My sister, Courtney, gave me a book for Christmas, “Catholic Matters”, written by Father Richard John Neuhaus, and it is an excellent book!

Fr. Neuhaus tells the story of his conversion from being a Lutheran pastor to the Catholic Church and goes into depth about the Church in the United States before and after the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) and concludes with his “Rome Diary”, his account of the days in Rome after Pope John Paul II’s death and leading up to the election of Cardinal Ratzinger to the papacy.

Some people criticize Catholics as blindly following whatever the Pope says, which Fr. Neuhaus analyzes at length:

Dissent from official teachings–typically from teachings that do not sit well with the surrounding culture, and most typically from teachings touching on sexuality–is taken to be a mark of having grown up. The disposition is this: “Yes, I am a Catholic, but I think for myself.” The somewhat implausible assumption is that what one thinks up by oneself is more interesting than what the Church teaches. [emphasis mine]

This last statement is very interesting. I had done the same thing as an atheist, figuring out the world for myself and deriving truths on my own, which at that time were things like: There is no God, Christians are generally dumb but well-meaning people, the Bible is made-up, Jesus never existed, etc.

When I was a Protestant (protesting none other than the Catholic Church and it’s teachings), I “thought for myself” again and came up with my own doctrines. I didn’t realize it for a long while, but I was being extremely prideful to assume that I could figure out all the truths of the Christian faith on my own, but that is exactly what I tried to do.

I finally realized that:

  1. Other people have lived who are more faithful than I am (let’s call them “the saints”)
  2. God has spoken to these people throughout history and they have listened more closely than anyone else
  3. I want to follow God as closely as I can, so I should pay attention to what they say

The saints followed Jesus Christ with all their hearts, minds, and souls. They were and are part of the Church; God led them in discerning what the truths of the Faith are in every area and promised in the Bible to do so infallibly, so I should consider it alarming if I have, in my own cleverness, come to a different conclusion than they and the Church did about important matters of faith and morals.

Fr. Neuhaus:

It is true that, as the sixteenth-century St. Ignatius of Loyola put it, that we should think with the Church (sentire cum ecclesia). It is also true that thinking with the Church begins with thinking. Faithful assent is not a matter of standing to attention, clicking one’s heels, and saluting at the appearance of every document from Rome. Rather, it is a matter of thinking for myself so that I can think with the Church, the prior assumption being that the Church possesses a teaching charism and authority that warrants my assent. I think for myself not to come up with my own teaching but to make the Church’s teaching my own. That is not always easy to do.

No it is not. And yet, when I became convinced to the core of my being that the Catholic Church was given the authority and guidance by God himself to discern and therefore to know the Truth, it became so much easier for me in my Christian life. A weight was lifted. I didn’t have to figure it all out on my own, starting from scratch (aka the Bible). I could rely on the Church that Christ had created!

The analogy to what I was doing as a Protestant Christian in figuring out truths would be like an engineer not being satisfied to accept an equation or new concept he had been taught until he had derived it all himself starting from the simplest axioms. Instead, we accept what other scientists and engineers have discovered in previous centuries and then “stand on the shoulders of these giants”, making the next leaps forward in discoveries.

In this analogy I would have to re-run every lab experiment ever done to prove to myself definitively that what other people have already proved is true, or better yet, figure out for myself what experiments I even needed to run to reach the next conclusion.

Taking this absurd path would mean ignoring the likes of Albert Einstein, Newton, and Kepler. Doing so spiritually is like ignoring St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, and St. Therese of LIsieux. You’ll make little scientific progress in your short lifetime doing the former, and little spiritual progress doing the latter.

People say they have difficulty with one teaching or another. That is not necessarily a problem. The problem arises when we assume that the problem is with the teaching and not with ourselves. The great nineteenth-century theologian Cardinal John Henry Newman said, “Ten thousand difficulties do not add up to a doubt.”

[T]he authentic Catholic spirit is well expressed by the fifth-century St. Augustine: “No one believes anything unless one first thought it believable. Everything is believed after being preceded by thought. Not everyone who thinks believes, since many think in order not to believe; but everyone who believes thinks, thinks in believing and believes in thinking.”

I plan to make more posts on these Catholic matters and Fr. Neuhaus’ very thought-provoking book soon.