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.
~G.K. Chesterton
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
~Jesus, King of The Universe, in Matthew 16
Nearly every one of my friends and acquaintances know that I am a follower of Jesus Christ. He has become my very breath. Everything I am, or will be, is now utterly wrapped up in Him, and Him alone. The Primacy of His Grace, along with the reality of His Preeminence in all things, broke through my pride nearly ten years ago. And, with the rightful death of that ‘old man,’ the new man; the new creation spoken of by Saint Paul, The Apostle, in 2 Corinthians 5, has found the glorious freedom that comes from being given the right to be one of the children of God.
Please don’t take any of what is written below to mean that only Catholics are saved. No indeed. Truly, there is no other way to the Father, but through Jesus Himself, Who is The Way, The Truth, and The Life. However, it is not the ‘mode’ of salvation that saves us. It is the Savior Himself working through the modes Who does the saving! And, I do say that our clearest experience of Jesus and His saving power is found within His mystical body, Catholic church.
Oh, I ‘believed’ from a young age. My parents had committed me to God in a Christening that surely conduited sacramental strength to me over the years. And, at a young age I confirmed this faith imparted to me, at a Billy Graham crusade in 1974. Still, I was not yet home.
A few years later, I was baptized in the Name of The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit. Surely, this is not about H2O. But just as surely, God is working through the water to slay the old man, and to resurrect a new man who can, in surrender to Christ, and in the power of The Holy Spirit, find his way Home to be utterly united into communion with his Heavenly Father.
This journey began in earnest during a long, Spring, orange blossom-scent-laden walk with a brother in the faith one night, in the mid 1980s. He challenged me to a depth I could not understand at the time. All of the ‘arguments’ I threw at this guy were answered with stunning clarity, complete submission to Scripture, love, conviction, and compelling logic. He answered without defensiveness. He did not just ‘believe,’ he was experiencing the Truth. The arguments? My cultural indoctrinations, that were meant to ‘destroy’ the views that Roman Catholics had.
This all did not work out so well for my pride and doubts. 🙂
Still, … Many years of misunderstanding needed to be broken down and remade. But, I was beginning to understand the astounding reality that there was more to my faith, than simply ‘my faith.’
So, In 1993, I went through an abbreviated catechism with a Jesuit priest. He served me my first communion in 1993.
The journey got well underway for me in 1994, as I picked up the book by Pope John Paul 2, called “Crossing The Threshold of Hope.” Again, the author spoke authoritatively, scripturally, and with astonishing beauty as to a panoply of Catholic apologetics.
Then, in 2004, GK Chesterton met me on my “journey home,” to a place I truly never expected I would go. The book was called “Orthodoxy.” And the strength of his arguments were simply unassailable. Yes, one could disagree with him, but no writer that I know has had any success disproving this stunning work.
In late 2011, I went to Jamaica on a short-term mission trip with a Roman Catholic group, and got to know an old diocesan priest who was one of the most amazing Christians i had ever met, bursting with life and The Holy Spirit in his 80s. And many, many other RC people I met on this trip showed me that being a true Christian has very little to do with being either a protestant, RC, or any other denomination, it has to do with faith in Christ and HIS power working in us and through us.
While I had taken communion in the RC church in 1993, I finally made it my church ‘home’ in 2012 while in San Sebastian cathedral in The Philippines. I was listening to an old bishop preach, during Christmas and there was a powerful move of The Spirit in the cathedral. He was speaking from John 1, and proclaiming Christ as King and Lord and Savior and God. … I realized that Mother Church, The mystical body of Christ; The Catholic (καθολικός, universal, of the whole) was my home…
Trust me, it has been far from easy. I have some friends who think that I have become apostate. I have some evidence that our forced exit from our work in China, was partially motivated by anti-Catholic bias. But, the beauty of truth is that it does not need a defense. It simply is.
As GK puts it: “I am Catholic because it is true.” There is no salvation outside of the Roman Catholic Church. But this is not because of theological superiority, but because Jesus established the Church. The good news of salvation in Christ has come to us THROUGH the ancient church. In no way does Catholicism say that protestants cannot be saved. Rather, it is through the Catholic Church that the entire panoply of the great Christo-centric and Nicene credal traditions have come into the world. AND, it is in the Catholic Church where we can experience the fullness of our salvation through participating in His mystical body on this earth.
Are you a follower of Christ? Are you trusting Him alone for your salvation in this life and the next? If so, keep doing just that. It is truly NOT about which church you attend. It IS in the measure of our surrender to this truth that establishes the depth to which we are saved. But, if you sense a desire to more deeply know Christ, then allow yourself to explore coming ‘home’ yourself.
Chesterton went on to say: “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.”
Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.
~CS Lewis
