WHY I'M CATHOLIC - Introduction
Several years ago, I wrote a series of columns for our local diocesan paper with the above title. I later consolidated the columns into an e-book and eventually had it printed. The e-book is still available for download here.
I recently revisted the book, did some minor edits, and decided to share the book, chapter by chapter, here on Substack.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: We Begin at the End
Chapter 2: Beyond the End
Chapter 3: True Story or Monstrous Ruse?
Chapter 4: The Roman Accounts
Chapter 5: A Quick Review
Chapter 6: The Evidence
Chapter 7: The Authenticity of the Gospels
Chapter 8: “Do This”
Conclusion
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INTRODUCTION
No. I am not a convert or a revert. I was born Catholic, raised Catholic, educated Catholic, and never stopped being Catholic. I never had a faith crisis. I never doubted. I never fell away. And if I ever questioned, those questions were directed at religious educators who I believed strayed from what I knew to be the true teaching and practice of the Catholic faith.
However, my challenge as I grew older was that I didn’t know how to explain on the outside what I knew on the inside. The challenge grew particularly acute when in the mid 1980’s, I found myself in business with a group of “evangelicals” who believed Catholics weren’t Christians, and I didn’t know how to respond.
At the same time I began to become aware of how many Catholic friends and relatives were beginning to fall away from the faith, a trend that had begun to occur in general throughout the Church shortly after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, but was just beginning to impact my own mostly sheltered Catholic world.
Eventually the strength of my inner conviction about the truth of the Catholic faith, my inability to explain that truth, and the pain of seeing friends and family discard not just their faith, but in some cases, any faith at all, caused me to get down to business and learn how to share what I knew to be true.
At first, my aim was directed at non- and “used to be” Catholics. However, I became quickly aware that, especially for the “used to be” Catholics, there was a need to go further. For not only did they reject Catholicism, an increasing number were rejecting the idea of God altogether.
Thus, I needed a new starting point. Scripture, religious truth, teaching authority...none of those work as starting points for people who reject them. And today, more and more do. So I start this apologia, this “reason for my faith”, with a truth no one can reject: WE WILL DIE.
It’s not new of course. Once upon a time, in the “good ol’ days,” pastors, desirous of saving souls, were not as hesitant as they are today to remind their flocks to “memento mori” (“remember you must die”).
Death is simply the one common denominator for all of us. It’s the one thing about which there is no argument. So I shall begin my case for Catholicism there.
Finally, I am under no illusion that anything I have written will have any grand impact. I actually wrote this originally as a way to gather my thoughts so that I could pass on what I knew to be true to my eleven children. I had seen the pain of other parents whose children had left the faith; and, perhaps selfishly, I wanted to spare myself that pain if I could.
So, in the end, what follows is nothing more than a father’s letter to his children, children whom he hopes he will one day see in heaven, and who — most probably — will have to help him get there.