The following article (including the note at the beginning) comes to this website courtesy of James Preece, who writes the blog Catholic and Loving it! Grateful thanks go to James for permission to post here what is a very useful summary of what we believe in a nutshell.

Note: The following has been written by some guy with a keyboard. It has not been written by a priest and is not officially approved by the Church. I've done my best to get it right, but I’m not the Pope...

In the beginning…

We believe in one God. Before anything existed there was God who brought all things in to existence and nothing exists that was not created by him. God did not create because he needed something or was lonely, God is entirely self-sufficient. God is. Why would a God who doesn’t need or want for anything choose to create anyway? Because God is love. When we love someone we give them gifts and want nothing in return except their happiness. So it is with God. Even though there was nothing we could offer him that he did not already possess, God gave us existence simply because that is what love does. Love gives and asks nothing in return.

We have no arguments with evolution or any other scientific explanations for the development of the universe from the big bang to the evolution of human beings because we believe that the very laws of physics were created by God. It is a sign of the greatness of God that he did not make matter and then hammer it in to the desired shapes and forms, but created matter itself in such a way that it would be naturally ordered towards the fulfilment of his divine plan. He saw that it was good.

The soul…

God created many weird and wonderful creatures but none so strange as human beings whom he made in the image of himself. Although he formed them from the dust of the earth like the other animals, God breathed in to man something of his divine life. We call this the human spirit or the soul. The soul is not a physical part of a person, like the liver or the brain. If you cut a person open, you will not find the soul. The soul is the part of us that is not physical, but which makes us a little like God.

If a person commits a crime we say that they are to blame, but how can we blame them if they are just atoms and molecules operating according to the laws of science? We do not blame a volcano if it erupts because we know that a volcano is just a system of rocks and lava, but we blame a person if they get angry because we know there is a part of a person which more than just a machine. If a person overcomes their fear and risks their life to enter a burning building and save a child, we praise that person and say that they are a hero. We know that this person overcame their natural animal instinct to save themselves and instead put themselves in harm’s way.

The soul is the part of us that allows us to override the laws of physics and make choices of our own free will. It is the part of us that is able to choose between right and wrong, between being a hero and running away. In short, your soul is you. As C.S. Lewis (author of the Narnia books) wrote, “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body”.