“And I can’t believe it’s coming true!”
– Goo Goo Dolls, Big Machine

This post is about what I thought of the Catholic Church as a Protestant.

Specifically, the Catholic Church made the outlandish claim that all her teachings on faith and morals are true–that not one of them is in error.

When I learned that this claim was made, as a Protestant I smelled blood in the water, for I knew that there was no possible way that it was true, and so all I had to do was find one example of it being false, and the whole house of Catholic cards would come tumbling down.  My reaction and effort to sink this iniquitous “Church” had been shared (and is shared today) by many Protestants, including my Evangelical friend John, who has sprayed round after round of shotgun shells at every possible error he has read the Catholic Church has made, no matter how spurious the charge.  He, like me years ago, knows that this claim is false, and if he can just show one teaching to be an error, the Catholic Church is discredited and is exposed for its pyramid of human (and therefore false) traditions.

Why was I so sure that the Catholic Church’s claim was false?  Simple: look at human experience.  Every person (except Jesus) and every institution is corrupted.

With regard to people, we sin and do evil, and as the Bible says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” because “there is none righteous, no not one”, with the exception of course of Jesus who was righteous and never sinned.

Every organization and institution, including the Catholic Church, is full of people who sin, and these sins corrupt the organizations.  Look at our country’s government: How many scandals were there this year and last year alone?  I can think of several off the top of my head, of marital infidelity, of corruption, and our country is one of the better ones!

St. Peter's Basilica

Companies make defective products and people die from them; courts issue false rulings that imprison or even execute innocent persons while the guilty walk free; our country said “all people are created equal” with the right to life and yet we enslaved African persons and now execute babies in their mothers’ wombs.

And the Christian “churches” aren’t much better.  How many pastors have been found doing evil things: bribery, infidelity, or worse?  And supposedly Christianity is the truth, yet all these different “churches” contradict each other in their teachings!  I may have been going to a church affiliated with the Baptists, but I didn’t call myself a Baptist–though I thought what they taught was mostly true, I surely didn’t necessarily agree with everything my pastor said.  Why should I?  He is just another sinful, fallible human being like me.

Further, the Bible taught (see above) that we are not righteous; in fact, Christ’s righteousness was imputed to us by the Father such that we appear holy because He only sees His perfect Son when He looks at us.  But we are sinful and corrupted and it is only that God declares us holy; we are not truly made holy.  (This is the Protestant belief not the Catholic one just to be clear.)

So with that backdrop, what gall for the Catholic Church to claim that she teaches no error!  It is unconscionable and must be a lie.  Protestant churches are at least truthful in that, though they contradict each other in many ways, none of them claim that everything they teach is true; at best they claim that the Bible is true and that they try to teach off the Bible.

And so I continued growing in my faith and sought to refute this wild claim, but as I did so, I was bothered by the lack of Christian unity, clearly against Christ’s command and Paul’s.  It led me to investigate where we got the books of the Bible in the first place, among other things.  It led me to investigate moral issues like using contraception, something I had always assumed was a good thing.

And as I investigated, I believe that the Holy Spirit started opening up my eyes, already blinded by a decent amount of anti-Catholicism, to at least consider challenges to beliefs that I had accepted implicitly from my (Evangelical Protestant) Christian friends as well as from the world during my long years as an atheist.

By what authority did I accept the 66-book Bible I had been given (first at 10 years of age by my aunt and uncle and then at 20 years of age by my Evangelical friends)?  Why did I believe that baptism was symbolic only?  Why did I believe that contraception was good?

Along the way, my friend Gerardo gave me a copy of The Story of a Soul, the autobiography of St. Therese, a French nun who lived about 100 years ago. I was astounded: This woman was brilliant and holy, and I had never heard of her before.  And she was Catholic?  Well, maybe a blind squirrel finds a acorn every once in a while, but it turns out there were more like her, e.g. St. Francis of Assisi, whom my dad was named after, and who followed Christ more radically than any Protestant brother of mine I knew, for he gave everything away and followed God as a celibate man!

I began to be convinced as each belief I held that contradicted the Catholic Church’s teaching had a reasonable answer to it, often more reasonable and faith-supported than my own belief’s support.  I learned about why the Catholic Church said contraception was immoral.  I challenged my Evangelical friends with the arguments, which to them I am sure was like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, for “no one thinks contraception is wrong”, but their responses were unconvincing.  I challenged them on other beliefs; they did not have good answers nor refutations.

Fr. Steele, the Anglican priest who just became Catholic, said:

No, I don’t check my brain in at the door of the Vatican. But, my personal brain doesn’t have the last word either. Where is the beauty in truth? I can now say to my wonderful six children, ‘we don’t do this or that because the Church says that is not true and in the best interest of God’s people. And now my children don’t respond, ‘then why do some who lead the church do this or that if it is wrong?’ In an age of disbelief, the truth of the Church is a magnet not only for me but for my family. Previously I, much like Chesterton, pulled against the Church out of fear; now I find myself being pulled towards it all the more. (emphasis mine)

I remember one day realizing that the Catholic Church’s claim might just be true.  It was similar to the day when I began to believe that Jesus Christ might really be who He said He was.  It was exhilirating!  It meant that God had not left us alone to wallow in the corruption of error that plagued every institution.  It meant that, though “all” sinned and fell short of God’s glory, Jesus did not, which meant that we, too, could live in the true freedom from the slavery of sin.  Similarly, though “all” institutions, including churches, are corrupt and none teach truth without error, the Church Christ built Himself did not teach error because Christ would not let her.  Even though she was and is made up of sinful human beings, God gave us the gift of His Church so that we could know the truth, be set free by it, and live the truth by the power of the Holy Spirit.

St. Peter's statue

Two Parallel Protestant Objections

1. Protestants reject the Catholic claim that the Virgin Mary never committed a sin during her entire life.
2. Protestants reject the Catholic claim that she never errs when she teaches on matters of faith and morals.

The second one has been the subject of this post, but the first objection is a parallel one to it.  Even though Christ said “be perfect therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect”, if you ask most Protestants about this verse, you will probably get an answer like “well, it is hypothetically possible to live perfectly, but in practice ‘all have sinned’ and no one actually lives perfectly except Jesus”.  Funny though that Jesus didn’t say “be perfect but I already know that not one of you will be”; instead, he told everyone to do it and did not give any exceptions.  So why then couldn’t someone live perfectly, by the power of the Holy Spirit?  And if that someone was the Virgin Mary, why would we begrudge her that?  It wouldn’t have been done on her own but by cooperating with God.

In each of the two claims, a stupendous statement is made, not of human power and greatness, but of God’s power and greatness in spite of our human weakness and failings.  How terrific if both of them are true, and further, there is tremendous evidence that they are true, though you have to look with the eyes of faith and not of cynicism.  Faith says we can be perfect and the Holy Spirit can accomplish this in us humans; cynicism says no one has been nor will ever be perfect.  Faith says that the Church is Christ’s bride and will be spotless, the pillar and bulwark of the truth; cynicism sees only a bunch of men and women like any other, many doing evil things while claiming to be Christian.

I would say, ask yourself–whether Protestant or Catholic–what your problems are with the Catholic Church, and then I challenge you to take the issue most important to you and explore it; see what the Catholic answer is to your question and read the arguments made for and against.  Pray about it as well and discern where the Holy Spirit leads you.

May Christ graciously guide you to the truth!