Why be Catholic?
It certainly has nothing to do with any sort of direct experience of God or mystical encounter with Christ. And it has nothing to do with feelings. I don’t always feel like a Christian. Heck, sometimes I feel like an atheist. And it doesn’t have anything to do with absolute certainty.
And yet, If I’m committed to being a rational person, I must consider that there are a few things going for the Catholic faith which are hard to dismiss.
The Bible holds the key to the human story. I’m Catholic because the Catholic vision is the most realistic one. The Catholic view of man is right on the money; the Church has human nature pegged. I can nod with St. Paul when he describes the division within himself; that division that keeps him from doing what he wants. I say ‘Amen!’ when he asks who will save him from this body of death. Paul clearly isn’t speaking about his own personal foibles. The reality he is pointing to is universal. A thousand years from now, some person who is honest and observant will also nod in agreement as he reads of the division within himself and between humans and creation. You will never find in a psychology textbook a description of the madness of men so complete and accurate as that picture which emerges from the bible. From Cain killing his brother to the crowds demanding Barrabbas in exchange for Jesus, the old biblical concepts of ‘sin’, the ‘fall’, and ‘redemption’ still have explanatory power.
The Gospel is a source of Hope. We need hope to live. We can take pain and suffering; but we can’t tolerate an absence of meaning or hope. The Gospels present us with a very optimistic and joyful vision which gives us hope. God–according to this gospel vision–desires us to have a future. Creation was not made to fail. Death and suffering are not allowed to be the end of the story. The ‘Living God’ wants us to have life and promises us life. This gives us hope. And hope is good for us. There is not a more fundamental kind of evidence–naturally speaking–than goodness, truth, and beauty. If hope is good, it is also in some proximity to truth.
A church of forgiveness. In times of great scandal, foolishness, disappointments with leaders or the sins of our neighbors, it’s consoling to be part of a Church whose main attribute is forgiveness and tolerance. Why? Because we are all causes of scandal and foolishness. We are all sources of disappointment and contribute in our own way to the messiness of the Church. That’s why it’s not a church of picking-up-stones or a Church of pointing-out-the specks-in-our-brothers’-eyes, but a Church of “bear with one another” and “forgive as your Father in heaven has forgiven you. The sign of God in the world is love and mercy and forgiveness and tolerance for each other; not throwing stones and pointing fingers and playing back-seat pope and heaping scorn on the bishops all day or ‘leaving the Church’. In the end, it is mercy that is the most convincing thing about being a part of the Church, not perfection or lack of sin or hypocrisy.
This too is part of the realism of the Church. And part of the hope of Christians. We are all broken, and mercy gives us hope. It’s hard to be shocked by sin when the Church is an assembly of sinners. But not just sinners; sinners on the way to healing through mercy and forgiveness and love. Sinners on the way to being saints; sinners on the way to being signs of God’s love in the world.
Who could have made this up? What other religion or ‘godless philosophy’ is more realistic, more profound, more hopeful, more totally understanding of the real condition of human beings, than this Catholic faith?
