“What does being Catholic mean to you?”
That may sound like a corny question asked of high-schoolers at a church youth group… because it is, in fact, a corny question recently asked of high-schoolers at my church’s youth group… but how would you answer it?
Maybe a better way to ask it is this: “Laying aside the question of whether Catholicism is true, why are you Catholic?”
Here’s how I might answer.
1. I am Catholic because the Church gives me a different vantage point on the world. As Chesterton wrote, “The Catholic Church is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” Your environment will determine your beliefs and actions — unless you can compare your environment to something unchanging, indifferent to time and place. So while the world pursues hedonism, we Catholics practice self-discipline; while the world glorifies sex, we are chaste; while the world demands its rights, we focus on our duties.
Or take an age with opposite excesses: the Middle Ages.
To scholars pursuing philosophy before they pursued holiness, Thomas a Kempis wrote, “An unlearned peasant, whose contentment is the service of God, is far better than the learned and the clever, whose pride in their knowledge leads them to neglect their souls while fixing their attention on the stars.”
When many people denigrated the lay vocation, St. Francis de Sales wrote, “A different exercise of devotion is required of each — the noble, the artisan, the servant, the prince, the maiden and the wife; and furthermore such practice must be modified according to the strength, the calling, and the duties of each individual… The devotion which is true hinders nothing, but on the contrary it perfects everything; and that which runs counter to the rightful vocation of any one is, you may be sure, a spurious devotion.”
And consider the life of St. Francis of Assisi: born to wealthy aristocratic family in an age that prized social class and obedience to one’s parents, he gave up his wealth against his father’s will. Though most people then thought monks belonged in monasteries, he decided to bring prayer and preaching into the streets.
Thomas a Kempis didn’t neglect philosophy; St. Francis de Sales didn’t downplay the importance of religious vocations; St. Francis of Assisi didn’t scorn family or contemplative monasticism. Without rejecting the good things their contemporaries praised, they embraced the good things their contemporaries forgot. To be Catholic is to see beyond the biases of your time and place, to compare its prevailing standards to eternal ones.
2. I am Catholic because I can’t figure everything out for myself. Imagine trying to deduce Christian theology from the Bible alone or to evaluate whether to fight a war without Augustine and Aquinas. Or to go more broadly, where would the world be without the Church? Catholics have made inestimable contributions to nearly every field of study — not just theology and philosophy, but history, literature, political theory, education, biology, genetics, astronomy, medicine, mathematics, psychology, and more. The story of the last two millenniums is the story of How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization.
Cue atheist response: “If that’s what people can do despite the Church, imagine what they could do without the Church!” Sure, I admit the human race would have achieved some technological advancement without a pope in Rome. But keep in mind: crucial Catholic teachings not shared by most pre-Christian civilizations — on the dignity of every human being, the order of the physical universe, the reliability of human reason, the possibility of discovering truth — undergird the very notion of progress. The Church has advanced human knowledge for more centuries than most civilizations even exist. To be Catholic is to gain access to her bottomless fount of wisdom.
3. I am Catholic because I need condemnation, salvation, and moral guidance. It is fashionable now to craft one’s own code of ethics, to do what’s right for you. I find this a bit pathetic: the human race should really know better by now. Do-it-yourself morality quickly turns into the rejection of all moral norms, which sounds fun until it ends in bloodbaths like the 20th century.
Anyway, my main point is this: Even do-it-yourself moralists recognize everyone else’s hypocrisy; only religious people recognize their own. I know what is right; I do what is wrong. And since the Church is so darn inflexible and unyielding, she sees right through my excuses and tells me the truth. You are a sinner. Think about it, admit it, turn to Christ, be grateful that He died to save you… and stop sinning. No one but the Church (acting as God’s instrument in the world) calls you to holiness or gives you the grace you need to attain it.
True: most Catholics do not even come close to obeying the Church’s teachings. Some betray her — and her most vulnerable members — terribly. I do not pretend that Catholics are holier than anyone else. Yet the only grounds on which you can condemn us are the grounds provided by the Church. Denounce our sins if you will, but remember that the idea of sin entered civilization through the Church. (If good and evil are relative, the Church isn’t evil. If good and evil are not relative… wait. Don’t consider that possibility unless you’re ready to swim the Tiber.)
Most of us aren’t saints yet, but the moral commands and spiritual graces of the Church are our only hope of getting there someday. To be Catholic is to recognize your sinfulness and still aspire to sanctity.
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So what did I miss? Besides your belief that Catholicism is true, why are you Catholic, and why do you need the Church? Or if you’re not Catholic — why not?!
6 thoughts on “Why be Catholic?”
Being a ‘Seeking’ Agnostic-Atheist, I feel I could relate to Answer 1 the most. The wisdom and philosophy in paragraph one of Answer 1 gives me a lot of confidence in Catholicism and is how my mind loves to be educated at the moment. Just a shame I have no connection at all, at All, with God; no mental connection in anyway.
Great question and points! I think for me – the answer is at first simple. I am Catholic because I was baptized and raised Catholic. Why have I stayed Catholic? That’s a different question that yields so so so many answers, but it’s a choice I’ve made to truly be Catholic (and live the faith!) as opposed to just “being Catholic”. I would definitely agree with all your points though as being reasons for me as well.
@Earthsurvivor – Sometimes, we have to get over mental roadblocks to have a connection with something or someone. Mine was the other way around – I finally built a personal connection with Christ, but then I needed to have a full-on intellectual battle/acceptance/reversion/pure love with what it means to be Catholic – thus why I am still Catholic! Keep searching, I hope you continue to find the answers your mind and heart are looking for! (I’d really recommend reading some of Jennifer Fulwiler’s posts at her blog conversiondiary.com – she was an atheist and it’s so interesting to see her personal and intellectual conversion into the Church)
This is really a question every Catholic should work through as a spiritual exercise. Like Liesl, I was baptized and raised Catholic, but as I grew into my late teens and twenties, i was challenged to make sense of my being Catholic. I didn’t want to just go through the motions, like I remember doing in high school, as though my Catholic faith was another requirement.
The interesting thing I found in my own journey of ‘owning my Catholic faith’, that helped me embrace it, was not the feel-good times … it was in the times I couldn’t sense God’s presence, that made me realize what faith really is: it is believing without seeing (or feeling, for that matter). Truly, I reached a place I had to choose to believe in God and trust in Him. It was these moments that made me realize, faith, although explainable using the intellect, has an element about it that seems nebulous and can’t nail down in words; this part of my being Catholic (and, I will add to this, my reasons for consecrating my life to God as a religious) is something I cannot always fully articulate. Yet, the Church helps me daily to reconcile my intellectual understanding of God with that less articulate understanding, and together help me to walk ever more into the arms of God’s embrace.
I could write a LOT about this, but I think what it boils down to for me is that I am Catholic because Jesus is found in his entirety (Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity) in this Church and no other. When I was doubting back in college and looking at other churches, that’s what ultimately brought me back to the Church. No body else has Jesus like we do. Praise God for that!
“So what did I miss? Besides your belief that Catholicism is true, why are you Catholic, and why do you need the Church? Or if you’re not Catholic — why not?!”
I came close to writing a post about this back when we launched, and I could never quite get it to work out, so I might as well give away the plot. The best reason to join any religion is because it is true and good and beautiful. The Catholic Church and the Catholic Faith is all of these things in a unique way which is greater than can be said of any other religion. It was founded by God Himself, after all, Who Is the source of all Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. But defending this proposition is the task for an entire blog, and really or an entire lifetime, so I’d have to fall back on my second-best (or possibly third or fourth) reason: which is to get my sins forgiven. It is true that there are plenty of Protestant sects which claim to offer this as well. But which of these actually offers reconciliation, absolution, or even the barest hint of participating in our own atonement? The last one, at least, seems to go more-or-less against most of the varieties of Protestant theology which I have encountered.
Thanks for the great comments, all! I probably should have noted that I was listing answers I would give to non-Catholics and non-religious people; I’ve found the sacraments, for example, extremely hard to explain, so despite their importance to me, they wouldn’t be the first thing I’d mention to a non-Catholic.
Earthsurvivor- Glad you liked the post! I second Liesl’s advice, and her recommendation of conversiondiary.com. Another story of an atheist converting to Catholicism may also be helpful or interesting to you: http://www.whyimcatholic.com/index.php/conversion-stories/atheist-converts/item/96-atheist-convert-rj-stove . And not to overwhelm with recommendations, but if you want a solid overview of all things Catholic, try Frank Sheed’s book “Theology and Sanity.” I’ll pray for your continuing search for truth!
Liesl, Sr. Lisa, Sarah, and JC – Thanks for adding more reasons why it’s great to be Catholic! Of course we can never really do the subject justice, but just thinking about it makes me thankful for my faith.