Easter 2010 was a particularly
momentous occasion in my life, I was formally received into the Catholic
Church; receiving the Grace of Love, that is the Holy Spirit, through my first
Sacramental Reconciliation; was sealed by the infusion of grace through
Confirmation; and finally made communion with the Universal Church in my first
reception of Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. I have noticed a
growing trend on Catholic Social Media and Blogosphere in response to the
purported loss of Catholics to the ‘unaffiliated’—I shall endeavour to say more
about this notion of an unaffiliated religious belief in another post—group in
the USA in which practicing Catholics give reasons for why they are Catholic.
Firstly,
a little about myself. I am a 22 year old practicing Catholic, who has recently
graduated University with a BA (Hons) Philosophy and Theology with the ultimate
aim of being a professional Philosopher and Theologian in service of the Church
within the academy. Before my conversion to Catholicism I was remotely
Atheistic but most proximately what I would term a Natural Theist. This is as my process of conversion did not begin
with the consideration of Christianity and it would not have been possible for
the methods of Apologetics to have moved me from Atheism directly to
Christianity; the Philosophy supposed by an Atheistic background makes a claim
to resurrection preposterous, thus these philosophical suppositions against
Theism had to be broken before I could properly consider Christianity. I shall
not address the arguments for Natural Theism over Atheism in this post, but a
presentation of what I consider to be one of the best formulations of the
argument can
be found here.
Why
Christianity? Christianity makes a very specific claim to Divine Revelation and
offers a very specific piece of historical evidence for testimony to the truth
of this claim. Christianity claims that in 1st century Israel “The Word became flesh, and dwelt amongst us”
that Jesus of Nazareth, who is Christos, or the Messiah, was born of the
Virgin Mary, Crucified under Pontius Pilate, was buried, and “on the third day he rose again in fulfilment
of the Scriptures”. The historical evidence the Church gives us in support
of this is the witness of the Apostles and their disciples in the Canon of the
Scriptures, the Apostolic, Ante, and Post Nicaea Fathers. With Natural Theism
affirmed through Philosophy; these first century documents written by
eyewitnesses and the disciples of eyewitnesses to the events of Jerusalem 33AD
are persuasive. Out of the 12 that which formed the Apostolic College at the
beginning of Acts (the 11 plus Bartholomew), 11 wear a Martyrs crown and only
St John died of old age. There was never a contestation of the empty tomb, nor
of the missing body. It is also known that the congregation of the Church in
Jerusalem before its sacking in 70AD (and the flight of Christians from the
city not long before) was sizeable, and it was of means. These were not
illiterate farmers and nomads; the early Christians came from every walk of
life and level of education.
The New Testament does not itself
contain mythological flowering; the Gospels are accounts of Jesus’ Ministry by
Apostles (Matthew & John) and Disciples of Apostles (Mark and Luke) were
composed 10-80 years after the ascension. The range of manuscripts available
and the minimal variance between these manuscripts give us assurance the texts
we have are accurate; more so than any other Classical Text, for our oldest
manuscripts of the New Testament are a century or so removed from the originals.
There appears to be little reason to doubt the testimony of the early Church as
to the Resurrection of Christ; and thus I believe.
But what does it mean to
resurrect as opposed to revive? What does it mean to die? To die can be said in
two senses: the first is for biological function to ceases, whilst the second is
for the substance to corrupt. In the first the soul (the united principle of
operation of the living substance) and body may not have actually separated,
and thus they may be revived; in eschatology this is called apparent death. In
the second the soul and the body split and separate, the body ceases to exist
and corrupts into its constituents and the soul’s connection to it has been
broken; in eschatology this is called actual death, or death simpliciter. The Natural Order is that
this substantial corruption is irreversible; an undoing of actual death and the
reunifying of body and soul into the self-same person is a reversal of the
Natural Order. And the reversal of the natural order requires a power that
itself transcends the natural order; thus the resurrection must be an act of
Deity; thus the Christian Revelation received the ultimate guarantee of Truth,
a miraculous occurrence that could only, even in principle, be attained by
supernatural causation. Thus the Ministry of Christ and the Revelation given by
Christ unto the Apostles receives a Divine mark of authenticity; this then
raises the question, what was this Revelation?
The Church again appeals to
Historical Testimony in her favour; the early Church Fathers and the
Theological Controversies of the early Church and the responses of the Church
to the continuing Christian Tradition. St Clement of Rome’s First Epistle to
the Corinthians is a First Century Epistle detailing a controversy at the
Church of Corinth in which the installed Bishop had been usurped and another elder
had been put into his place; St Clement decries this usurpation and exhorts the
Faithful at Corinth to submit to their Bishop and perform penance for rebelling
against the Body of Christ. St Clement goes through a Soteriology based upon
Faith, Hope, & Love, and St Ignatius of Antioch, another first century
Father, is the first explicit mention of the Monarchical Episcopal set up; St
Irenaeus in the third century explicitly evokes Apostolic Succession as a mark
of the continuing unity with the Apostles of the Church; and the Ecumenical
Councils were seen to have Dogmatic authority through which the Church taught
Divine Truth. This continuous assent to the early Doctrines of the Church
cannot be found within Protestantism as the Protestant Faith is not consonant
with the Faith of the Fathers in totality, nor with the doctrines of the
Theologians and Church Councils up to the Council of Trent.
To those familiar with Dogmatic
Theology before the Council and the cultural chaos that was the 60s and 70s
this argument for Catholicism will be familiar. Archbishop Sheehan presents a
similar case in Apologetics and Catholic
Doctrine, as well as several critical assessments of Calvinist, Lutheran,
Anglican, et al Theological Doctrines and finds them incompatible with the
testimony of the Fathers and the Teaching of the Church.
So why do I believe? There are
thousands of reasons why I believe; but they all ultimately reduced into the
statement that I believe Catholicism because the Catholic Church is the Body of
Jesus Christ, our Lord, who rose from the dead on the third day, after being
crucified and buried, in atonement for our sins; and as the Body of the Lord
Incarnate, the Church is the Body of the Fullness of Truth itself, and cannot
error.
Whilst the cultural waves of our time mean that we have transformed God
from the Creator and Lord who Loves his creation through the very act of
creation itself, into some abstract demiurge that is made in our image. Whilst
we sacrifice the sacred, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful upon the altar
of hedonistic paganism and an atheistic pantheism; the Catholic Church stands
firm in defence of the Truth, as she has throughout the centuries. Were there
mistakes? Yes; we are but sinful creatures who shall fall short of the glory of
God, and must approach him as the prodigal son who returns home in total
contrition as we meet him to reconcile in the Sacraments. Does this mean the
Church is not the Body of Christ? No; our Lord protects his Church so that the
gates of hades shall never prevail.
Fr Ratzinger made a prediction that the
Church shall enter into a period of recession, where her flock shall be smaller
but more fervent and devout of their faith and praxis; this is an unfortunate
reality, but it is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run.
I say this may not be a bad thing
because this is giving the Church a reality check; the way that we have
transmitted the faith and evangelised in the past 50 years (at least) has been
an abysmal failure. Cradle Catholics enter into their teenage years and, if
they were practicing at all, they have a tendency to fall away as well as being
poorly catechised. Take these statistics as a challenge, we can no longer be
Catholics of Convenience. We must be Catholics; and we must therefore act like
Catholics. Parents; actually catechise your children, the Catechist at your
parish will thank you for fulfilling the promises you made at the Child's baptism.
Young Catholics; it is time to hit the books, acquaint yourselves with the
Theologians and Apologists throughout the Church's history. St Thomas Aquinas,
Francisco Suarez (his Defensio
Fidei can be found here), Fr Garrigou-Lagrange, and many others.
Those of us dedicated to service
of the Church through an intellectual vocation; we have a serious job to do.
There is a large body of literature on Catholic Philosophy and Theology that
remains untranslated and largely inaccessible to large portions of the
Faithful; the Theological wisdom contained in the old Latin Manuals is a part
of the Churches intellectual heritage, and we ignore it at our peril. For those
of us dedicated to service of the Church in our intellectual life it is
paramount that we know and can read Latin; the Scholastics are nowhere near as
difficult as Cicero, Ovid, Augustine, etc so there is no excuse. And in aid
of those that cannot dedicate their lives to this kind of study, it is
important that we remember the incredibly large translation project we have a
head of us. So much of the Scholastic Theologians corpus remains untranslated, St
Albertus Magnus (teacher of St Thomas) remains untranslated; as does large
parts of St Bonaventure; and Bl John Duns Scotus. In fact it would appear
accurate to say that St Thomas Aquinas forms the vast majority of the
translated Latin literature from Scholastic Philosophy and Theology, which is
problematic considering that St Thomas’s corpus has not been fully translated
and some of the translations that are in widespread use are known to suffer
with flaws that obscure the meaning of the text.
In short I finish with a quote from G. K.
Chesterton on “Why I am a Catholic” «The difficulty of explaining “why I am a
Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason:
that Catholicism is true. I could fill all my space with separate sentences
each beginning with the words, “It is the only thing that…” As, for instance,
(1) It is the only thing that really prevents a sin from being a secret. (2) It
is the only thing in which the superior cannot be superior; in the sense of
supercilious. (3) It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading
slavery of being a child of his age. (4) It is the only thing that talks as if
it were the truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to tamper with a
real message. (5) It is the only type of Christianity that really contains
every type of man; even the respectable man. (6) It is the only large attempt
to change the world from the inside; working through wills and not laws; and so
on.»
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