Roman Catholicism is not a distant worldview for most of us. It is the faith of a grandmother, a colleague, a student's family, perhaps a spouse's relatives. Catholics confess the Trinity, the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, bodily resurrection and return. That shared ground is real, and we should say so gladly. Yet the Reformers were convinced, and Reformed Christians remain convinced, that Rome's teaching on authority, justification, the Mass and Mary obscures the sufficiency of Christ and his finished work.
This module lets Rome speak for itself. You will read the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), the Council of Trent, Vatican I and II, and the papal definitions on Mary, and you will learn to separate official dogma from popular piety. Then you will learn to answer the best Catholic arguments, the kind made by trained apologists, from Scripture and from church history.
Our aim is not to win an argument against a friend at the family barbecue. It is to point a fellow image-bearer, often one who already loves Jesus in some way, to a Saviour whose one sacrifice is enough and whose righteousness is given as a gift. Tone matters as much as content in this module.