And another thing, ...

There was another aspect of Catholicism that I intended to cover in my last post [February 14: Life from the inside (Part 2)], but forgot. And that is: why Catholic teaching seems so, well, so complicated.

Non-Catholics typically look at the well-known practices & beliefs of Catholics and think of them as an eclectic, jumbled hodgepodge of unrelated and eccentric ideas and behaviors. A veritable grab-bag of nonsense invented or accumulated in pack-rat fashion over the centuries. I mean, just look at them:

Papal infallibility, praying to saints, fish on Fridays, “the Mass” as a
sacrifice, penance & personal mortification, confession to a priest, rosary
beads, mortal & venial sins, crucifixes & statues, holy water,
condemnation of contraception, marriage tribunals, priestly celibacy, the whole
Mary thing, sign of the cross, seven sacraments, yada, yada, yada ….

That’s the outsider’s view.

But once a person makes the decision, moved by grace, to take the teachings and practices of the Church seriously and begins to look into their meaning and history, it’s as if he takes the huge pile of fabric he once mistook for a “grab-bag” and begins to open and unroll it and takes a hard look at it. He then realizes that it is actually a tapestry, ingeniously woven in a seamless integrated pattern. The images depicted on it are not random and confused, but interconnected, historically organic & rationally sound. (Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman said to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.)

And as he looks more closely, he begins to notice certain threads in the fabric that can be traced from one doctrine to the next, to the next … tracing them all the way to the central figure: Jesus Christ, true God & true man, His life, passion, death and resurrection. It’s called the unity of faith.

Everything, no matter how remote it may seem at first, eventually relates to and takes its meaning from the person of Jesus Christ. Catholicism, properly understood, is a unified whole, not a random mishmash. This is why, once you begin to “tug” on a particular thread (say, you think there’s nothing wrong with artificial contraception), you very soon start to see that one thread, once pulled out of place, begins to mar and distort the others nearby (e.g., the total gift of self in marriage, the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of human life, reliance on divine providence …). Before long, the whole pattern starts to come undone, just because you thought “one little thread … way down here in the corner” wasn’t to your liking, wasn’t necessary, and it was OK to pull it out.

It doesn’t work that way, though. “Cafeteria Catholicism” (the practice of picking and choosing the doctrines you like and skipping over the ones you don’t) is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Once you reject the magisterial (teaching) authority of the Church, in effect making yourself the final judge of the way things should be, you cease to be Catholic and become, well, something else. Politicians (to use the most common example) who claim to be Catholic, yet maintain that it is desirable to protect the heinous practice of abortion by every possible law are lying. They are not Catholic because they dismiss fundamental Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life (and a whole lot more besides, because you can’t reject one without implicitly rejecting a host of others).

On the other hand, once, through the operation of grace, you make the act of faith that you “believe and profess all that the Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God,”* while you may not understand every detail of every article of the faith, you still believe, on the word of Jesus, that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church (Matt 16:19), that it would never formally teach an error as truth to be believed by all. And, if you choose to dig deeper into any of the individual tenets of the faith, that truth is always borne out to an amazing degree, bringing with that understanding a deep sense of peace and satisfaction (and even love) that an “outsider” cannot know.

* (part of the Profession of Faith made by adult converts)

Life from the inside (Part 2)

The Catholic Church is not a human institution. It is a divine institution with human members.

This is because it was founded by a divine Person, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ. And the life (animating principle) of the Church is also a divine Person. The New Testament refers to the Church as the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Eph 1:22-23, 4:12; Col 1:24). Christ died for us all on the hill of Calvary at one moment in history (approximately 1,975 years ago), but rose again from the dead less than 48 hours later, never to die again. Therefore, the Body of Christ today is a living Body. The life principle (soul) of the living Body of Christ, the Church, is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Holy Spirit, originally manifested in the infant Church on Pentecost Sunday (Acts 2), ten days after Jesus ascended into heaven (Acts 1:8-9).

For this reason, membership in the Catholic Church cannot be compared to membership in any merely human institution, such as a club or other fraternal, social or religious organization. Each of these was founded by a human being, even the various Protestant churches. (This also explains why the Catholic Church cannot be destroyed—despite the best efforts of both its enemies and its members. It is maintained in existence through time, not by human effort or ingenuity, but purely by the power of God to be Christ’s presence in the world until He returns at the end of time.)

It is more like membership in a family than in some other human institution. While it is possible for a non-member to study the principles and tenets of an organization in order to understand why it exists and what it’s all about, the same cannot be said of a family. The only way to thoroughly understand and appreciate a family is to join it.

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard stories by former Protestants who, following the path of truth, heeded the unmistakable call of God to find His “One True Church,” the original Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ.

Typically, they’d start in one of the Protestant denominations (the church of their youth) and over time come to realize that there were certain elements among the traditions or teachings of their church that didn’t quite square with the Biblical principles they’d been taught, or certain passages in the New Testament that made absolutely no sense given their church’s standard interpretation. So they left it and “went shopping” for another church that made more sense.

Well, after years (or even decades) of searching around the denominations, finding elements of Christian life and truth in each one, yet also finding each one somehow seriously flawed, eventually they would find they had run out of options. They realize that the fullness of the Christian life and Christian truth was not to be found among the Protestant denominations.

At this point, they often report breaking out in a cold sweat: “No, no, NO!!! (they would typically pray), NOT the ‘Whore of Babylon’—not the Catholic church!! Please, God, Noooo! Anything but THAT!!”

So they might try one of the Eastern Orthodox churches instead, recognizing their valid priesthood and the validity of their sacraments (beyond Baptism and Matrimony which were already valid in Protestantism, not requiring priestly ordination). This will do, they think. “I can have all the biblical sacraments, and not have to join the Catholic church. Whew! Far out!”

But after a while the nagging thoughts come back and they sense that this too is only a detour, not their final destination. This realization always centers in some way on the question of authority, especially of the Petrine office, the principle of visible unity in the Church Jesus established on earth (Matt 16:17-19; Lk 22:32; Jn 21:15-17).

So, in time, they find themselves on the threshold of the Catholic Church.

There is a time (sometimes a long time) of confusion and indecision, not unlike the period of time when a man is making up his mind to ask the woman he loves if she will consent to become his wife. In both situations, such a one realizes that he is on the verge of a life-changing moment—a defining moment in his existence as a person. Joining the Catholic Church (he realizes) is most definitely not like joining the Lutherans or the Baptists. It really is more like getting married. Jesus is the biblical Bridegroom (Matt 9:15, etc.) and the Church is his Bride.

Once they are finally received into full communion with the Church however—they already enjoyed an imperfect, partial communion within their Protestant denominations by virtue of their baptism—they are invariably flooded almost immediately with the deep, mystical and joyful sense that they are finally home. They realize now that they could never be happy anywhere else, and wonder why they took so long to find the ONE place they were meant to be all along!

So just as it is impossible for an “outsider” to perfectly understand a human family, the same holds for the family of God, the Catholic Church.

Life from the inside (Part 1)

You may have been wondering what the point was of that post below titled Different (Dec. 4, 2005). It was intended as an elementary illustration of the principle that quite frequently things look completely different from the inside than they do from the outside. So different, in fact, that it is impossible to truly know the thing until you experience it from the inside. I intended to post subsequent examples in a similar vein, but “never got around to it ....” The other two posts were to be on the topics of love & marriage, and the Catholic Church. I will try to sum up my thoughts on those topics in this present post & the next (I hope), but without the elaborate illustrative narratives.

Love is something everybody knows something about. Every person has some experience on some level of something they call “love.” Love is a thing that is generally hard to define with any precision, but usually people claim that they “know it when they see it.” And it’s safe to say, I think, that no two people experience love in quite the same way. I’m sure everyone would agree that love is probably the most precious thing on this earth.

Whether it is the love experienced between spouses, parents & children, or close friends, it is a treasure that is universally recognized and prized. It is quite distinct from the person we love (or sense loves us). Love is not the other person; it is a separate something that is shared between two persons (or, sadly, that is wasted on a material object or some other impersonal concept that cannot return it), and distinct even from the manner in which we express it to the other person (e.g. gentle words, a caress or kiss, conjugal embrace, etc.). Love is absolutely intangible because it is a spiritual reality, not physical. (It frequently spills over, it is true, from the spirit into the emotions, and we experience such physiological manifestations as accelerated respiration, mental preoccupation and/or confusion, but real love isn’t the only thing that can produce these effects, so it is always wise to proceed with great caution.)

It’s the stuff of poetry and music. Popular “love songs” attempt to describe it. It is a beauty that cannot be seen or heard, but is absolutely and inescapably real.

(It is tragically also true that there are some people who mainly experience love as a void because they see others experience the joy of love, but they themselves are so alone in life that they do not have anyone to love themselves, or to love them back.)

Now I could talk about love all day long in sentimental, analytical, allegorical, metaphysical or theological terms and, although that might give you a few new insights (or thoroughly convince you I was crazy), it still would not give you the actual experience of love itself. When two persons experience real love, their view of life itself changes—drastically. When you’re “in love,” colors seem brighter, sounds seem sweeter, everything around you takes on a newness and clarity that is startling. Of course, things don’t actually change, only your perception of things is heightened because love has changed your outlook on everything around you—on life itself.

Life itself looks different from the inside of a loving relationship than it does from the outside.

Love comes through knowledge of another person. It is impossible to truly love anyone you know nothing about. A man courts a woman, for example, in order to get to know her better, and to let her know him better. And, hopefully, with mutual knowledge will come mutual love; the more insightful the knowledge, the deeper the love.

Before I met my wife, she was a stranger, and I might not have given her a second glance (had circumstances been different). Once we met, we decided we wanted to get to know one another better, and over time, I began to appreciate her personality (and personal quirks) in ways that couldn’t be imagined before. Our love deepened and now she’s my wife. And our love continues to deepen over the years. Someone who doesn’t know my wife or me would never understand why we love each other the way we do. But that’s OK; they don’t have to. I understand, because I see it from the inside.

But true love isn’t limited to married love. Siblings can love one another very deeply, as can parents their children, of course, and vice versa, as well as close friends of the same or opposite sex. (Deep love need not be expressed genitally, as that is appropriate only to the state of marriage—between one man and one woman.) There is also the love of a priest or religious (sister/nun or brother) for the Lord or for His bride, the Church. And someone outside that relationship cannot understand it properly. Only those who experience the love from the inside can truly know what it’s all about or truly appreciate it.