Why I am a Catholic (Part 1)

The short answer is that I am convinced that Catholicism is TRUE.

I am, of course, aware that many people dispute this (even many who call themselves Catholics). (I hope everyone who does dispute it leaves a comment so I can address each one--there is an answer for every question.)

Let's explore some of the claims of the Catholic Church.

First of all, one must remember that Catholicism is NOT just another Christian denomination. Denominationalism started when groups started breaking away from the Catholic Church. This is not mere opinion, but historical fact. Anyone who accepts the New Testament and believes that Jesus was the Son of God ought to recognize that He intended to, and indeed DID, found a church, the one true church. He founded it on the 12 Apostles with Peter ("Rock") as their head (Matt 16:16-19).

A thumbnail sketch of Christian history

Originally, and for a few generations after the first Christian Pentecost (Acts ch. 2), those who believed in Jesus remained a sect within Judaism. (Gradually over many years, they grew more and more distinct from other Jewish sects, and eventually the "official" Jewish leadership expelled them from the synagogue and they became a separate religion.) Over the years this one group of Jesus' followers (or disciples) spread outward from Jerusalem, and in various places came to be known by various names. Some people called them Nazarenes because they followed the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In Antioch (in present day southern Turkey), they were first called Christians (Acts 11:26).

The Apostles traveled from city to city and taught the people about Christ and many converted from Judaism and paganism by their oral preaching, and were baptized. The Apostles would frequently train and ordain men to lead these local congregations. (These men were called episcopoi (bishops, or overseers) and presbyteroi (priests, or elders).)

Here and there, a number of errors began to be taught by some of these local leaders. The first big error was taught by the Judaizers, who held that all Christians had to keep observing all the minutiae of the Law of Moses. The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:1-35) was called to deal with this question, and many of the letters in the New Testament deal with it extensively.

For the first couple of decades, all teaching was in the form of oral preaching. Nothing that appears in what we today call the New Testament was penned for at least 10 years after the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. No one followed Jesus or the Apostles around taking notes (their memories were much better in those days than ours are today because they didn't have the luxury of cheap books and common literacy--they HAD to remember what they heard). And, as I said, the Apostles would appoint leaders in the towns and cities wherever they went (1 Tim 4:14; 5:22; 2 Tim 1:6) and instructed them to pass this same apostolic teaching and authority on to other men, faithfully and in its entirety (2 Tim 2:2; Titus 1:5).

Eventually all the Apostles died, but their teaching and authority lived on in the persons of the bishops they appointed (Catholics today refer to this as "apostolic succession"). Whenever doctrinal disputes arose, the bishops within the affected area would come together in synods or councils and discuss the matter and sift through the issue to separate what the Apostles actually taught from the novel and erroneous teaching. (This wasn't always easy, since often the dispute wasn't necessarily one of outright error, but might have been just new ways of expressing true apostolic teaching. The bishops' job was to figure this out, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit according to the promise of Christ (John 15:13) and to declare the truth.)

Some errors refused to go away, however. People frequently decided they knew better than the bishops, forgetting that only the bishops (as a body or "college," not individually) had the apostolic authority to declare the true apostolic doctrine. So they went off in their own groups, and their false teachings were known as "heresies," many of which persist in one form or another to this day.

By the end of the First Century (certainly by A.D. 107 or 110 when Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote his letter to the Smyrnaeans) it was apparently common to distinguish between the Christians that followed the bishops' (i.e. apostolic) teaching, and the various groups of "heretics" (those who "take out") by the word "catholic" ("of the whole," or universal). This same apostolic teaching is preserved to our own day in the one Catholic Church.

Next installment: The Bible

Some "lost" comments have been found!

Someone saved a copy of 14 of the comments that were posted on the old template (before they were deleted) and sent them to me. They were comments on the November 20th post (on same-sex "marriage"). I have now reproduced them in the comment box under that post [with a few minor editorial changes--order of some comments, corrected typos, etc.].

If anyone has similar records of any of the other comments (or can remember any of them) please e-mail them to me and I will restore them (or you can just post them yourself). Or post new ones.

"You call that an argument?"

(...or a funny thing happened on the way to the conclusion)

"...That's not a real argument! Why, the source of your premise that the sky is blue also said the earth is flat and the stars revolve on glass spheres! Hubble proved Socrates was wrong and Darwin was right long ago, and there's no turning back the clock, you idiot. And I happen to know that the source of your claim that light refracts through a prism ate over 16 eggs and smoked 5 cigars a week (and you can't deny it), so you know his cholesterol was way out of whack! And besides, your tie clashes with your suit! Who dressed you this morning? What you should do is go to this little shop down in Greenwich Village, called Straight Lines for Crossed Eyes--they make the sweetest little things that could make even you look good. And besides, my car is much faster than your's, and I'll bet you don't even donate to Planned Parenthood. (What kind of a snob are you!?) And if your people in Congress really cared about 'the little people,' money wouldn't be a problem and Greenspan would be out on the street! It's those selfish, greedy fat-cats in big hotels who think everybody else is worthless just because their idea of fun is a little different! And you're the same way! It's NOT MY FAULT!! You have no idea how much it hurt when my dad took away the keys when I was seventeen. He had NO RIGHT! And neither do you! You pompous ass! You can't possibly know what you're talking about!! Case closed ... I WIN! (You know, you really should have done your homework before you tried to tangle with the likes of me.)"

(Any resemblence between this diatribe and a REAL rebuttal is purely coincidental.)

Logical Fallacies (non sequiturs) (partial list)

I. Fallacies of Ambiguity

1. Begging the question (petitio principii): to employ circular reasoning by using one's conclusion (in a disguised form) as a premise.

2. Complex or Leading Question: a question that is phrased in such a way that it cannot be answered without granting some particular answer to some point at issue. (E.g. "Are you still beating your wife?")

3. Accident (fallacia accidentis): improperly applying a generalization or general principle to a particular instance. This is the opposite of the hasty or sweeping generalization (see II., 3, below).

4. Continuum or "Argument of the Beard" (as in, "exactly how many whiskers must a man have before he can be said to have a beard?"): an attempt to establish that the existence of a gradual continuum between extremes is proof against any real difference between them, because there is no absolute dividing line.

5. Bad Analogy: an attempt to equate two things when only a superficial similarity exists. This is refutable by reductio ad absurdum (reducing the analogy to a patent absurdity merely by extending the line of reasoning).

6. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this): to infer causality from mere temporal priority. (Just because one event happened before another does not mean that the first event caused the second one.)

7. Composition: an argument that a property which is affirmed or denied of every part of some whole must also be affirmed or denied of the whole. (E.g. the affirmation that since all members of the Catholic Church (on earth) are sinners, therefore the Catholic Church is sinful is a fallacy of composition. The truth is that the Church, being the Bride of Christ and the Mystical Body of Christ, is a sinless society by the promise of Christ and the agency of the Holy Spirit, despite the fact that all her members remain sinners.)

8. Division: the opposite of composition; an argument that a property which is affirmed or denied of a whole must also be affirmed or denied of each of its constituent parts. (E.g. it is fallacious to affirm that, since the Church is infallible in matters of faith and morals, each one of Her members must also be likewise personally infallible. This fallacy is employed by the "We Are Church" crowd.)

9. Equivocation (equivocatio or homonymia): playing upon the double meaning of a term in a misleading or erroneous fashion.

10. Amphiboly: A sentence with a built-in ambiguity due to its peculiar structure is said to be amphibolous. The fallacy of amphiboly is committed when the amphibolous structure of a sentence is played upon in a misleading or erroneous fashion.

11. Accent: Sometimes a sentence takes on different meanings as it is accented in different ways. The fallacy of accent is committed when a false or misleading inference is made from a sentence which is improperly accented (i.e. some of its terms are unnecessarily stressed) when the same sentence, when properly accented, is perfectly true and clear.


II. Irrelevant Appeals

Aristotle identified fallacies that were committed by people who were ignorant of the question at issue. These fallacies are classified in general as ignorantio elenchi, ignorant refutations, that is to say, the person committing them either proves the wrong point or he arrives at his conclusion by a set of premises irrelevant to the point at issue, or both. With the exception of the hasty generalization, these are informal fallacies, i.e. they do not necessarily involve a formal mistake in logic, they are merely irrelevant.

1. Abusing the Man (argumentum ad hominem, arguing to the man; as opposed to arguing ad rem, to the point): there are at least four basic types:
a. Name-calling
b. "Let's-play-amateur-psychoanalyst" (calling into question the opponent's mental health)
c. Casting aspersions on the opponent's moral character
d. Poisoning the wells (an attempt to discredit the opponent absolutely, to destroy his reliability for anything in the eyes of the audience).

2. Argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people or popular sentiments): there are three main types:
a. Argumentum ad captandum vulgas (appeal to the emotions of the crowd)
b. Argumentum ad invidium (appeal to the prejudices of one's audience)
c. Argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to the pity or sympathy of one's audience)

3. Hasty (or Sweeping) Generalization: This is committed when, after observing that a small number or a special sort of the members of some group have some property, it is then inferred that the whole group has this property. One must not draw unnecessary conclusions or make a judgment about a large population on the basis of an observation of certain members of that population who have very special positions or functions or who happen to be in extraordinary or atypical situations.

4. Shifting the Burden of Proof: The burden of proof properly rests on the proponent, the one making the assertion; the opponent has no obligation to disprove the assertion or to prove the contrary. The proponent commits a logical error if he tries to force the opponent to prove the assertion to be false when he has not adequately proven it to be true.

5. Special Pleading: citing only those facts which seem to support one's position while avoiding those which seem to undermine it. Logic requires a proponent to consider all of the pertinent facts. Special pleading misrepresents the proponent's case by excluding any facts which might damage it.

6. Red Herring: an attempt to divert attention away from the topic at hand by bringing up side-issues or subtly changing the subject altogether.

7. Straw Man: This is a misrepresentation--a caricature--of one's opponent's position, which the proponent sets up so as to easily knock it down. Since a straw man is not an accurate statement of the opponent's position, what the proponent is actually attacking is not the true position at all, but a figment of his own imagination.

8. False Antithesis, Faulty Dilemma or False Dichotomy: assuming two options to be opposite and/or mutually exclusive when such might not actually be the case. There may be more than two options and/or they may not be opposed to each other, but rather complementary aspects of a unified truth. This fallacy is the flip-side of the "argument of the beard" (continuum). Both demand an absolute division between positions which may not in fact exist.

9. Argumentum ad ignorantiam (appealing to the ignorance of the opponent or audience): basing one's argument on some field of expertise of which one presumes the opponent or audience is ignorant--very dangerous if the proponent is himself ignorant of it.

10. Misuse of Authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam (argument to modesty or bashfulness-because the proponent is attempting to hide behind some authority rather than letting his own reasoning or evidence stand subject to evaluation or scrutiny): This fallacy is related to the argumentum ad ignorantiam. One must first understand the nature and use of authority and its overall context, as well as the limitations of any single authority, or the attempt to use it may backfire in fallacy.

11. Appeal to Force (Argumentum ad baculum): This is committed when a proponent attempts to sway an opponent to accept his view by applying some real or imagined threat of force or violence. Although the appeal to force is, logically speaking, irrelevant, it is often persuasive nonetheless.

12. Cliché Thinking: "the lazy man's guide to truth;" clichés and truisms, however convenient and appropriate in casual discourse, cannot substitute for sound reasoning and must not be the basis of one's argument or point of view.

13. Chronological Snobbery: to imply in one's argument that an idea that is old is therefore no longer true; a basis for the heresy called "Modernism."

14. Hypothesis Contrary to Fact: to base one's argument on a hypothetical situation, "what might have been." "If only…" and "what if…" statements cannot serve as valid premises.

Why would I want to read Gödel?

Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) was a brilliant logician/mathemetician, no question about it. But unless I was a mathematics graduate student, engineer or professor (which I'm not), I can't see myself being absorbed in his writings. My occupation, hobbies, personal interests, none of these are related to the field of mathematics. I nevertheless understand logic and how to use it. Logic is basically the rules for clear reasoning. I appreciate Gödel's contributions in the area of logic. I can follow a logical argument and can recognize a number of logical fallacies. My fundamental interests however are mainly directed toward getting myself to heaven (i.e., eternal life with God) and helping my family (and as many other people as I can) to get there too.

Some people (of self-described atheist, agnostic or pagan persuasion) have recently posted comments on other blogs (e.g., bloghogger) contrasting Gödel with Thomas Aquinas, saying "I'd take Gödel over Aquinas any day." True, they both deal in "proofs," but their subject matter is of an entirely different order. It's like comparing apples with oranges (or apples with angels). Is that logical? I can understand someone preferring Gödel's theorems and proofs over Aquinas'. The objects of Gödel's proofs (impersonal propositions and equations) make no claims on our lives as persons. They don't tell us how we are to behave. However the object of Aquinas' proofs (God) certainly does make such claims, claims that require a committed response on our part. We can choose to avoid this commitment (in this life), but it becomes unavoidable in the afterlife. (For now, I have no intention to attempt to "prove" that there is an afterlife. Let's save that for another time, shall we?)

Unfortunately, the place where we will be "committed" in eternity must be freely decided (by us) in the time we have on earth. Those people who avoid making the choice in this life (i.e., those who choose not to commit themselves to the love of God), ipso facto choose eternity without Him. That's what Christians mean by "hell"--eternity without God. God does not force Himself on us, requiring us to choose Him instead, and these are our only alternatives: God or no-God.

Of course, God cannot be "proven" logically (in a mathematical sense). He cannot be reduced to an equation, nor is He an experiment that can be viewed under a microscope. He is in no way material and cannot be analyzed by material creatures throught material means. Since He is pure spirit, in order to know Him you have to accept His invitation and open yourself up to Him spiritually.

It should be equally obvious that God's mercy and action are beyond any of us to observe, much less understand. That's why the Church is competent to declare someone to be in heaven with God, but never pronounces that anyone is in hell. Not Judas, not Hitler, not Stalin, not Mao, no one. And Christians must always resist the temptation to presume to judge the condition or status of any other soul but our own. But this in no way exempts us from the responsibility (or commission) to preach the gospel to every creature (always with our actions, sometimes with our words).

Gödel no doubt said many brilliant things about how a logical argument is technically constructed, but that, by itself, won't help me get to heaven. I feel my time would be better spent in other pursuits.

The New Look

Here it is. What do you think?
Sorry about wiping out all those interesting comments posted on the old template, but saving them would have been more trouble than it was worth (in my opinion).
New commenting system too, courtesy of Haloscan.com.