Sample Pages from [em]Science 4 for Young Catholics[/em] by Gregory Townsend, Ph.D.
Excerpted from Science 4 for Young Catholics by Gregory Townsend, Ph.D.
Copyright 1999, Seton Press, Used with permission.
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Sample Pages from [em]Stories in Stone: The World of Animal Fossils[/em] by Jo So. Kittinger
Excerpted from Stories in Stone by Jo S. Kittinger
Copyright 1998, Franklin Watts/Grolier, Used with permission from the Author
Sample Pages from [em]Surprised by Truth 2[/em], edited by Patrick Madrid
Conclusions of a Guilty Bystander
Patrick Madrid
I'm writing this in front of the Blessed Sacrament, in the quiet solitude of a monastery chapel near my home. Being alone here with the Lord helps me gather my thoughts as I search for the right way to recount my story.
St. Peter's words echo in my mind: "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Christ had led him and James and John to the lonely heights of Mount Tabor one day and there revealed things to them that evoked Peter's exclamation, startling things, previously hidden.
"Lord, it is good for me to be here with you in the Eucharist," is the refrain that resonates within me as I write. For in this setting, before the tabernacle, Christ has shown me many things about myself that I needed to see and repair. His hammer and chisel of grace delivered their most effective blows to my heart during those times when I knelt in front of Him, head bowed, in the silence of another Catholic church, years ago and far from here.
I'm not a convert in the standard sense of the term. I was born into a Catholic family, raised in the Faith by devout and loving parents, and have remained in the Church, believing all her teachings with all my heart. ("So what is your story doing in a book like this?" you ask yourself.) I'm not a convert to the Catholic Church, but I am the unworthy recipient of the grace of a conversion of the heart, a recommitment to Christ at a time when I thought I knew what it means to be Catholic. How wrong I was.
In my mid 20s, I went through a kind of creeping spiritual crisis that led me into a reconversion that was neither sudden nor dramatic, although it shook me powerfully and reached the deepest recesses of my heart.
Like a painful, prolonged medical treatment that's necessary to save a patient's life, my reconversion entailed pain and uncertainty, but the result, thank God, was a cure - not an instant one, forever banishing the symptoms of the disease we call "sin," but a cure nonetheless. As St. Paul explained, "Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death." This malaria of sin, contracted in the Garden of Eden through the bite of an apple, courses through our veins with all its deadly effects. Only God's grace can combat and overcome it. His love is the sole antidote.
At the height of my conversion of heart, I discovered, or more specifically, the Lord showed me, that through years of infrequent and minimal use, I had allowed the "muscles" of my interior life - prayer, mortification, and recollection - to atrophy and wither. My spiritual "arteries" - which carry the love of Christ as the lifeblood of the soul - had hardened and Iconstricted as a result of the lukewarm, halfhearted complacency into which I had settled.
I think my situation wasn't unlike that of many Catholics. We who are born into the Faith easily take it for granted, and we make the fatal mistake of assuming that conversion is for Protestants or Mormons or atheists who, being outside the Church, make their way into it. Many Catholics - I being a good example - lull themselves into a state of comfortable, "do not disturb" spiritual incapacitation. They make no real or consistent effort to grasp Christ with all their might and to work daily at keeping and strengthening that grasp, as His grace enables.
Simply being Catholic isn't enough. What is required by Christ is love, and true love means effort, work, and time spent in prayer - things that so often fall by the wayside in the daily lives of many Catholics. We call him Lord in our prayers, but so often we don't live our lives as if He really is. Membership in the Church, even a strong conviction about things Catholic, is in itself no guarantee of a real friendship with Christ.
That's the condition in which I found myself. I lived a life of Catholicism that comprised good and important but largely external things such as regular Sunday Mass attendance, grace before meals, and praying the Rosary occasionally. These weren't enough. I lacked a deep interior commitment to Christ, to living virtuously and to deepening my prayer life. My parents had taught me the Faith and how to live it, but these lessons were surprisingly easy to forget, at least for a time, once the powerful distractions, temptations, and concupiscence of young adulthood crowded them into the background.
But our Lord is kind and faithful. "If we are unfaithful, He will remain faithful, for He cannot deny Himself." He seeks out, not just the lost sheep that has wandered far from the flock, but also the one that remains within the flock but gradually grows dull and lazy and becomes deaf to the sound of the Shepherd's voice. I was once like that second sheep, and this is the story ofhow the Good Shepherd rescued me from my spiritual stupor and gathered me to Himself.
California dreamin' ...of Christian martyrdom
I was born in 1960 into a devout Catholic family. My parents were loving and wise in the way they raised us children, especially in the way they taught us about Christ and imparted to us the truths of the Catholic Faith. I grew up and lived most of my life in Southern California. In 1970 our family moved to Mission Viejo, a sparkling new, "master planned" bedroom community in Orange County, about forty-five miles south of Los Angeles. It was a great place to grow up, each tract of newly built homes filling quickly with an influx of young families. In our neighborhood, one thing became noticeable: ours was by far the biggest family.
One important lesson I learned from my parents' example was the importance of generosity with God and openness to life. As the oldest of eight children, I lived in a world where it was natural for parents to spend themselves totally in their love and devotion to their family. Only later, as I began to encounter secular culture, in high school, college, and beyond, did I see how deliciously radical and countercultural my parents were in having a large family in the 1970s. But I certainly didn't realize that while I was growing up. As far as I could see, my parents never saw themselves in that light. They never put on the "We're the parents of a large family and you're not" sort of airs one sometimes encounters in others. Nor can I recall my mom and dad ever rolling their eyes or looking askance at another family with the maximum one or two children that modern society tells people to have. At that time, the only Iarge families people generally saw were on television: the Brady Bunch, which had six (although the plot line for their Iarge family was a consequence of remarriage), and the Bradford family on Eight Is Enough. Even the title of that show betrayed the media and cultural disapproval of large families.
We weren't poor, but we certainly weren't what people would call middle-class comfortable. Although my parents' monthly budget was pretty tight most of the time, my mom chose to pursue her vocation as a homemaker; and for that I thank God. My dad went to work to pay the bills, and my mom stayed home to cook, clean, change diapers, do laundry, and chauffeur the kids around town on an endless series of treks to school, Little League games, and dance practices. (Someday, I'll film a documentary tribute to her career behind the wheel of our family station wagon. I'll call it "Taxi Driver.") She made our home comfortable and beautiful, settled disputes, spanked us when we needed it, and otherwise rode herd on her thundering pack of kids.
My dad, a brilliant, under-appreciated, overworked computer engineer, daily endured the mind-crushing drudgery of a Southern California commute from our home in the 'burbs of Orange County to his workplace in Los Angeles and back.
The Madrid family sprawl was a great environment in rich to grow up Catholic. It was loud, loving, rambunctious, and devout without ever being kooky or weirdly pious - generally a pretty happy place.
I wasn't by any stretch bad, but, like most kids, I was accomplished and diligent in the arts of boyhood mischief, chore-shirking, impertinence, and random acts of slacking and disobedience. I received plenty of spankings, groundings, and "How many times do I have to tell you to clean up your room?" lectures. I loved playing sports, swimming, and rough-housing with my neighborhood pals, but I was also a bookworm and spent a lot of time engrossed in adventure tales, lives of the saints, and war stories. I remember countless hours ensconced in my room, mesmerized by some book or another, imagining myself as a brave, "laugh in the face of the pagan emperor" early Christian martyr, or as an explorer, or as Teddy Roosevelt, waving his men forward with saber in one hand, a colt revolver in the other, charging up San Juan Hill into a hail of Spanish bullets and artillery Then my mom would call me downstairs to take out the trash. (Sometimes, being grounded wasn't so painful - although I never told my parents that - because being banished to my room for the day meant along stretch of uninterrupted reading. )
From Kumbaya to Kyrie
Another important element of my Catholic upbringing was being an altar boy. For several years, I actually dwelt in two different liturgical worlds, serving at the ancient Tridentine rite on weekdays at my school and at a freewheeling Novus Ordo guitar Mass on Sundays in my parish. That strange, although providential, circumstance gave me valuable insights into what the Catholic Church is as ail entity, established and safeguarded by Christ regardless of its outward circumstances and the frailties of its members.
The latter part of my grammar school career was spent at the Mission San Juan Capistrano parochial school. The parish church adjacent to the school is one of the many California missions established by Bl. Junipero Serra, the Spanish Franciscan who planted the seeds of Christianity throughout California, shortly after the Spaniards arrived in Mexico. Built in 1776, this church was the oldest thing I had ever seen, and its hoary beauty impressed me. The chapel still has its original high, whitewashed adobe walls, timber and tile roof, stone floor, and ancient wooden pews. In fact, of all the twenty- one California missions, San Juan Capistrano has the only intact chapel where BI. Junipero Serra had celebrated Mass. And it was there, at the early daily Mass, that I served as an altar boy.
The elderly pastor of the parish had received a special indult from Pope Paul VI to continue the celebration of the sacraments there in Latin, according to the pre-1963 Tridentine rite. So while I was an altar boy at Sunday Mass at the parish near our home { where the Novus Ordo Mass was celebrated exclusively), on 'weekday mornings, when I served the Latin Mass, I could step back in time for half an hour, away from the din of the Southern California kaleidoscope of traffic jams, fast-food restaurants, and shopping malls. Inside the dim, incense-Iaden sanctuary of the Old Mission chapel, I felt profoundly connected with the ancient, timeless Catholic Church. Now I can understand and articulate a fundamental truth that, even as a boy, I sensed clearly: the Catholic Church, like Christ, her Spouse {and because ofHim), is the same yesterday, today, and forever.145 She has sojourned on His behalf for more than twenty centuries on this earth, has seen every epoch's unique set of problems and challenges come and go, and she is still here.
Years later, writing about the Liturgy for a Catholic journal, I recalled that remarkable experience fondly: "1 have vivid memories of serving Holy Mass in that elaborate sanctuary, cloudy with incense, where Bl. Junipero Serra had celebrated Mass two centuries earlier: on my knees, reciting the acolyte's responses in Latin, watching the priest's every motion. So many realities of the Faith were communicated to my young soul by the elements of that Traditional Latin Mass."
Herein arose a strange dichotomy. During the week, I was an acolyte at the Traditional Mass. On Sundays, I was an acolyte {although they never used that word there) at our local parish. The pastor was a good man and by all appearances personally orthodox, but he wasn't forceful in the way he ran the parish. His "hang on loosely" approach to dealing with the various lay ministries and the srrong egos of some of the parishioners meant that the parish was liturgically liberal- not kooky liberal, but it had a general atmosphere of "almost anything goes." This included relatively new practices such as hand-holding during the Our Father, out-of-tune folk guitarists twanging through sappy songs being written in those days, a stark interior with no statues or votive candles, and a bizarre orange-and-silver-foil wallpaper that formed a space-age, floor-to-ceiling backdrop behind the altar {it drove my dad crazy).
Mass at the Old Mission was, in its externals; the polar opposite: majestic and mysterious. The incense and Gregorian chany the Latin prayers, the imposing, intricately carved, gold-Ieaf reredos that towered above the altar, the flurry of bells rung at the moment of Consecration -all of these stamped on my young imagination a powerful imprint of the Mass's mystical, transcendent beauty. (Now I see clearly and appreciate that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, whether celebrated according to the New Order promulgated by Vatican II, or according to the ancient Byzantine form of the Divine Liturgy, or according to the ancient Latin Tridentine rite codified by Pope Pius V, is still the same Holy Sacrifice.)
A faith built on imagination
As odd as it might sound, it's here, I believe, that the beginnings of my gradual decline into lukewarmness began. My imagination was being fed with all the richness and glory of the Faith and its history. I avidly read the lives of the saints - particularly those martyrs who died for the Faith by being burned alive or speared or beheaded. The more gore, the better. It was so easy to imagine the Catholic Church and its romantic, fiercely beautiful, two-thousand~year panoply of saints, sinners, and martyrs. On that rich diet, my ravenous imagination was very well fed- and that in itself isn't bad -but whether it was due to some character flaw of mine, or a general spiritual and intellectual laziness (which is a character flaw, I suppose), I allowed my Catholic Faith to subsist almost entirely at the level of imagination. That, I think, was a significant cause of my later bout with lukewarmness.
As Scripture tells us, God created humans "in His own image." This means each of us was fashioned as a person, just as He is a person. As such, God created our human nature to have an intellect and a will, the two rational faculties by which we know and love. The intellect is the apparatus of reason with which a human person perceives, measures, and makes decisions about himself and the world around him. The will is the component of the person that assents to and carries out one's decisions and actions based on what his intellect tells him.
Now, since God also created us to be material and spiritual beings (i.e., body and soul), we must contend with the input that our physical senses give to our minds. This is where the imagination comes into play. The imagination isn't the entire intellect, but merely a component of it. The imagination is what provides the mind with "pictures," images of our experiences that come through the senses. And our imaginations are powerful and often vivid in the images - both good and evil - they present to our mind.
This is why many people gradually lose interest in using their intellects to penetrate deeper into the spiritual and moral (and even scientific) truths of the world around them. Like a muscle, the intellect must be exercised regularly or it will become lazy, flabby, and unable to heft the weight of the many moral dilemmas and choices we face in life. When the intellect is weak and ineffectual as a result of laziness, the imagination sets itself up as dictator. It feeds the mind on a steady diet of mental junk food. Those images and impressions it generates soon become mistaken for acts of the intellect. At that stage, a person finds himself reduced to the shabby condition of living in a world constructed predominantly (and governed ruthlessly) by his imagination. It becomes an ever, present ringmaster at the center of a circus of swirling images, smells, sounds, and feelings with which the five senses constantly bombard the mind. Such a person becomes hostage to his own emotions and appetites. Left unchecked, his imagination works solo while his intellect stays quiet and sluggish in the background. This gradual abdication of the intellect will inevitably cause the Christian to drift into indifference to the spiritual struggle raging around him, or worse, he may lay down his anus entirely and give up the fight.
In my case, the drift started when I was a high school senior.
Minor seminary days
When I was in eighth grade, I thought that God might be calling me to the priesthood. It wasn't an overwhelming call, but I sensed that the thing to do was to "come and see," as Christ told the Apostles when He first called them to follow Him.147 Through the generosity of the kindhearted pastor of our parish, who agreed to pay for my tuition, I was given the privilege of spending nearly three years in Our Lady Queen of Angels diocesan minor seminary in San Fernando, California. It was a good if uneventful time for me; I enjoyed my studies, developed an appreciation for a more regimented prayer and liturgical life, and formed some friendships that have lasted even to today. Eventually I saw that God wasn't calling me to the priesthood. So, near the end of my junior year, I left the seminary and enrolled at the local public high school. It was like being dropped into a very large aquarium filled with hoards of exotic and sometimes beautiful fish, as well as some dangerous predators.
Small-time rocker, part-time Catholic
I quickly slipped into the groove of dating, going to parties, hanging out at the beach, and many of the other pastimes teens pursued in sunny Southern California. My upscale high school had about three thousand students and was awash in drugs, alcohol, sex, recklessness, and materialism. There were many good students and teachers, but many students lived lives of excess and pleasure-seeking. They came from affluent homes, and Mommy and Daddy had the bucks to buy them stylish clothes, a new car on their sixteenth birthday, and pretty much anything else they wanted. I found myself swimming in the pleasant, warm waters of this aquarium of hedonism.
When I got into public high school, I didn't go berserk with my new relative freedom. I didn't dye my hair purple or pierce any body parts (that silliness among teenagers was still several years away). There were no shouting matches with my parents, or sneaking out of the house at night, or any of those things. My slide into complacency was furtive and unobtrusive; even I wasn't fully aware of just how slippery the slope had become.
I grew lazy in prayer and no longer made an effort to cultivate virtue, but compared with many of my peers, I was still a "good kid," and I didn't get mixed up with a lot of the craziness around me.
I never took drugs of any kind -not even once. I'm grateful to God for protecting me from that snare. Large amounts of marijuana, cocaine, various mind-bending pills, acid, and even hardcore injectables such as heroin were used all around me by many young people.
In 1979, I heard from a friend that a drummer I had played a few gigs with and whom I had known from school - a guy my own age and an excellent musician - had died of a heroin overdose the month before. He was eighteen.
I can't take much credit for avoiding drugs; God protected me from that scourge. I have a vivid memory of being at a party one night and being offered a joint by a cute girl. "No thanks," I muttered sheepishly, glancing at the mari, juana cigarette she held out to me. I looked down in embar, rassment. I knew she was surprised and was thinking, "What a geek." She wrote me off with a roll of her eyes and walked away. I can see now that that was a moment of grace - one of many unrecognized moments of grace - and it taught me that although my willingness to avoid sin had been weakened through compromise, it hadn't been destroyed.
I didn't follow the crowd in its pot, addled, binge, drinking quest for new chemically induced highs, but I'm sorry to say that I hung out with many who did. Not everyone was a bleary-eyed pothead, but many of the young people I knew were. Some graduated from "weed" to the harder stuff: acid, hash, and cocaine were common fare at parties.
Easy access to the party scene and all the temptations that entailed came as a result of my growing involvement with rock 'n' roll. If anything was a passion for me, it was playing music. I had a solid background in music, having studied violin for a short time and played the trumpet in the school orchestra for several years. When I was fifteen, I taught myself to play the bass guitar and quickly discovered I was good at it.
I spent countless hours in my bedroom with my bass guitar, practicing and learning how to play the songs on the radio and on my albums. Chicago, the Cars, Boston, the Stones, Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, The Police, America, and especially the Beatles were among the rock groups whose music I loved and learned, note by note. By the time I was seventeen, I was playing with several pretty decent garage bands in Southern California. One particularly successful band I played bass for was Geneva Brown. We never did make it to the "medium time" {much less the big time), but we developed a local following and played at parties, weddings, and clubs. Besides playing songs by Top-40 groups, we wrote and performed a lot of our own music, mostly bouncy pop tunes, which even today I can honestly say were pretty good.
For me and many others, this interlude as a wannabe rock star contributed to the growth of narcissism, superficiality, and vanity. It engendered a vivid fantasy world that catered to my ego and my appetites. Not virtue or strength of character, but seeing myself as a "popular, talented, successful" musician was the measure of success. My desire for success as a rock star wasn't balanced with a strong spiritual life and good spiritual direction, so it fed and empowered my imagination, at the expense of my intellect.
In 1979, Geneva Brown won first place in a widely publicized, well-attended "Battle of the Bands" competition, beating twenty other local bands. I'll never forget the adrenal in rush I felt when we walked onto the stage in front of a couple of thousand screaming teens and young adults and knocked them dead with our first number, Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." A few songs later, we finished our set, unplugged our guitars, and sauntered offstage to the roar of boisterous applause.
We thought for sure we were headed for big things in music. But when you're nineteen and stupid, as I was, what do you know? We collected our trophy, posed for some cheesy publicity pictures, and piled into our cars and went home to celebrate. Back at the house we shared, there was a big party that lasted into the early morning.
When I woke up, the shadow across the room showed it was nearly noon. I had a throbbing headache - too much beer- and my head felt as if it were the size of a filing cabinet. My mouth was dry. There seemed to be small mittens on my teeth. I trudged into the bathroom, looked into the mirror at my bloodshot eyes, threw up, and went back to bed.
Small-time rock 'n' roll was doing nothing to enhance my spiritual life.
During this time, I remained Catholic, but all around me were drugs, girls, alcohol, and the band's ubiquitous hangers- on. It was inevitable that these negative influences would harm me. I dated different girls, although I was never a predator with only one goal in mind. With dating came many of the dangers inherent in being alone with a pretty girl. It was fun, I thought, and I found it easy to push aside the lessons I had learned about chastity and moderation. While I didn't get drawn into the worst excesses that were common among many young people at the time, I look back with remorse (and with gratitude for (God's mercy) on the sins I committed during my "young and stupid" period.
I now find it odd that, even amid my spiritual laziness, the music, and the party~scene craziness, I still went to Mass every Sunday, prayed before meals, and went to Confession every few months. I also enjoyed defending Catholicism against the criticisms of non~Catholics - and was even good at it.
Protestants force me to think about the Faith
The truth is, I had been doing this for years. For example, the summer before my senior of high school, I was going out with a beautiful girl named Christi. She was a sweet, lively person, and her parents took a strong interest in me. Christi and her family were what I call "hardcore" Baptists. They talked a lot about the Bible and seemed to have an appropriate Bible verse to quote at any moment and in any situation. Christi's parents knew I came from a strong Catholic background, of course, and I think these two good, sincere people saw me as a challenge - especially since I was dating their daughter - and they went to work on me with vigor. Since Christi and I spent a lot of time at her house, listening to music and swimming in her pool, her parents had plenty of time to work oil their "Pat Madrid" project. They often sat with us, a well-worn King James Bible open on her dad's knee, and posed friendly but pointed questions to me about my Catholic Faith.
"The Bible says in Exodus 20:4 that God condemns the use of statues and other graven images," her mom would say with a smile. " As a Catholic, Patrick, and since the Catholic Church promotes praying to statues, doesn't that bother you?"
Of course I knew we Catholics don't worship or pray to statues, so I knew enough to reject that part of her argument, but what I lacked was a solid knowledge of Scripture that would have enabled me to point out passages such as Exodus 25:18-20, Numbers 21:8-9, and 1 Kings 6:23-28, where God approves of and even commands the carving of religious statues. I would have been able to show Christi's well-meaning mom that what God condemned in Exodus 20 was not graven images per se, but idolatry - the worship of graven images. Idolatry under any guise is a sin, and the Catholic Church has always strenuously condemned it. If I had had this family's level of biblical knowledge, I could have stood my ground better.
Over several weeks, Christi's parents and their circle of Evangelical Protestant friends presented me with a variety of biblical challenges to my Faith: "Mary worship," the Catholic Church's alleged "false gospel of salvation by works," the heresy of infant Baptism, the Pope and his outrageous claims of being infallible, the magic of the sacraments, especially the issue of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist - these and other arguments against the Catholic Faith were thrown (smilingly, of course) in my face.
Such arguments were often accompanied by a venomous anti-Catholic "Chick Tract" dredged up from a seemingly limitless supply that came from a hidden stash somewhere in their house. I read these garish anti-Catholic comic books carefully. Time after time, I could see that they offered slick but bogus arguments against the Catholic Church. It was so obvious that the wild, angry charges these tracts made against Catholicism weren't true -and I was able to check Scripture to see this for myself. I soon began to refuse the anti-Catholic literature that Christi's parents proffered. Once, I even had the gumption to invite them to come to Mass with us, so they could see what the Catholic Church taught and that it resembled nothing like the caricatures in the tracts they gave me.
I recall one particularly tense conversation about the Eucharist with Christi's parents. Her dad said, "Hang on a minute" and went into the house. He came back with a Chick Tract called "The Death Cookie," which he handed to me with great seriousness, asking me to read it prayerfully. I was asked repeatedly if I had "been saved." As a Catholic, they regarded me as a "lost soul," an "unsaved" person who still needed to "find Christ" (even though they let me see their daughter, for which I give them credit).
It's ironic that in one sense, their view of me was actually not far from the truth. My intellectual certitude, even as a teen, was insufficient to save me. I needed a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," and I'm grateful that these encounters helped me see how important that is. Of course, Catholics don't typically speak in this way, but semantics aside, I was beginning to learn a deep truth.
There were times when I'd think to myself in frustration, "I just want to spend time with Christi! I don't want to be put on trial about the Bible." Looking back on those months of being grilled regularly by these good but deeply anti-Catholic people, I realize how beneficial this experience was for me. It forced me to defend my Catholic convictions, to move beyond my imagination and use my intellect to grapple with these challenges and the truths I claimed to believe in, and to determine for myself why I believed what I believed as a Catholic. I thank Christi's parents for conducting this project on me, because even though Christi and I soon drifted apart, they helped propel me into a more mature, more introspective level of Faith. Little did I ( or they) realize then how they were preparing me for my later work as a Catholic apologist.
My so-called spiritual life
Even though my theological jousting with Christi's parents and other aggressive Evangelicals forced me to think more deeply about why I believed what I did, I was still being moved along by the current of those things that appealed to me in life. Without even realizing it, by the time I was nineteen and in college, I had slipped almost entirely into relying mainly on imagination, fed by my senses. Parties, beer, music, and cute available girls had become the fixtures of my life.
True, I went to Mass every Sunday; I believed in and loved the Catholic Church; I said my prayers, but sporadically and without much fervor. (I did experience fleeting moments of fervor that I now believe were moments of God's prevenient grace, like the tugboats that nudge an ocean liner in the direction it should move while it's building its own head of steam.)
I knew enough to get to Confession when my sinful actions thrust me out of the state of grace, but my spiritual life had be, come little more than a sentimental fondness for the image of Catholicism I had created. It didn't dawn on me that I was empty. Outwardly, intellectually, even emotionally, I was a Catholic. But in that hidden place where the soul and God are alone with each other, I was mushy and superficial.
I spent far more time with Paul McCartney, learning to play the bass guitar exactly as he did, than I did in prayer with Jesus Christ. I cared much more about dating and having fun than I did about cultivating virtue. Although I was never tempted to leave the Catholic Church, I had drifted into the comfortable cult of Myself.
My assent to Catholic teaching and practice was still simply an edifice of faith, not Faith itself. Just as a mansion may appear solid and well built from the outside, but on the inside may well be cold, dreary, and empty of the furnishings that would transform it from a hulk of wood and plaster into a home where people live, so it was with me: the externals were there, but there was little inside. Still, the edifice was sturdily built and, in spite of my drift, the Lord continued to protect me and even bless me with new and amazing graces. Foremost among these was the grace of discovering my future wife.
...Then comes marriage
She was sixteen and I was seventeen when I met her. Slim, lovely, and always smiling, Nancy was one of those vivid young women people instinctively like and want to be around. For a year and a half, we were just friends, and we dated other people. We often saw each other casually, and I sometimes even played bass for the parish choir she sang in. When the relationship with my girlfriend fizzled, I got my nerve up to ask Nancy on a date.
The next year was a blur of happy times spent with Nancy: long walks on the beach, bike rides, holding hands and talking for hours, playing Frisbee, laughing, quiet moments gazing at the stars on warm summer nights. She was fantastic and wonderful, alive in a deeper and more attractive way than any girl I had ever known. She was Catholic and beautiful, and I loved being with her. Best of all, Nancy never allowed herself to get caught up in any of the typical teenage vices, and that was immensely attractive to me. I was drawn by her radiant goodness as much as her beauty and sweet personality. She amazed me with a wisdom and depth of vitality that was beyond anything I had to offer her. She loved with chaste yet stirring intensity. Her love was a current of goodness that was wide, deep, and unstoppable, the way a mountain stream surges onward to find its waterfall. I came to realize that I loved her.
Even though they knew I wasn't a "high confidence" candidate for her affection, Nancy's family was very patient with me. They were worried by my frivolity and aimlessness, but guided Nancy as she and I grew closer.
My parents and family all loved Nancy, and I can remember one particular conversation with my dad: He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, "Pat, you have no idea what a wonderful girl you've found in Nancy. If you let her get away from you, it will be the worst thing ever to happen to you. If you don't grow up and turn away from the music scene, you'll lose her." His words cut me; I knew he was right. His remark was one of the milestones in my journey back to a serious practice of my Faith.
But I still had a long way to go.
After a year's courtship, we got engaged in July of 1980. I had no idea how dramatically this young woman was about to change my life for the better.
We were married on February 7, 1981. She was nineteen; I was twenty. Young, yes, but we knew that marriage was what we wanted. Our parents supported us in our decision, and we saw no reason for waiting. After an idyllic if simple honeymoon driving up the coast of California, we came home and started the process of setting up house and adjusting to married life. We were very happy. I worked as a clerk at a nearby bank, and Nancy taught at a local preschool. In the evenings, we'd talk about our dreams for the future, especially the dream of starting a family. God was already beginning to draw me home. Getting married and assuming the responsibilities of husband and father signaled the death of my rock 'n' roll days. The band wanted to keep playing and start recording, but I let them know I needed to be home with Nancy, not on stage.
And so I left the band.
As if they had been written for and about me personally, I found myself learning firsthand the meaning of St. Paul's words: "When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things." I was slowly, but not entirely, putting away my childish thinking and ways. The next several years were the stage on which the drama of my reconversion unfolded fully.
The crisis was drawing near.
Nancy and I had no specific plans for starting a family, but decided to see what would happen. It happened quickly. I got laid off by the bank a few weeks after we got married and then was quickly hired in the retail field. I had just started a new job as a store manager and was unloading boxes one afternoon when Nancy showed up unexpectedly.
"I just came ftom the doctor," she said, her eyes wide and brimming with tears of happiness.
"You mean. .." I stammered, slackjawed with the impact of her unspoken news.
She hugged me. "Yes, we're going to have a baby."
Phase Two of God's "Patrick Madrid reconstruction project" was underway. Becoming a husband was a big step toward maturity, but becoming a father was even more dramatic. Our first son, Jonathon, was born on Thanksgiving of 1981. By 1985, we had bought our first home and had two more children, Bridget in 1983 and Timothy in 1985. We had a happy, fun-filled marriage, and I marveled now and then at how dramatically different my life had become. I was, happily, being forced to grow up and get away from my earlier selfish ways as I did my best to shoulder the load of being a father and husband.
A soul divided cannot stand
In time, the effects of my years of immoderation and lukewarmness began to catch up with me. I can't recall when the feeling started, but I eventually became aware of a growing sense of discontent and restlessness. Even though I was now married with kids, a mortgage, and car payments, I hadn't shed many of the lax, pleasure-seeking attitudes I had cultivated earlier. These attitudes shaped aspects of our marriage, and iince we both had enough training in the Faith to know better, there were things in our marriage that Nancy and I mew didn't conform to what God wanted. I take the blame for being the one who led the way down wrong paths.
In many ways, I was still immature and superficial. My combination of doctrinal staunchness and moral laziness was very much at work in my life. Even as I found time to develop skills as an apologist (relishing opportunities to debate religion with Protestant and other non-Catholic friends), I did other things I knew I shouldn't have. I knew what was right, but still did what was wrong. St. Paul's words were reflected in me: "1 do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do."
I was empty inside, a vacuum of selfishness where my interior life with Christ should have been. I grew frustrated about who I was and wanted to know what I was supposed to be doing with my life. In my twenty-sixth year, I went through an identity crisis, precipitated by God's grace. Lovingly but firmly He shook me out of my stupor.
First, I grew deeply troubled about my past and present sinfulness. Guilt is the nervous system of the soul. In the physical body, the nerves alert us to danger, galvanizing us toward self-preservation. Guilt is a spiritual pain that alerts us to spititual dangers we're in; it's our conscience's way of prodding us to repent and amend our ways. Over the course of that year, my conscience prodded me ruthlessly. By now, I had abandoned the drudgery of my retail job (too much time away from Nancy and the kids) and was working in sales. I enjoyed my new work and was successful at it, but even that didn't muffle the anxiety and discontent that rang like a bell in the gathering dark night of my soul.
This pain of conscience commingled with frustration at knowing that I wasn't doing with my life what God had planned for me to do. I'm not referring here to marriage and family; I knew with certainty that this was His plan for me. But I thought my job was a dead-end; I sensed that there was something particular I should be doing, and I wasn't doing it. No matter how I tried to discern what it was, I came up empty. I felt like an explorer without a map or a compass. I had no des- tination. Alii knew was where I didn't want to go. I felt like a bystander to my own life.
My emptiness, spiritually and emotionally, couldn't be filled with various and sometimes sinful fixes I tried. Nancy and I, although still very much in love, were also suffering the effects of my year of discontent. Our marriage was under stress, I was unhappy, she was unhappy, and neither of us really knew why.
I find Christ in the tabernacle
One day - for the one and only time in our marriage - we actually spoke the words: "I don't know if I want to be married to you." Tears and silence overcame us after that remark. We knew that divorce was not an option. As unhappy as we were, we knew we loved each other and realized we wanted to be together. That was the grace of marriage coming to our rescue. We never again felt the cutting despair and loneliness that raked us that dark afternoon. By God's grace, our marriage was going through - and surviving - "the worse" of "for better or for worse," the often-forgotten words of our marriage vows.
I was like a sailor trapped in a sunken ship. I had my head above water in a small pocket of air, only enough to breathe for a short while before I drowned. And so I did the one thing I knew was my only hope: I went in search of Christ to ask Him to rescue me from the danger I found myself in.
I found Him where I knew He would be waiting for me - where He had always been waiting for me - in the tabernacle. I was working as an account executive for a firm whose offices weren't far from a beautiful Catholic church. For about a month, I spent my lunch hour in that church on my knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Day after day, I skipped lunch as a minor act of mortification, asking God to purify me. As noontime hunger gnawed at my belly, I knelt down, closed my eyes, and surveyed my life, grateful to the Lord for giving me Nancy and my children, but also shuddering at other things I saw.
For the first time, I saw my life in perspective: the time I had wasted, the frivolity, the furtive sins, the laziness, vanity, and even the smug intellectual certitude I had felt for so long as a Catholic. My years of compromise and complacency accused me. Christ's words resonated in my soul: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?"
A fountain of anguish burst forth inside me, and I wept. I was overwhelmed with contrition and a desire to be close to Christ in a way I never had before. I felt clawing pangs of sorrow for sin and a hunger for virtue and renewal, as I'm sure St. Mary Magdalene felt as she wept over Christ's feet and anointed them with oil.
I spent a holy hour with Christ in the Eucharist each day, prayerfully listening and asking - begging - Him to show me what He wanted me to do with my life. Even though I could discern no answer to that question, I sensed that I had finally begun my climb out of the darkness. The ascent wasn't smooth, though, and I saw that my journey homeward with Christ would be extensive and arduous.
During one of those holy hours, I ran across a phrase of St. Thomas Aquinas in a book someone had left in the church: "Inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin." I recognized the truth of that teaching and began asking Christ as part of my petitions to help me overcome and uproot the self-love that, like a weed, had choked my interior life and nearly suffocated me. I saw how I had for so long conspired against myself, allow, ing temptation to take root and flourish, bringing forth its in, evitable dark fruit of sin - a harvest of my own planting.
Praying the Rosary, slowly and with concentration, was a huge benefit to my progress. I asked Mary to pray for me and with me that I would become the person her Son wanted me to lbe. Her words of guidance and encouragement from the Gospel wafted gently through my soul: "Do whatever He tells you."
Lord, answer me!
After a month of holy hours before the Blessed Sacrament, imploring Christ to tell me what to do, I still had not heard an answer. On one hand, I had emerged from the crucible of self, reproach and repentance. I was strengthened and determined to avoid sin and cultivate virtue and a serious interior life. On the other hand, God still hadn't shown me what to do with my life. I felt a sense of healing and inner peace, and Christ's loving admonishment stilled my fears: "Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid."153 In response, I called to the Lord from my storm-tossed fishing boat: "Lord, if it is y ou, command me to come to You on the water."And He said, "Come." The problem was that I didn't know how.
So I decided to force the issue. I quit my job that Friday so I could find the new career to which God was calling me, regardless of where it might be. Nancy was extremely loving and supportive during this month-long process, and I had shared with her the general outline and even many details of the struggle through which I had come. Our marriage was happy and peaceful again. Nancy encouraged me to do what I thought best and prayed for me to see and follow God's will for my job. I had a little money saved up, so I figured I'd have a few weeks to sort out what my next step would be.
God didn't wait that long.
God makes me an offer I can't refuse - but I do
That weekend I talked with my friend Karl Keating, a Catholic layman and attorney in San Diego. He and I shared a deep interest in apologetics (defending the Faith), and he had recently started a modest part-time apologetics apostolate called "Catholic Answers." Karl and I had become phone friends and talked frequently about our mutual interest in apologetics. That conversation with Karl changed my life forever.
After sharing with him a little about my recent spiritual renewal, I got to the punch line: "I quit my job on Friday, and I'm trying to determine what my next move should be. Would you keep this intention of mine in your prayers as I figure out what to do?"
Karl's response was immediate. "Sure, I'll pray for you, but I can do something even better. I'm getting ready to close up my law practice and open an office to do apologetics work full-time. Why don't you come work with me at Catholic Answers? We'll build it into something big."
It never entered my mind that apologetics could be a career; I hadn't devoted even a moment to contemplating that as an option, so even as Karl brought it up, I declined. "Thanks, Karl, but I don't think this is what God wants from me. I appreciate the offer, but whatever God wants me to do, it's not apologetics."
But God's grace can penetrate even my thick skull. Karl persisted in his invitation, and twenty minutes later, I had promised to give it a try.
That was in early 1988. Several months later it struck me that apologetics work was exactly what God had called me to do. It was the answer to my prayer. I laughed when I thought of the saying: "There is none so blind as he who will not see." I thank and praise God for the privilege of being able to work in the apostolate of apologetics and evangelization. I see it as a way that I can make at least partial restitution for the wasted time and bad decisions of my youth.
His grace abounds! Praise Him!
How poetic are God's ways. Here I am now, years later, again in front of the Blessed Sacrament reliving the details of my experience. It was here that my story began, and it's appropriate that it should end here. In the light of grace that radiates from the tabernacle, we see many things about ourselves that would otherwise remain obscured.
As I look back on my reconversion to Christ and the way in which it came about, I am struck by how ordinary the circumstances were. There was no dramatic, "bolt of lightning" moment of conversion, no voice from Heaven. I didn't have to forsake family or friends to recommit my life to Christ.
The gradual way I supped into my spmtuallaziness was all so ordinary. In fact, I think it's a common problem with Catholics who live a life of outward allegiance to Christ, but inwardly find themselves empty and arid. Perhaps you see yourself reflected in my story.
Conversion of the heart is a long, difficult process - not a quick fix. We remain vulnerable to sin and prone to the tendencies and weaknesses we suffered from before. The difference is that we recognize these things for what they are and the road to Heaven.
As He called me out of spiritual lethargy, so Christ is calling you now. Before you turn the page and move on to the next story, close your eyes and spend a moment meditating upon these words of Christ. Let them flood your soul with peace and draw you close to his Sacred Heart: "Come to me, all you who are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest."
Patrick Madrid
I'm writing this in front of the Blessed Sacrament, in the quiet solitude of a monastery chapel near my home. Being alone here with the Lord helps me gather my thoughts as I search for the right way to recount my story.
St. Peter's words echo in my mind: "Lord, it is good for us to be here." Christ had led him and James and John to the lonely heights of Mount Tabor one day and there revealed things to them that evoked Peter's exclamation, startling things, previously hidden.
"Lord, it is good for me to be here with you in the Eucharist," is the refrain that resonates within me as I write. For in this setting, before the tabernacle, Christ has shown me many things about myself that I needed to see and repair. His hammer and chisel of grace delivered their most effective blows to my heart during those times when I knelt in front of Him, head bowed, in the silence of another Catholic church, years ago and far from here.
I'm not a convert in the standard sense of the term. I was born into a Catholic family, raised in the Faith by devout and loving parents, and have remained in the Church, believing all her teachings with all my heart. ("So what is your story doing in a book like this?" you ask yourself.) I'm not a convert to the Catholic Church, but I am the unworthy recipient of the grace of a conversion of the heart, a recommitment to Christ at a time when I thought I knew what it means to be Catholic. How wrong I was.
In my mid 20s, I went through a kind of creeping spiritual crisis that led me into a reconversion that was neither sudden nor dramatic, although it shook me powerfully and reached the deepest recesses of my heart.
Like a painful, prolonged medical treatment that's necessary to save a patient's life, my reconversion entailed pain and uncertainty, but the result, thank God, was a cure - not an instant one, forever banishing the symptoms of the disease we call "sin," but a cure nonetheless. As St. Paul explained, "Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death." This malaria of sin, contracted in the Garden of Eden through the bite of an apple, courses through our veins with all its deadly effects. Only God's grace can combat and overcome it. His love is the sole antidote.
At the height of my conversion of heart, I discovered, or more specifically, the Lord showed me, that through years of infrequent and minimal use, I had allowed the "muscles" of my interior life - prayer, mortification, and recollection - to atrophy and wither. My spiritual "arteries" - which carry the love of Christ as the lifeblood of the soul - had hardened and Iconstricted as a result of the lukewarm, halfhearted complacency into which I had settled.
I think my situation wasn't unlike that of many Catholics. We who are born into the Faith easily take it for granted, and we make the fatal mistake of assuming that conversion is for Protestants or Mormons or atheists who, being outside the Church, make their way into it. Many Catholics - I being a good example - lull themselves into a state of comfortable, "do not disturb" spiritual incapacitation. They make no real or consistent effort to grasp Christ with all their might and to work daily at keeping and strengthening that grasp, as His grace enables.
Simply being Catholic isn't enough. What is required by Christ is love, and true love means effort, work, and time spent in prayer - things that so often fall by the wayside in the daily lives of many Catholics. We call him Lord in our prayers, but so often we don't live our lives as if He really is. Membership in the Church, even a strong conviction about things Catholic, is in itself no guarantee of a real friendship with Christ.
That's the condition in which I found myself. I lived a life of Catholicism that comprised good and important but largely external things such as regular Sunday Mass attendance, grace before meals, and praying the Rosary occasionally. These weren't enough. I lacked a deep interior commitment to Christ, to living virtuously and to deepening my prayer life. My parents had taught me the Faith and how to live it, but these lessons were surprisingly easy to forget, at least for a time, once the powerful distractions, temptations, and concupiscence of young adulthood crowded them into the background.
But our Lord is kind and faithful. "If we are unfaithful, He will remain faithful, for He cannot deny Himself." He seeks out, not just the lost sheep that has wandered far from the flock, but also the one that remains within the flock but gradually grows dull and lazy and becomes deaf to the sound of the Shepherd's voice. I was once like that second sheep, and this is the story ofhow the Good Shepherd rescued me from my spiritual stupor and gathered me to Himself.
California dreamin' ...of Christian martyrdom
I was born in 1960 into a devout Catholic family. My parents were loving and wise in the way they raised us children, especially in the way they taught us about Christ and imparted to us the truths of the Catholic Faith. I grew up and lived most of my life in Southern California. In 1970 our family moved to Mission Viejo, a sparkling new, "master planned" bedroom community in Orange County, about forty-five miles south of Los Angeles. It was a great place to grow up, each tract of newly built homes filling quickly with an influx of young families. In our neighborhood, one thing became noticeable: ours was by far the biggest family.
One important lesson I learned from my parents' example was the importance of generosity with God and openness to life. As the oldest of eight children, I lived in a world where it was natural for parents to spend themselves totally in their love and devotion to their family. Only later, as I began to encounter secular culture, in high school, college, and beyond, did I see how deliciously radical and countercultural my parents were in having a large family in the 1970s. But I certainly didn't realize that while I was growing up. As far as I could see, my parents never saw themselves in that light. They never put on the "We're the parents of a large family and you're not" sort of airs one sometimes encounters in others. Nor can I recall my mom and dad ever rolling their eyes or looking askance at another family with the maximum one or two children that modern society tells people to have. At that time, the only Iarge families people generally saw were on television: the Brady Bunch, which had six (although the plot line for their Iarge family was a consequence of remarriage), and the Bradford family on Eight Is Enough. Even the title of that show betrayed the media and cultural disapproval of large families.
We weren't poor, but we certainly weren't what people would call middle-class comfortable. Although my parents' monthly budget was pretty tight most of the time, my mom chose to pursue her vocation as a homemaker; and for that I thank God. My dad went to work to pay the bills, and my mom stayed home to cook, clean, change diapers, do laundry, and chauffeur the kids around town on an endless series of treks to school, Little League games, and dance practices. (Someday, I'll film a documentary tribute to her career behind the wheel of our family station wagon. I'll call it "Taxi Driver.") She made our home comfortable and beautiful, settled disputes, spanked us when we needed it, and otherwise rode herd on her thundering pack of kids.
My dad, a brilliant, under-appreciated, overworked computer engineer, daily endured the mind-crushing drudgery of a Southern California commute from our home in the 'burbs of Orange County to his workplace in Los Angeles and back.
The Madrid family sprawl was a great environment in rich to grow up Catholic. It was loud, loving, rambunctious, and devout without ever being kooky or weirdly pious - generally a pretty happy place.
I wasn't by any stretch bad, but, like most kids, I was accomplished and diligent in the arts of boyhood mischief, chore-shirking, impertinence, and random acts of slacking and disobedience. I received plenty of spankings, groundings, and "How many times do I have to tell you to clean up your room?" lectures. I loved playing sports, swimming, and rough-housing with my neighborhood pals, but I was also a bookworm and spent a lot of time engrossed in adventure tales, lives of the saints, and war stories. I remember countless hours ensconced in my room, mesmerized by some book or another, imagining myself as a brave, "laugh in the face of the pagan emperor" early Christian martyr, or as an explorer, or as Teddy Roosevelt, waving his men forward with saber in one hand, a colt revolver in the other, charging up San Juan Hill into a hail of Spanish bullets and artillery Then my mom would call me downstairs to take out the trash. (Sometimes, being grounded wasn't so painful - although I never told my parents that - because being banished to my room for the day meant along stretch of uninterrupted reading. )
From Kumbaya to Kyrie
Another important element of my Catholic upbringing was being an altar boy. For several years, I actually dwelt in two different liturgical worlds, serving at the ancient Tridentine rite on weekdays at my school and at a freewheeling Novus Ordo guitar Mass on Sundays in my parish. That strange, although providential, circumstance gave me valuable insights into what the Catholic Church is as ail entity, established and safeguarded by Christ regardless of its outward circumstances and the frailties of its members.
The latter part of my grammar school career was spent at the Mission San Juan Capistrano parochial school. The parish church adjacent to the school is one of the many California missions established by Bl. Junipero Serra, the Spanish Franciscan who planted the seeds of Christianity throughout California, shortly after the Spaniards arrived in Mexico. Built in 1776, this church was the oldest thing I had ever seen, and its hoary beauty impressed me. The chapel still has its original high, whitewashed adobe walls, timber and tile roof, stone floor, and ancient wooden pews. In fact, of all the twenty- one California missions, San Juan Capistrano has the only intact chapel where BI. Junipero Serra had celebrated Mass. And it was there, at the early daily Mass, that I served as an altar boy.
The elderly pastor of the parish had received a special indult from Pope Paul VI to continue the celebration of the sacraments there in Latin, according to the pre-1963 Tridentine rite. So while I was an altar boy at Sunday Mass at the parish near our home { where the Novus Ordo Mass was celebrated exclusively), on 'weekday mornings, when I served the Latin Mass, I could step back in time for half an hour, away from the din of the Southern California kaleidoscope of traffic jams, fast-food restaurants, and shopping malls. Inside the dim, incense-Iaden sanctuary of the Old Mission chapel, I felt profoundly connected with the ancient, timeless Catholic Church. Now I can understand and articulate a fundamental truth that, even as a boy, I sensed clearly: the Catholic Church, like Christ, her Spouse {and because ofHim), is the same yesterday, today, and forever.145 She has sojourned on His behalf for more than twenty centuries on this earth, has seen every epoch's unique set of problems and challenges come and go, and she is still here.
Years later, writing about the Liturgy for a Catholic journal, I recalled that remarkable experience fondly: "1 have vivid memories of serving Holy Mass in that elaborate sanctuary, cloudy with incense, where Bl. Junipero Serra had celebrated Mass two centuries earlier: on my knees, reciting the acolyte's responses in Latin, watching the priest's every motion. So many realities of the Faith were communicated to my young soul by the elements of that Traditional Latin Mass."
Herein arose a strange dichotomy. During the week, I was an acolyte at the Traditional Mass. On Sundays, I was an acolyte {although they never used that word there) at our local parish. The pastor was a good man and by all appearances personally orthodox, but he wasn't forceful in the way he ran the parish. His "hang on loosely" approach to dealing with the various lay ministries and the srrong egos of some of the parishioners meant that the parish was liturgically liberal- not kooky liberal, but it had a general atmosphere of "almost anything goes." This included relatively new practices such as hand-holding during the Our Father, out-of-tune folk guitarists twanging through sappy songs being written in those days, a stark interior with no statues or votive candles, and a bizarre orange-and-silver-foil wallpaper that formed a space-age, floor-to-ceiling backdrop behind the altar {it drove my dad crazy).
Mass at the Old Mission was, in its externals; the polar opposite: majestic and mysterious. The incense and Gregorian chany the Latin prayers, the imposing, intricately carved, gold-Ieaf reredos that towered above the altar, the flurry of bells rung at the moment of Consecration -all of these stamped on my young imagination a powerful imprint of the Mass's mystical, transcendent beauty. (Now I see clearly and appreciate that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, whether celebrated according to the New Order promulgated by Vatican II, or according to the ancient Byzantine form of the Divine Liturgy, or according to the ancient Latin Tridentine rite codified by Pope Pius V, is still the same Holy Sacrifice.)
A faith built on imagination
As odd as it might sound, it's here, I believe, that the beginnings of my gradual decline into lukewarmness began. My imagination was being fed with all the richness and glory of the Faith and its history. I avidly read the lives of the saints - particularly those martyrs who died for the Faith by being burned alive or speared or beheaded. The more gore, the better. It was so easy to imagine the Catholic Church and its romantic, fiercely beautiful, two-thousand~year panoply of saints, sinners, and martyrs. On that rich diet, my ravenous imagination was very well fed- and that in itself isn't bad -but whether it was due to some character flaw of mine, or a general spiritual and intellectual laziness (which is a character flaw, I suppose), I allowed my Catholic Faith to subsist almost entirely at the level of imagination. That, I think, was a significant cause of my later bout with lukewarmness.
As Scripture tells us, God created humans "in His own image." This means each of us was fashioned as a person, just as He is a person. As such, God created our human nature to have an intellect and a will, the two rational faculties by which we know and love. The intellect is the apparatus of reason with which a human person perceives, measures, and makes decisions about himself and the world around him. The will is the component of the person that assents to and carries out one's decisions and actions based on what his intellect tells him.
Now, since God also created us to be material and spiritual beings (i.e., body and soul), we must contend with the input that our physical senses give to our minds. This is where the imagination comes into play. The imagination isn't the entire intellect, but merely a component of it. The imagination is what provides the mind with "pictures," images of our experiences that come through the senses. And our imaginations are powerful and often vivid in the images - both good and evil - they present to our mind.
This is why many people gradually lose interest in using their intellects to penetrate deeper into the spiritual and moral (and even scientific) truths of the world around them. Like a muscle, the intellect must be exercised regularly or it will become lazy, flabby, and unable to heft the weight of the many moral dilemmas and choices we face in life. When the intellect is weak and ineffectual as a result of laziness, the imagination sets itself up as dictator. It feeds the mind on a steady diet of mental junk food. Those images and impressions it generates soon become mistaken for acts of the intellect. At that stage, a person finds himself reduced to the shabby condition of living in a world constructed predominantly (and governed ruthlessly) by his imagination. It becomes an ever, present ringmaster at the center of a circus of swirling images, smells, sounds, and feelings with which the five senses constantly bombard the mind. Such a person becomes hostage to his own emotions and appetites. Left unchecked, his imagination works solo while his intellect stays quiet and sluggish in the background. This gradual abdication of the intellect will inevitably cause the Christian to drift into indifference to the spiritual struggle raging around him, or worse, he may lay down his anus entirely and give up the fight.
In my case, the drift started when I was a high school senior.
Minor seminary days
When I was in eighth grade, I thought that God might be calling me to the priesthood. It wasn't an overwhelming call, but I sensed that the thing to do was to "come and see," as Christ told the Apostles when He first called them to follow Him.147 Through the generosity of the kindhearted pastor of our parish, who agreed to pay for my tuition, I was given the privilege of spending nearly three years in Our Lady Queen of Angels diocesan minor seminary in San Fernando, California. It was a good if uneventful time for me; I enjoyed my studies, developed an appreciation for a more regimented prayer and liturgical life, and formed some friendships that have lasted even to today. Eventually I saw that God wasn't calling me to the priesthood. So, near the end of my junior year, I left the seminary and enrolled at the local public high school. It was like being dropped into a very large aquarium filled with hoards of exotic and sometimes beautiful fish, as well as some dangerous predators.
Small-time rocker, part-time Catholic
I quickly slipped into the groove of dating, going to parties, hanging out at the beach, and many of the other pastimes teens pursued in sunny Southern California. My upscale high school had about three thousand students and was awash in drugs, alcohol, sex, recklessness, and materialism. There were many good students and teachers, but many students lived lives of excess and pleasure-seeking. They came from affluent homes, and Mommy and Daddy had the bucks to buy them stylish clothes, a new car on their sixteenth birthday, and pretty much anything else they wanted. I found myself swimming in the pleasant, warm waters of this aquarium of hedonism.
When I got into public high school, I didn't go berserk with my new relative freedom. I didn't dye my hair purple or pierce any body parts (that silliness among teenagers was still several years away). There were no shouting matches with my parents, or sneaking out of the house at night, or any of those things. My slide into complacency was furtive and unobtrusive; even I wasn't fully aware of just how slippery the slope had become.
I grew lazy in prayer and no longer made an effort to cultivate virtue, but compared with many of my peers, I was still a "good kid," and I didn't get mixed up with a lot of the craziness around me.
I never took drugs of any kind -not even once. I'm grateful to God for protecting me from that snare. Large amounts of marijuana, cocaine, various mind-bending pills, acid, and even hardcore injectables such as heroin were used all around me by many young people.
In 1979, I heard from a friend that a drummer I had played a few gigs with and whom I had known from school - a guy my own age and an excellent musician - had died of a heroin overdose the month before. He was eighteen.
I can't take much credit for avoiding drugs; God protected me from that scourge. I have a vivid memory of being at a party one night and being offered a joint by a cute girl. "No thanks," I muttered sheepishly, glancing at the mari, juana cigarette she held out to me. I looked down in embar, rassment. I knew she was surprised and was thinking, "What a geek." She wrote me off with a roll of her eyes and walked away. I can see now that that was a moment of grace - one of many unrecognized moments of grace - and it taught me that although my willingness to avoid sin had been weakened through compromise, it hadn't been destroyed.
I didn't follow the crowd in its pot, addled, binge, drinking quest for new chemically induced highs, but I'm sorry to say that I hung out with many who did. Not everyone was a bleary-eyed pothead, but many of the young people I knew were. Some graduated from "weed" to the harder stuff: acid, hash, and cocaine were common fare at parties.
Easy access to the party scene and all the temptations that entailed came as a result of my growing involvement with rock 'n' roll. If anything was a passion for me, it was playing music. I had a solid background in music, having studied violin for a short time and played the trumpet in the school orchestra for several years. When I was fifteen, I taught myself to play the bass guitar and quickly discovered I was good at it.
I spent countless hours in my bedroom with my bass guitar, practicing and learning how to play the songs on the radio and on my albums. Chicago, the Cars, Boston, the Stones, Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, The Police, America, and especially the Beatles were among the rock groups whose music I loved and learned, note by note. By the time I was seventeen, I was playing with several pretty decent garage bands in Southern California. One particularly successful band I played bass for was Geneva Brown. We never did make it to the "medium time" {much less the big time), but we developed a local following and played at parties, weddings, and clubs. Besides playing songs by Top-40 groups, we wrote and performed a lot of our own music, mostly bouncy pop tunes, which even today I can honestly say were pretty good.
For me and many others, this interlude as a wannabe rock star contributed to the growth of narcissism, superficiality, and vanity. It engendered a vivid fantasy world that catered to my ego and my appetites. Not virtue or strength of character, but seeing myself as a "popular, talented, successful" musician was the measure of success. My desire for success as a rock star wasn't balanced with a strong spiritual life and good spiritual direction, so it fed and empowered my imagination, at the expense of my intellect.
In 1979, Geneva Brown won first place in a widely publicized, well-attended "Battle of the Bands" competition, beating twenty other local bands. I'll never forget the adrenal in rush I felt when we walked onto the stage in front of a couple of thousand screaming teens and young adults and knocked them dead with our first number, Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London." A few songs later, we finished our set, unplugged our guitars, and sauntered offstage to the roar of boisterous applause.
We thought for sure we were headed for big things in music. But when you're nineteen and stupid, as I was, what do you know? We collected our trophy, posed for some cheesy publicity pictures, and piled into our cars and went home to celebrate. Back at the house we shared, there was a big party that lasted into the early morning.
When I woke up, the shadow across the room showed it was nearly noon. I had a throbbing headache - too much beer- and my head felt as if it were the size of a filing cabinet. My mouth was dry. There seemed to be small mittens on my teeth. I trudged into the bathroom, looked into the mirror at my bloodshot eyes, threw up, and went back to bed.
Small-time rock 'n' roll was doing nothing to enhance my spiritual life.
During this time, I remained Catholic, but all around me were drugs, girls, alcohol, and the band's ubiquitous hangers- on. It was inevitable that these negative influences would harm me. I dated different girls, although I was never a predator with only one goal in mind. With dating came many of the dangers inherent in being alone with a pretty girl. It was fun, I thought, and I found it easy to push aside the lessons I had learned about chastity and moderation. While I didn't get drawn into the worst excesses that were common among many young people at the time, I look back with remorse (and with gratitude for (God's mercy) on the sins I committed during my "young and stupid" period.
I now find it odd that, even amid my spiritual laziness, the music, and the party~scene craziness, I still went to Mass every Sunday, prayed before meals, and went to Confession every few months. I also enjoyed defending Catholicism against the criticisms of non~Catholics - and was even good at it.
Protestants force me to think about the Faith
The truth is, I had been doing this for years. For example, the summer before my senior of high school, I was going out with a beautiful girl named Christi. She was a sweet, lively person, and her parents took a strong interest in me. Christi and her family were what I call "hardcore" Baptists. They talked a lot about the Bible and seemed to have an appropriate Bible verse to quote at any moment and in any situation. Christi's parents knew I came from a strong Catholic background, of course, and I think these two good, sincere people saw me as a challenge - especially since I was dating their daughter - and they went to work on me with vigor. Since Christi and I spent a lot of time at her house, listening to music and swimming in her pool, her parents had plenty of time to work oil their "Pat Madrid" project. They often sat with us, a well-worn King James Bible open on her dad's knee, and posed friendly but pointed questions to me about my Catholic Faith.
"The Bible says in Exodus 20:4 that God condemns the use of statues and other graven images," her mom would say with a smile. " As a Catholic, Patrick, and since the Catholic Church promotes praying to statues, doesn't that bother you?"
Of course I knew we Catholics don't worship or pray to statues, so I knew enough to reject that part of her argument, but what I lacked was a solid knowledge of Scripture that would have enabled me to point out passages such as Exodus 25:18-20, Numbers 21:8-9, and 1 Kings 6:23-28, where God approves of and even commands the carving of religious statues. I would have been able to show Christi's well-meaning mom that what God condemned in Exodus 20 was not graven images per se, but idolatry - the worship of graven images. Idolatry under any guise is a sin, and the Catholic Church has always strenuously condemned it. If I had had this family's level of biblical knowledge, I could have stood my ground better.
Over several weeks, Christi's parents and their circle of Evangelical Protestant friends presented me with a variety of biblical challenges to my Faith: "Mary worship," the Catholic Church's alleged "false gospel of salvation by works," the heresy of infant Baptism, the Pope and his outrageous claims of being infallible, the magic of the sacraments, especially the issue of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist - these and other arguments against the Catholic Faith were thrown (smilingly, of course) in my face.
Such arguments were often accompanied by a venomous anti-Catholic "Chick Tract" dredged up from a seemingly limitless supply that came from a hidden stash somewhere in their house. I read these garish anti-Catholic comic books carefully. Time after time, I could see that they offered slick but bogus arguments against the Catholic Church. It was so obvious that the wild, angry charges these tracts made against Catholicism weren't true -and I was able to check Scripture to see this for myself. I soon began to refuse the anti-Catholic literature that Christi's parents proffered. Once, I even had the gumption to invite them to come to Mass with us, so they could see what the Catholic Church taught and that it resembled nothing like the caricatures in the tracts they gave me.
I recall one particularly tense conversation about the Eucharist with Christi's parents. Her dad said, "Hang on a minute" and went into the house. He came back with a Chick Tract called "The Death Cookie," which he handed to me with great seriousness, asking me to read it prayerfully. I was asked repeatedly if I had "been saved." As a Catholic, they regarded me as a "lost soul," an "unsaved" person who still needed to "find Christ" (even though they let me see their daughter, for which I give them credit).
It's ironic that in one sense, their view of me was actually not far from the truth. My intellectual certitude, even as a teen, was insufficient to save me. I needed a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ," and I'm grateful that these encounters helped me see how important that is. Of course, Catholics don't typically speak in this way, but semantics aside, I was beginning to learn a deep truth.
There were times when I'd think to myself in frustration, "I just want to spend time with Christi! I don't want to be put on trial about the Bible." Looking back on those months of being grilled regularly by these good but deeply anti-Catholic people, I realize how beneficial this experience was for me. It forced me to defend my Catholic convictions, to move beyond my imagination and use my intellect to grapple with these challenges and the truths I claimed to believe in, and to determine for myself why I believed what I believed as a Catholic. I thank Christi's parents for conducting this project on me, because even though Christi and I soon drifted apart, they helped propel me into a more mature, more introspective level of Faith. Little did I ( or they) realize then how they were preparing me for my later work as a Catholic apologist.
My so-called spiritual life
Even though my theological jousting with Christi's parents and other aggressive Evangelicals forced me to think more deeply about why I believed what I did, I was still being moved along by the current of those things that appealed to me in life. Without even realizing it, by the time I was nineteen and in college, I had slipped almost entirely into relying mainly on imagination, fed by my senses. Parties, beer, music, and cute available girls had become the fixtures of my life.
True, I went to Mass every Sunday; I believed in and loved the Catholic Church; I said my prayers, but sporadically and without much fervor. (I did experience fleeting moments of fervor that I now believe were moments of God's prevenient grace, like the tugboats that nudge an ocean liner in the direction it should move while it's building its own head of steam.)
I knew enough to get to Confession when my sinful actions thrust me out of the state of grace, but my spiritual life had be, come little more than a sentimental fondness for the image of Catholicism I had created. It didn't dawn on me that I was empty. Outwardly, intellectually, even emotionally, I was a Catholic. But in that hidden place where the soul and God are alone with each other, I was mushy and superficial.
I spent far more time with Paul McCartney, learning to play the bass guitar exactly as he did, than I did in prayer with Jesus Christ. I cared much more about dating and having fun than I did about cultivating virtue. Although I was never tempted to leave the Catholic Church, I had drifted into the comfortable cult of Myself.
My assent to Catholic teaching and practice was still simply an edifice of faith, not Faith itself. Just as a mansion may appear solid and well built from the outside, but on the inside may well be cold, dreary, and empty of the furnishings that would transform it from a hulk of wood and plaster into a home where people live, so it was with me: the externals were there, but there was little inside. Still, the edifice was sturdily built and, in spite of my drift, the Lord continued to protect me and even bless me with new and amazing graces. Foremost among these was the grace of discovering my future wife.
...Then comes marriage
She was sixteen and I was seventeen when I met her. Slim, lovely, and always smiling, Nancy was one of those vivid young women people instinctively like and want to be around. For a year and a half, we were just friends, and we dated other people. We often saw each other casually, and I sometimes even played bass for the parish choir she sang in. When the relationship with my girlfriend fizzled, I got my nerve up to ask Nancy on a date.
The next year was a blur of happy times spent with Nancy: long walks on the beach, bike rides, holding hands and talking for hours, playing Frisbee, laughing, quiet moments gazing at the stars on warm summer nights. She was fantastic and wonderful, alive in a deeper and more attractive way than any girl I had ever known. She was Catholic and beautiful, and I loved being with her. Best of all, Nancy never allowed herself to get caught up in any of the typical teenage vices, and that was immensely attractive to me. I was drawn by her radiant goodness as much as her beauty and sweet personality. She amazed me with a wisdom and depth of vitality that was beyond anything I had to offer her. She loved with chaste yet stirring intensity. Her love was a current of goodness that was wide, deep, and unstoppable, the way a mountain stream surges onward to find its waterfall. I came to realize that I loved her.
Even though they knew I wasn't a "high confidence" candidate for her affection, Nancy's family was very patient with me. They were worried by my frivolity and aimlessness, but guided Nancy as she and I grew closer.
My parents and family all loved Nancy, and I can remember one particular conversation with my dad: He put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said, "Pat, you have no idea what a wonderful girl you've found in Nancy. If you let her get away from you, it will be the worst thing ever to happen to you. If you don't grow up and turn away from the music scene, you'll lose her." His words cut me; I knew he was right. His remark was one of the milestones in my journey back to a serious practice of my Faith.
But I still had a long way to go.
After a year's courtship, we got engaged in July of 1980. I had no idea how dramatically this young woman was about to change my life for the better.
We were married on February 7, 1981. She was nineteen; I was twenty. Young, yes, but we knew that marriage was what we wanted. Our parents supported us in our decision, and we saw no reason for waiting. After an idyllic if simple honeymoon driving up the coast of California, we came home and started the process of setting up house and adjusting to married life. We were very happy. I worked as a clerk at a nearby bank, and Nancy taught at a local preschool. In the evenings, we'd talk about our dreams for the future, especially the dream of starting a family. God was already beginning to draw me home. Getting married and assuming the responsibilities of husband and father signaled the death of my rock 'n' roll days. The band wanted to keep playing and start recording, but I let them know I needed to be home with Nancy, not on stage.
And so I left the band.
As if they had been written for and about me personally, I found myself learning firsthand the meaning of St. Paul's words: "When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things." I was slowly, but not entirely, putting away my childish thinking and ways. The next several years were the stage on which the drama of my reconversion unfolded fully.
The crisis was drawing near.
Nancy and I had no specific plans for starting a family, but decided to see what would happen. It happened quickly. I got laid off by the bank a few weeks after we got married and then was quickly hired in the retail field. I had just started a new job as a store manager and was unloading boxes one afternoon when Nancy showed up unexpectedly.
"I just came ftom the doctor," she said, her eyes wide and brimming with tears of happiness.
"You mean. .." I stammered, slackjawed with the impact of her unspoken news.
She hugged me. "Yes, we're going to have a baby."
Phase Two of God's "Patrick Madrid reconstruction project" was underway. Becoming a husband was a big step toward maturity, but becoming a father was even more dramatic. Our first son, Jonathon, was born on Thanksgiving of 1981. By 1985, we had bought our first home and had two more children, Bridget in 1983 and Timothy in 1985. We had a happy, fun-filled marriage, and I marveled now and then at how dramatically different my life had become. I was, happily, being forced to grow up and get away from my earlier selfish ways as I did my best to shoulder the load of being a father and husband.
A soul divided cannot stand
In time, the effects of my years of immoderation and lukewarmness began to catch up with me. I can't recall when the feeling started, but I eventually became aware of a growing sense of discontent and restlessness. Even though I was now married with kids, a mortgage, and car payments, I hadn't shed many of the lax, pleasure-seeking attitudes I had cultivated earlier. These attitudes shaped aspects of our marriage, and iince we both had enough training in the Faith to know better, there were things in our marriage that Nancy and I mew didn't conform to what God wanted. I take the blame for being the one who led the way down wrong paths.
In many ways, I was still immature and superficial. My combination of doctrinal staunchness and moral laziness was very much at work in my life. Even as I found time to develop skills as an apologist (relishing opportunities to debate religion with Protestant and other non-Catholic friends), I did other things I knew I shouldn't have. I knew what was right, but still did what was wrong. St. Paul's words were reflected in me: "1 do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do."
I was empty inside, a vacuum of selfishness where my interior life with Christ should have been. I grew frustrated about who I was and wanted to know what I was supposed to be doing with my life. In my twenty-sixth year, I went through an identity crisis, precipitated by God's grace. Lovingly but firmly He shook me out of my stupor.
First, I grew deeply troubled about my past and present sinfulness. Guilt is the nervous system of the soul. In the physical body, the nerves alert us to danger, galvanizing us toward self-preservation. Guilt is a spiritual pain that alerts us to spititual dangers we're in; it's our conscience's way of prodding us to repent and amend our ways. Over the course of that year, my conscience prodded me ruthlessly. By now, I had abandoned the drudgery of my retail job (too much time away from Nancy and the kids) and was working in sales. I enjoyed my new work and was successful at it, but even that didn't muffle the anxiety and discontent that rang like a bell in the gathering dark night of my soul.
This pain of conscience commingled with frustration at knowing that I wasn't doing with my life what God had planned for me to do. I'm not referring here to marriage and family; I knew with certainty that this was His plan for me. But I thought my job was a dead-end; I sensed that there was something particular I should be doing, and I wasn't doing it. No matter how I tried to discern what it was, I came up empty. I felt like an explorer without a map or a compass. I had no des- tination. Alii knew was where I didn't want to go. I felt like a bystander to my own life.
My emptiness, spiritually and emotionally, couldn't be filled with various and sometimes sinful fixes I tried. Nancy and I, although still very much in love, were also suffering the effects of my year of discontent. Our marriage was under stress, I was unhappy, she was unhappy, and neither of us really knew why.
I find Christ in the tabernacle
One day - for the one and only time in our marriage - we actually spoke the words: "I don't know if I want to be married to you." Tears and silence overcame us after that remark. We knew that divorce was not an option. As unhappy as we were, we knew we loved each other and realized we wanted to be together. That was the grace of marriage coming to our rescue. We never again felt the cutting despair and loneliness that raked us that dark afternoon. By God's grace, our marriage was going through - and surviving - "the worse" of "for better or for worse," the often-forgotten words of our marriage vows.
I was like a sailor trapped in a sunken ship. I had my head above water in a small pocket of air, only enough to breathe for a short while before I drowned. And so I did the one thing I knew was my only hope: I went in search of Christ to ask Him to rescue me from the danger I found myself in.
I found Him where I knew He would be waiting for me - where He had always been waiting for me - in the tabernacle. I was working as an account executive for a firm whose offices weren't far from a beautiful Catholic church. For about a month, I spent my lunch hour in that church on my knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Day after day, I skipped lunch as a minor act of mortification, asking God to purify me. As noontime hunger gnawed at my belly, I knelt down, closed my eyes, and surveyed my life, grateful to the Lord for giving me Nancy and my children, but also shuddering at other things I saw.
For the first time, I saw my life in perspective: the time I had wasted, the frivolity, the furtive sins, the laziness, vanity, and even the smug intellectual certitude I had felt for so long as a Catholic. My years of compromise and complacency accused me. Christ's words resonated in my soul: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you?"
A fountain of anguish burst forth inside me, and I wept. I was overwhelmed with contrition and a desire to be close to Christ in a way I never had before. I felt clawing pangs of sorrow for sin and a hunger for virtue and renewal, as I'm sure St. Mary Magdalene felt as she wept over Christ's feet and anointed them with oil.
I spent a holy hour with Christ in the Eucharist each day, prayerfully listening and asking - begging - Him to show me what He wanted me to do with my life. Even though I could discern no answer to that question, I sensed that I had finally begun my climb out of the darkness. The ascent wasn't smooth, though, and I saw that my journey homeward with Christ would be extensive and arduous.
During one of those holy hours, I ran across a phrase of St. Thomas Aquinas in a book someone had left in the church: "Inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin." I recognized the truth of that teaching and began asking Christ as part of my petitions to help me overcome and uproot the self-love that, like a weed, had choked my interior life and nearly suffocated me. I saw how I had for so long conspired against myself, allow, ing temptation to take root and flourish, bringing forth its in, evitable dark fruit of sin - a harvest of my own planting.
Praying the Rosary, slowly and with concentration, was a huge benefit to my progress. I asked Mary to pray for me and with me that I would become the person her Son wanted me to lbe. Her words of guidance and encouragement from the Gospel wafted gently through my soul: "Do whatever He tells you."
Lord, answer me!
After a month of holy hours before the Blessed Sacrament, imploring Christ to tell me what to do, I still had not heard an answer. On one hand, I had emerged from the crucible of self, reproach and repentance. I was strengthened and determined to avoid sin and cultivate virtue and a serious interior life. On the other hand, God still hadn't shown me what to do with my life. I felt a sense of healing and inner peace, and Christ's loving admonishment stilled my fears: "Take courage, it is I. Do not be afraid."153 In response, I called to the Lord from my storm-tossed fishing boat: "Lord, if it is y ou, command me to come to You on the water."And He said, "Come." The problem was that I didn't know how.
So I decided to force the issue. I quit my job that Friday so I could find the new career to which God was calling me, regardless of where it might be. Nancy was extremely loving and supportive during this month-long process, and I had shared with her the general outline and even many details of the struggle through which I had come. Our marriage was happy and peaceful again. Nancy encouraged me to do what I thought best and prayed for me to see and follow God's will for my job. I had a little money saved up, so I figured I'd have a few weeks to sort out what my next step would be.
God didn't wait that long.
God makes me an offer I can't refuse - but I do
That weekend I talked with my friend Karl Keating, a Catholic layman and attorney in San Diego. He and I shared a deep interest in apologetics (defending the Faith), and he had recently started a modest part-time apologetics apostolate called "Catholic Answers." Karl and I had become phone friends and talked frequently about our mutual interest in apologetics. That conversation with Karl changed my life forever.
After sharing with him a little about my recent spiritual renewal, I got to the punch line: "I quit my job on Friday, and I'm trying to determine what my next move should be. Would you keep this intention of mine in your prayers as I figure out what to do?"
Karl's response was immediate. "Sure, I'll pray for you, but I can do something even better. I'm getting ready to close up my law practice and open an office to do apologetics work full-time. Why don't you come work with me at Catholic Answers? We'll build it into something big."
It never entered my mind that apologetics could be a career; I hadn't devoted even a moment to contemplating that as an option, so even as Karl brought it up, I declined. "Thanks, Karl, but I don't think this is what God wants from me. I appreciate the offer, but whatever God wants me to do, it's not apologetics."
But God's grace can penetrate even my thick skull. Karl persisted in his invitation, and twenty minutes later, I had promised to give it a try.
That was in early 1988. Several months later it struck me that apologetics work was exactly what God had called me to do. It was the answer to my prayer. I laughed when I thought of the saying: "There is none so blind as he who will not see." I thank and praise God for the privilege of being able to work in the apostolate of apologetics and evangelization. I see it as a way that I can make at least partial restitution for the wasted time and bad decisions of my youth.
His grace abounds! Praise Him!
How poetic are God's ways. Here I am now, years later, again in front of the Blessed Sacrament reliving the details of my experience. It was here that my story began, and it's appropriate that it should end here. In the light of grace that radiates from the tabernacle, we see many things about ourselves that would otherwise remain obscured.
As I look back on my reconversion to Christ and the way in which it came about, I am struck by how ordinary the circumstances were. There was no dramatic, "bolt of lightning" moment of conversion, no voice from Heaven. I didn't have to forsake family or friends to recommit my life to Christ.
The gradual way I supped into my spmtuallaziness was all so ordinary. In fact, I think it's a common problem with Catholics who live a life of outward allegiance to Christ, but inwardly find themselves empty and arid. Perhaps you see yourself reflected in my story.
Conversion of the heart is a long, difficult process - not a quick fix. We remain vulnerable to sin and prone to the tendencies and weaknesses we suffered from before. The difference is that we recognize these things for what they are and the road to Heaven.
As He called me out of spiritual lethargy, so Christ is calling you now. Before you turn the page and move on to the next story, close your eyes and spend a moment meditating upon these words of Christ. Let them flood your soul with peace and draw you close to his Sacred Heart: "Come to me, all you who are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest."
Excerpted from Surprised by Truth 2 edited by Patrick Madrid
Copyright 2000, Sophia Institute Press, Used with permission of the author and the publisher
Sample Pages from [em]The Adoremus Hymnal[/em] (Ignatius Press)
Excerpted from the Adoremus Hymnal
Copyright 1997, Ignatius Press, Used with permission.
Sample Pages from [em]The Angel's Alphabet[/em] by Hilda Van Stockum
Excerpted from The Angel's Alphabet by Hilda Van Stockum
Copyright 1996, Bethlehem Books, Used with permission.
Sample Pages from [em]The Borrowed House[/em] by Hilda Van Stockum
Chapter One
The Ring of Power
THE BARN SMELLED of stale hay, chicken droppings, and cabbage. Lorelei, the white hen, cackled. With a swift glance over her shoulder, Janna took the broom and chased the bird off her nest. Sure enough, there was an egg. Janna slid it into her apron pocket. The barn door creaked as Frau Kopp came in, towering over Janna, a mountain of authority.
"Kill me a couple of chickens, Janna, quick," she said. "I’ve unexpected company." Janna looked around in dismay. What she saw were not chickens but Lorelei and Ilsebill, the leghorns; Wilhelm, the rooster; Fritz and Franz, the cockerels; Lieschen, Gretchen, and all the other cackling, scratching friends she knew by name. How could you kill something that had a name? But what could you do against a grownup? Janna began to sweep vigorously.
"Johanna," repeated Frau Kopp, "did you hear me?"
Janna looked up, shaking the hair out of her eyes. "I can’t," she said, trembling at her own audacity.
"You can," Frau Kopp insisted. "I showed you. You wring their necks, like that . . . it’s easy. What a fool they have sent me—and the other one so good, so willing! Why did she have to leave?"
"I’m on duty," said Janna desperately. "We have a Youth meeting."
"But it isn’t Wednesday," protested Frau Kopp. "I know
"I know, I know," Frau Kopp interrupted, "you’ve told me before. Isn’t it early for you to go? Your meetings are always later."
"Not this one," said Janna.
Frau Kopp looked at her suspiciously, opened her mouth to say something, and then closed it again. It was not wise to tangle with the Youth groups; she’d heard stories. . . . on Wednesdays you have your Heim Abend and have to leave early. But today is Tuesday and you can help in the kitchen, can’t you?"
"It’s a special meeting," said Janna, noticing the frustrated expression on Frau Kopp’s face. No one was allowed to interfere with the Hitler Youth meetings: not the church, or the school, parents or employers.
"A special meeting, a special meeting," grumbled Frau Kopp. "You are always having these special meetings and I think it’s just to escape work. What’s this meeting for, then?"
Janna’s face lit up. "It’s a rehearsal," she said. "We’re going to do a play our group leader has written. And imagine . . . they’ve chosen me to be Brunhilde!"
"And who is Brunhilde?" asked Frau Kopp sourly.
"Don’t you know? She is Siegfried’s bride. He gives her the magic ring, which was stolen from the Rhine maidens. But there is a curse on it. Siegfried drinks an evil potion, forgets Brunhilde, and marries someone else. Brunhilde is furious and causes him to die, but she is sorry afterward, and when she lights his funeral pyre she jumps on it herself, and as they burn all the gods burn with them."
Frau Kopp had listened open-mouthed. "Where do you get all that heathenish nonsense?"
"Oh, it isn’t nonsense," said Janna. "It’s all in Wagner’s operas."
"It’s heathenish anyway," sputtered Frau Kopp. "And for that they keep you from honest work!"
"Learning a part is work too. My parents have to do it all the time. They’re famous actors, their pictures are often in the papers, and Hitler has praised them. It’s in an article . . . I’ll show it to you. . . . He says they are an outstanding example of true Aryan culture."
Adjusting her black shawl, she shrugged her shoulders. "All right, go if you must and leave me with all the work." She bent and made a grab at the unsuspecting Lieschen. Janna lifted her coat from a nail and fled.
It was the last half of February. The thick blanket of snow was raveled and torn, showing patches of earth and yellow vegetation. Streams rushed singing down the hills, sweeping mud and pebbles along. The mountains, wrapped in fog, loomed like ghosts. Janna’s boots picked up the sticky snow as she clumped along. A stiff wind tore at her hair and slapped her cheeks. She passed Frau Kopp’s farmhouse with its steep, overhanging roof, half himself on his chain trying to get to her. She patted his straw, half shingle. Bruno, the mongrel dog, almost choked shaggy head, climbed a fence, and stood on the road, where puddles gleamed between ridges of mud. In the distance the church steeple lifted a warning finger at a flock of crows that seemed to be weaving swastikas against the sky.
Janna took a deep breath. She had managed to evade the cruel task Frau Kopp had laid on her because she was a Hitler Youth. Frau Kopp was afraid of Hitler. All grownups were.
"Oh, it isn’t nonsense," said Janna. "It’s all in Wagner’s operas."
"It’s heathenish anyway," sputtered Frau Kopp. "And for that they keep you from honest work!"
"Learning a part is work too. My parents have to do it all the time. They’re famous actors, their pictures are often in the papers, and Hitler has praised them. It’s in an article . . . I’ll show it to you. . . . He says they are an outstanding example of true Aryan culture."
Adjusting her black shawl, she shrugged her shoulders. "All right, go if you must and leave me with all the work." She bent and made a grab at the unsuspecting Lieschen. Janna lifted her coat from a nail and fled.
It was the last half of February. The thick blanket of snow was raveled and torn, showing patches of earth and yellow vegetation. Streams rushed singing down the hills, sweeping mud and pebbles along. The mountains, wrapped in fog, loomed like ghosts. Janna’s boots picked up the sticky snow as she clumped along. A stiff wind tore at her hair and slapped her cheeks. She passed Frau Kopp’s farmhouse with its steep, overhanging roof, half himself on his chain trying to get to her. She patted his straw, half shingle. Bruno, the mongrel dog, almost choked shaggy head, climbed a fence, and stood on the road, where puddles gleamed between ridges of mud. In the distance the church steeple lifted a warning finger at a flock of crows that seemed to be weaving swastikas against the sky.
Janna took a deep breath. She had managed to evade the cruel task Frau Kopp had laid on her because she was a Hitler Youth. Frau Kopp was afraid of Hitler. All grownups were. hero who had fearlessly slain a dragon yet trembled at the sight of Brunhilde’s beauty. And that was another problem: Janna knew she was no beauty. Well, maybe they could do things with stage lights.
What would it be like to have a magic ring that gave you power over everybody? thought Janna. And why hadn’t Brunhilde used it to save Siegfried and conquer her enemies? Why had she given it back to the Rhine maidens? They had hidden the ring and now no one could get it, though some people said it had been given to Hitler and that that was why he had conquered all those countries.
A girl hailed Janna from a neighboring farm. She came running across the fields, darting around rocks and shrubs, her long braids dancing on her back. It was Greta, a classmate.
"Wait for me, Janna!"
"You got away early too," said Janna.
"I said we had a Youth meeting."
"So did I!" The girls burst into laughter.
"They’ll think it’s funny when we have our rehearsal on Friday. They’ll say we have too many special meetings!"
"They can’t do anything," said Greta. "We’re allowed as many meetings as we like."
"As long as our group leader doesn’t tell on us."
"She won’t. Hildegarde is nice. The other group leader we had, Hannelore, was awful, really strict. She used to make us march with heavy packs and take cold baths in freezing weather because she said we should be as tough as the boys. We were going to be the mothers of future German soldiers and she wasn’t having any weaklings."
"Did you bag anything today?" asked Janna.
"Not much. I think Frau Hahn is noticing. But if she says anything, I’ll tell on her. I’ll tell she slaughtered a pig illegally."
"Did she?" asked Janna.
"Of course. They’re always doing it, those farmers. They don’t care if our soldiers starve. I got some onions anyway. They’re good in soup."
"I got an egg," said Janna.
"An egg? But they count those!" exclaimed Greta.
"I got it before it was counted." They walked for a moment in silence, listening to a robin chirping on a bare branch.
The old mailman, his brown leather bag over his shoulder, was bicycling past. He was bent over the handlebars against the wind, treading down the pedals heavily with his big boots. Slush sprayed up and the girls jumped back.
"Gr�ss Gott!" said the mailman, nodding at them.
"Heil Hitler!" answered the girls, arms outstretched. Janna thoughtfully picked her way among the puddles.
"Did you ever see Hitler?" she asked.
"Yes, once," said Greta, "at that Youth rally we went to."
"There were too many people, I couldn’t see a thing."
"I climbed a tree," said Greta, enjoying Janna’s look of admiration. "But I didn’t see much," she confessed. "Only the back of his head and his raised arm. And do you know, he didn’t raise it high enough, not even as high as his shoulder!" Hildegarde made the girls raise their arms well above their heads, and no matter how long the occasion lasted, you were never allowed to rest your arm on the girl in front.
But of course Hitler didn’t have to raise his arm at all; the greeting was to him. Besides, laws were for other people, not for Hitler.
"Why did you want to go home early today?" Janna asked.
"Because of the test tomorrow," said Greta, looking worried. "They keep us working so late, I’m too tired to do my homework. I did badly all this term. Race science is our most important subject and I want to do as well as I can, but I can’t memorize all that stuff. Those terribly long words!"
"I know, like ‘brachycephalic,’ " said Janna. "That’s a kind of skull. There are round, square, and long ones, and it’s very important which kind you have. The Aryan ones are the best."
"Why?"
"It has something to do with room for your brains. Monkeys don’t have much. Aryans have the most. We’re Aryans, the only true race. We’re supposed to become supermen."
"What other races are there?"
"Oh, Slavs and Mongolians and Semites . . . that’s the Jews. When you don’t know the answer to a question, just say something bad about the Jews and they’ll give you a good mark. They’ll forget what they asked."
"Really?"
"Sure, I tried it. It sometimes works with Slavs too, they’re almost as bad as the Jews . . . that’s the Russians, you know. But the Jews are the worst. They made us lose the First World War. We were winning the war, the soldiers were winning it—and Hitler was a soldier then so he knows—but the Jews in Berlin made us sign the Treaty of Versailles and that made us lose the war. We lost a lot of territory so we hadn’t enough Lebensraum and we had to pay so much money to our enemies that we became poor. We even used our paper money in the toilets!"
"Why?" asked Greta.
"Because it was worth less than toilet paper. No one had work and people fell dead in the streets with hunger, but the democratic government did nothing. When Hitler came, he got back our lost territories and everyone had work. We had an army again and enough food. That’s why we have to thank Hitler before and after meals."
"But what has that got to do with race?"
"Don’t you see, Greta? It’s race that makes the Jews so bad. They’ve got the wrong blood. We were pure Aryans before the Jews came and we must become pure Aryans again. That’s why our boys have written on their daggers: ‘Blood and honor.’ It’s shameful to let your race deteriorate by mixing it with inferior races. In the ancient days of Atlantis the Aryans had magic powers. The swastika is a magic Aryan sign, you know. But the Jews have weakened us and we’ve lost those powers. Hitler wants to give them back to us, but he can do it only if we stamp out the evil influence of the Jews."
"Did you ever see a Jew?" asked Greta.
"No, only in pictures."
"A Jew used to visit our village before you came," said Greta. "Every Friday he stood in the marketplace, selling a pig. He had a big yellow star on his coat. But there was always something wrong with the pig. We were glad when he didn’t come any more."
"I think they’re like the Nibelungen dwarfs in our play . . . sly and dangerous," said Janna. "It’s the Jews in England and America that are Wghting us. All the Aryan people would like to belong to us. And the Jews gave us Christianity, which is making us weak. Christians have to love their enemies, do good to those who hate them, and give more to those who steal from them. If you believe that, how can you be a strong nation and conquer the world? Hitler says it’s impossible to be a good German and a Christian at the same time."
"Do you believe that?" asked Greta.
"Hitler says so," said Janna.
"And why are the Slavs bad?"
"They’re Communists; the Jews gave them Communism. They say that everyone is equal, and that’s a lie. There’s a master race, that’s us, and inferior races. The inferior races must serve the master race."
"You make it sound so simple, Janna. I wonder how you do it . . . all those long chapters in Mein Kampf . . ."
"I suppose it’s because of my parents," said Janna. "They’re famous, you know. Hitler said . . ."
"Yes, you told me," Greta broke in. The only thing she disliked about Janna was the way she boasted about her parents. "Here’s my road. See you tomorrow."
Greta lived in a hut in the mountains, while Janna’s home was in the village with her nurse Erna and Erna’s mother. The celebrated Mechtild and Otto Oster, Janna’s parents, had been traveling about for over two years, entertaining troops in foreign countries. They kept writing Janna that they would get a house soon and send for her, but so far it hadn’t happened. Janna consoled herself by writing them long letters and talking about them to anyone who would listen. They were always present to her, an admiring audience for all she did.
Erna took great interest in Janna’s Youth meetings, but the old mother, who mumbled away her last days in a rocking chair beside the huge blue porcelain stove, a rosary in perpetual motion between her fingers, disapproved of the Youth movement. She said it was wicked to hold meetings on Sunday mornings so that Janna could not go to church. She warned Janna not to listen to the pagan things she was being taught. She would go on to mutter threats against a mysterious being called Antichrist and predict all manner of evil for Germany, till Erna made her be quiet.
"Don’t mind her," Erna would say contemptuously. "The old one is crazy."
Janna loved her Youth group. It was the only pleasant thing in her life. All the rest was grim. School from eight to twelve, much of the time taken up preparing bandages or doing other work for the soldiers, as well as writing letters to them. Then midday dinner, which consisted of potatoes with a flavor of meat. Then farm work in the afternoons. When there was no Youth meeting, Janna often had to work late, so that her homework suffered. The farmers forgot how young their helpers were and they piled on the work. If it had not been for the Hitler Youth, Janna didn’t think she could have stood it.
The Youth meetings were delightful—except for readings from Mein Kampf or lectures on early Germanic tribes, which were dull. But the girls also learned handicrafts, practiced on musical instruments, played games, acted in plays, held songfests, and went on hikes. In the summer there were camping trips and excursions to Youth rallies. Those were the high points. When Janna was on a camping trip with her group, she felt confident, strong, and alive. The fresh air, the lovely woods and mountains, the comradeship of the other girls: it was glorious. They all felt they mattered, their country needed them—and what a beautiful, beautiful country it was!
In the evenings, tired out, they would gather around a leaping bonfire. Then Hildegarde would tell stories: old tales grown from the soil they sat on. They heard of the great Norse gods and their fiery matings, of curses and spells, of heroes with magic powers and of their malicious foes . . . till their eyelids pricked and the fire dwindled to a few glimmering worms. Then the night wind would blow them into their tents to dream of blond gods.
Janna loved it all. She sang enthusiastically with the rest:
"Today we own Germany,
Tomorrow the world."
She was nearing the village and looked forward to Erna’s face when she saw the egg. Erna would tell her to thank Frau Kopp. Janna grinned. Frau Kopp would as soon part with her false teeth as with her eggs!
She had passed the first pastel-colored village houses with their wooden latticework, smoke curling from their chimneys. Usually Hans, the shoemaker, sat in front of his window, nodding at her, but today the window was empty. A bit farther on lived the clockmaker. His shop was full of interesting, carved wooden clocks, ticking and wheezing away, but Janna did not linger to look. She saw an ambulance standing before the little hotel. Frau Bauer, the hotelkeeper’s wife, was opening the door for two men, who were carrying out Frau Bauer’s old aunt on a stretcher. She was covered with a blanket and her face looked pale and anxious as she clutched the blanket with emaciated fingers.
"Now remember, Aunt Hedwig, it’s for your own good. They are going to make you better," said Frau Bauer.
"I know . . ." quavered Aunt Hedwig. "They have this new treatment . . . but . . ."
"You don’t want to go on having those pains," said Frau Bauer.
"But it’s so far . . ." complained Aunt Hedwig. "You won’t be able to visit me!"
"I wouldn’t be able to anyway. The hotel . . ."
"I know, I know . . ." Aunt Hedwig’s voice trailed off.
A group of villagers had gathered around the ambulance. The men carrying the stretcher had no expression on their faces. They did not talk to Aunt Hedwig or to Frau Bauer. They waited till the goodbyes were over; then they pushed the stretcher into the ambulance and slammed the doors shut. They climbed into the front seat. A stink came from the exhaust pipe as the ambulance sputtered into action, its wheels spraying slush, and growled off. The villagers watched it getting smaller and smaller till it disappeared down the hill. Frau Bauer sobbed and hurried into the hotel, her handkerchief pressed against her face.
"If she had to have new treatment, why not send her to the hospital in Freiburg? Why to Hademan? It’s so far away," said a woman.
"I think that’s decided by the government," another voice remarked.
"Hademan is for the aged and for incurables and feebleminded," said Hans, the shoemaker. "It’s a special place."
"That’s true," the postmistress chipped in. "My sister’s boy wasn’t right in the head and they took him there, but he died soon after. They said it was pneumonia."
"Grandpa went there with a sore foot, and he died of pneumonia too," said a messenger boy. "It must be drafty in that place."
"He was old; perhaps the change was too much for him."
"Maybe," said the postmistress grimly. "But has any of you ever heard of anyone who came back from Hademan alive?" There was a silence. Somewhere a radio blared:
"Adolf Hitler’s favorite flower
Is the simple edelweiss."
Janna shivered. Was something wrong? Was something dreadful going to happen to Aunt Hedwig? Gentle Aunt Hedwig, always lying on her long chair in front of the window and welcoming children with a box of homemade candy. She had been like a grandmother to Janna, telling her stories of long ago, when women wore long skirts and men had whiskers. Together they had pored over albums with stiff pages full of dried ferns and faded brown snapshots. If Aunt Hedwig had been in pain she had never shown it.
The tall youth standing beside Janna saw her distress. He belonged to the Jung Volk the older boys’ group. His name was Kurt Engel.
"Don’t listen to those gossips," he said, putting his hand on Janna’s shoulder as he walked beside her. That was a great honor.
"Do you think she’ll be all right?" asked Janna timidly, gazing up at him. Kurt looked away into the distance. The main street was sloping down steeply now, and they could see the misted valley with row upon row of snowcapped mountains melting into a haze of purple.
"Does it matter?" he asked. "Aunt Hedwig is a useless old woman of no further value to our nation. Why worry about her? Don’t you realize what is happening to our young people, our soldiers in Russia? Have you seen the list of the dead? Why don’t you worry about them?" He was gazing at the sky where the last rays of the sun slanted down like spears from a gap in the clouds.
"We’re in a crisis," he said. "Only four times in history was there a similar crisis in Europe: when the Greeks warded off the Persians, when Charles Martel defended France against Islam, when Vienna held out against the Turks, and when the Teutonic knights stopped the hordes of Genghis Khan at Liegnitz. Now, once again Europe is threatened by barbarians from the East and we Germans are called to save it." Kurt’s closely cropped head, lifted against the sky, looked stern and noble, thought Janna.
"There is a prophecy," Kurt went on, "that after the gods were killed, the horn of Heimdall, the guardian of the border line between gods and men, would sound one day to awaken the Germanic race. I think it has happened: Hitler is that horn. He has special powers and is sent to lead us to a great victory, which will be spoken of for centuries to come. We must trust him and follow him, even unto death."
"Oh, I hope not death," cried Janna.
Kurt looked down at her as if he had just discovered her. His smile lit up his face. "You’re all right, Janna," he said. "Don’t worry. Hitler is invincible, a man of destiny. With him we can do anything. See you Friday. I suppose you know I’m playing Siegfried . . ." Nodding affably at her, he strode off, tall and handsome in his leather jacket. Janna stared after him. So he was to be Siegfried! What a stunning Siegfried he would make! She began to think about her costume: a flowing white dress with silver breastplates, a girdle studded with jewels, and a helmet on her head. She also needed silver sandals and a spear. She wondered where she’d get all that, but Hildegarde would help, she always did. Janna was almost home before she remembered the egg.
"See what I’ve got for you, Erna!" she cried, bursting into the kitchen. Erna looked around. She was holding a letter.
"Janna!" she exclaimed, scarcely noticing the egg. "I’m so glad you are early! We just got this special-delivery letter. Your father and mother have found a house in Amsterdam. They want you to join them as soon as possible. You’ll be traveling with a Frau Mueller, an officer’s wife who is visiting her husband. So much to do, I don’t know where to start! But . . . what’s the matter? Don’t you want to go to your parents?"
Excerpted from The Borrowed House by Hilda Van Stockum
Copyright 1975, Used with permission from Bethlehem Books
Sample Pages from [em]The Chief Truths of the Faith[/em] by Fr. John Laux
CONTENTS
x CHAPTER VI. The Sources of Faith: Tradition
1. MEANING AND NECESSITY OF TRADITION
What Tradition Means. Scripture and Tradition of Equal Value. Necessity of Tradition. The Catholic Rule of Faith.... 50
2. THE RECORDS OF TRADITION
Traditions Recorded. Decrees of General Councils and Popes. Acts of Martyrs. Liturgical Books. Works of the Fathers. Monuments. Creeds. ......51
xi CHAPTER IV. Divine Providence
God Preserves and Governs the World. Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil. Christian Optimism. ......82
CHAPTER V. The Spirit World
The Invisible Creation. Scripture and the Spirit World. The Spirit World and Human Reason. Number and Dignity of the Angels. Good and Bad Angels. Our Guardian Angels. The Evil Spirits. Possession and Exorcism. ......85
CHAPTER VI. Origin of the Human Race
Man the Crown and Lord of the Visible Creation. Origin of the Human Body. Origin of the Human Soul. The Soul of Man Spiritual and Immortal. All Men Are Descended from One Pair. The Age of the Human Race. ......91
CHAPTER VII. Elevation and Fall of Man
1. ELEVATION OF MAN
Man an Image of God. The Supernatural Image of God in Man. Special Privileges of Our First Parents. " A Little Less than the Angels."' The Golden Age. ......96
2. THE FALL OF MAN
The Trial. The Fall. The Consequences of the Fall. ......97
CHAPTER VIII. Original Sin, the World's Tragedy
Why Adam's Sin is Called Original Sin. Scripture and Original Sin. Tradition and Original Sin. Original Sin a State, not an Act. Original Sin and Baptism. Importance of the Doctrine of Original Sin. ......100
CHAPTER IX. The Immaculate Conception
What is meant by the Immaculate Conception. Definition of the Dogma. An Argument from Reason. ......103
CHAPTER X. Promise of a Redeemer and Preparation for His Coming
Need of a Redeemer. Promise of a Redeemer. His Coming Delayed. Preparation of the Jews for His Coming. Preparation of the Pagan World. The Great Advent. ......106
CHAPTER XI. Jesus Christ-the Promised Redeemer
The "Fullness of Time." The Names of the Redeemer. Jesus Christ the Promised Messias. Prophecies and Figures Fulfilled. ......109
CHAPTER XII. Jesus Christ-True God and True Man in One Person
1. JESUS CHRIST IS TRUE GOD
The Testimony of the Church. The Testimony of the Apostles. The Testimony of Christ Himself. Christ Confirms His Testimony
CONTENTS
xii by the Holiness of His Life, by Miracles and Prophecies. He Seals His Testimony by His Death. ......114
2. JESUS CHRIST IS TRUE MAN
The Incarnation. Jesus Christ a Perfect Human Being. The Ideal of Human Beauty? ......118
3. JESUS CHRIST GOD AND MAN IN ONE PERSON .......120
4. SUMMARY OF THE CHURCH'S TEACHING ON THE INCARNATION ......121
CHAPTER XIII. Prerogatives of the Human Nature of Christ
Vision of God Face to Face. Absolute Sinlessness. Christ's Human Nature Claims Our Adoration. The Sacred Heart of Jesus. Cardinal Newman on Devotion to the Sacred Heart. ......122
CHAPTER XIV. Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer
Mary, the Mother of God. Mary's Co-operation in the Redemption. Mary's Divine Motherhood the Source of all her Graces and privileges. An Objection Answered. The Assumption. St. Joseph, the Spouse of Mary and Foster-Father of Jesus. ......126
CHAPTER XV. The Work of Redemption Accomplished
The Redemption a Great Mystery. The Savior's Sacrifice Freely Offered. Why Christ Chose Suffering and Death. The Cross, the School of Love. The Savior's Sacrifice Offered for All Mankind. The Fruits of the Redemption. The Church's Thanks to God for the Redemption. ...131
CHAPTER XVI. The Functions of the Redeemer
Christ Our High Priest, Teacher, and King. Our Duties to Christ the King. ......137
CHAPTER XVII. The Redeemer Living and Working in His Church
Christ Invests His Apostles and Their Successors with His Threefold Office. How the Church Discharges Her Threefold Office. Christ and His Priests. The Holy Ghost and the Threefold Office of the Church. The Work of the Holy Ghost in the Church and in the Hearts of the Faithful. ...142
CHAPTER XVIII. The Work of Sanctification: Sanctifying Grace
Christ Restores the Supernatural Order. What is Sanctifying Grace ? How It Is Conferred upon Men. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Can We Be Certain of Being Justified ? Cardinal Newman on the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost. ......145
CHAPTER XIX. Actual Graces
Difference between Actual and Sanctifying Grace. Efficacy of Actual Grace. Necessity of Actual Grace. God Gives Sufficient Grace to All, but not an Equal Amount. Grace and the Freedom of the Human Will. Predestination. The Little Flower on the Unequal Distribution of Grace. ......151
CONTENTS
xiii CHAPTER XX. Fruits of Sanctifying Grace: Good Works
Every Christian Bound to Perform Good Works. Good Works Meritorious only through Sanctifying Grace. The Good Works of the Sinner. What We Merit by Good Works. Good Works and Good Intention. Some Objections Answered. ......156
CHAPTER XXI. Eternal Life
The First and Last Words of the Creed. The Beatific Vision. The Bliss of Heaven not Equal in Degree for All. St. Augustine, St. Columban and St. Thomas on the Joys of Heaven. ......159
CHAPTER XXII. Purgatory
There Is a Purgatory. The Doctrine of Purgatory Most Reasonable. The Lot of the Poor Souls. St. Augustine and His Mother St. Monica. Importance of the Doctrine of Purgatory. Bishop Vaughan on Prayers for the Dead. ......162
CHAPTER XXIII. Eternal Death
Who Will Be Cast. into Hell ? The Punishment of the Damned Eternal. The Sufferings of the Damned. The Doctrine of Hell and Human Reason. ......166
CHAPTER XXIV. The Resurrection of the Dead and the General Judgment
The Particular Judgment. The End of the World. Resurrection of the Body. The Risen Body. The Last Judgment. The Purpose of the General Judgment. The Circumstances of the General Judgment: The Time, the Place, the Judge, the Judged, the Account, the Sentence. A New Heaven and a New Earth. ......170
INDEX ......177
2 FAITH AND ITS SOURCES
An Arab in the desert was once asked how he knew there is a God. "In the same way," he said, ''as I know by the footprints on the sand that a man or an animal has passed this way."
ST. ANTONY'S BOOK
The thousands of men who visited St. Antony in the desert were astonished at his wisdom and good sense. Asked where he had acquired such solid wisdom, he replied, pointing with one hand to the heavens and with the other to the earth: "There is my book; I have no other: all should study it : in considering the works of God, they will be filled with admiration and love of Him who created all things."
"How, raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of God? - or how, turning them to what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more noble and durable than the clay of which we are formed?"
INTRODUCTION. Our Life's Purpose
Our Desire for Happiness. Earthly Goods and Happiness. "God Alone Sufficeth." How We Can Possess God. Grace and Our Life's Purpose. The Study of Religion the Most Important Study. ........xv
SECTION I
FAITH AND THE SOURCES OF FAITH
CHAPTER I. Our Knowledge of God
How We Know God. What Our Reason Tells Us About God. God Reveals Himself. God's Revelations Known by Faith. God's Spokesmen and Their Credentials: Miracles and Prophecies. Who Were God's Spokesmen? Revealed Mysteries. .....1
CHAPTER II. The Church, the Guardian and Teacher of Divine Revelation
How God's Revelations Were Preserved and Handed Down. Faith, a Divine Gift to Help Us Believe God's Revelations........ 5
CHAPTER III. The Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture
A. HOLY SCRIPTURE IN GENERAL
1. Definition and Division...... 9
2. Divine Origin: Inspiration .... 10
3. Canon, or Official List, of the Sacred Books....11
4. The Languages of the Bible... 14
5. Translations of the Bible.... 15
6. Interpretation of the Scriptures....17
7. Reading of the Bible.... 17
CHAPTER IV. Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture (Continued)
B. THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
1. The Historical Books ......20
2. The Doctrinal or Poetical Books .....27
3. The Prophetical Books .....34
CHAPTER V. Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture (Continued)
C. THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
1. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles...... 42
2. The Epistles .....45
3. The Apocalypse...... 48
x CHAPTER VI. The Sources of Faith: Tradition
1. MEANING AND NECESSITY OF TRADITION
What Tradition Means. Scripture and Tradition of Equal Value. Necessity of Tradition. The Catholic Rule of Faith.... 50
2. THE RECORDS OF TRADITION
Traditions Recorded. Decrees of General Councils and Popes. Acts of Martyrs. Liturgical Books. Works of the Fathers. Monuments. Creeds. ......51
CHAPTER VII. Necessity and Qualities of Faith
1. Faith Necessary to Salvation ......55
2. Qualities of Faith. Dangers to the Faith.....56
CHAPTER VIII. Profession of Faith. Sign of the Cross. ......60
SECTION II
CHIEF TRUTHS OF FAITH
INTRODUCTION. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. ......63
CHAPTER I. Nature and Attributes of God
1. NATURE OF GOD
Who God Is. What Scripture Tells Us About God. God and Human Reason. ......66
2. ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
A. Attributes of the Divine Nature
God is Eternal, Unchangeable, Immense......68
B. Attributes of the Divine Intelligence
God is All-Knowing, All-Wise......69
C. Attributes of the Divine Will
God is Almighty, Holy, Just, Good, Merciful, Patient, Truthful,
Faithful ......70
CHAPTER II. The Most Blessed Trinity
The Blessed Trinity in the Old Testament. Christ Reveals the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity. The Church Defends the Mystery against Heretics. The Athanasian Creed. The Trinity, the Greatest of Mysteries. The Trinity and Human Reason. Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity ......73
CHAPTER III. The Creation of the World
God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. The World Not Eternal. God Created the World of His Own Free Choice for His Own Glory. The Work of the Six Days. The Work of Creation and the Week of Seven Days. Science and the Biblical Account of Creation......79
xi CHAPTER IV. Divine Providence
God Preserves and Governs the World. Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil. Christian Optimism. ......82
CHAPTER V. The Spirit World
The Invisible Creation. Scripture and the Spirit World. The Spirit World and Human Reason. Number and Dignity of the Angels. Good and Bad Angels. Our Guardian Angels. The Evil Spirits. Possession and Exorcism. ......85
CHAPTER VI. Origin of the Human Race
Man the Crown and Lord of the Visible Creation. Origin of the Human Body. Origin of the Human Soul. The Soul of Man Spiritual and Immortal. All Men Are Descended from One Pair. The Age of the Human Race. ......91
CHAPTER VII. Elevation and Fall of Man
1. ELEVATION OF MAN
Man an Image of God. The Supernatural Image of God in Man. Special Privileges of Our First Parents. " A Little Less than the Angels."' The Golden Age. ......96
2. THE FALL OF MAN
The Trial. The Fall. The Consequences of the Fall. ......97
CHAPTER VIII. Original Sin, the World's Tragedy
Why Adam's Sin is Called Original Sin. Scripture and Original Sin. Tradition and Original Sin. Original Sin a State, not an Act. Original Sin and Baptism. Importance of the Doctrine of Original Sin. ......100
CHAPTER IX. The Immaculate Conception
What is meant by the Immaculate Conception. Definition of the Dogma. An Argument from Reason. ......103
CHAPTER X. Promise of a Redeemer and Preparation for His Coming
Need of a Redeemer. Promise of a Redeemer. His Coming Delayed. Preparation of the Jews for His Coming. Preparation of the Pagan World. The Great Advent. ......106
CHAPTER XI. Jesus Christ-the Promised Redeemer
The "Fullness of Time." The Names of the Redeemer. Jesus Christ the Promised Messias. Prophecies and Figures Fulfilled. ......109
CHAPTER XII. Jesus Christ-True God and True Man in One Person
1. JESUS CHRIST IS TRUE GOD
The Testimony of the Church. The Testimony of the Apostles. The Testimony of Christ Himself. Christ Confirms His Testimony
CONTENTS
xii by the Holiness of His Life, by Miracles and Prophecies. He Seals His Testimony by His Death. ......114
2. JESUS CHRIST IS TRUE MAN
The Incarnation. Jesus Christ a Perfect Human Being. The Ideal of Human Beauty? ......118
3. JESUS CHRIST GOD AND MAN IN ONE PERSON .......120
4. SUMMARY OF THE CHURCH'S TEACHING ON THE INCARNATION ......121
CHAPTER XIII. Prerogatives of the Human Nature of Christ
Vision of God Face to Face. Absolute Sinlessness. Christ's Human Nature Claims Our Adoration. The Sacred Heart of Jesus. Cardinal Newman on Devotion to the Sacred Heart. ......122
CHAPTER XIV. Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer
Mary, the Mother of God. Mary's Co-operation in the Redemption. Mary's Divine Motherhood the Source of all her Graces and privileges. An Objection Answered. The Assumption. St. Joseph, the Spouse of Mary and Foster-Father of Jesus. ......126
CHAPTER XV. The Work of Redemption Accomplished
The Redemption a Great Mystery. The Savior's Sacrifice Freely Offered. Why Christ Chose Suffering and Death. The Cross, the School of Love. The Savior's Sacrifice Offered for All Mankind. The Fruits of the Redemption. The Church's Thanks to God for the Redemption. ...131
CHAPTER XVI. The Functions of the Redeemer
Christ Our High Priest, Teacher, and King. Our Duties to Christ the King. ......137
CHAPTER XVII. The Redeemer Living and Working in His Church
Christ Invests His Apostles and Their Successors with His Threefold Office. How the Church Discharges Her Threefold Office. Christ and His Priests. The Holy Ghost and the Threefold Office of the Church. The Work of the Holy Ghost in the Church and in the Hearts of the Faithful. ...142
CHAPTER XVIII. The Work of Sanctification: Sanctifying Grace
Christ Restores the Supernatural Order. What is Sanctifying Grace ? How It Is Conferred upon Men. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Can We Be Certain of Being Justified ? Cardinal Newman on the Indwelling of the Holy Ghost. ......145
CHAPTER XIX. Actual Graces
Difference between Actual and Sanctifying Grace. Efficacy of Actual Grace. Necessity of Actual Grace. God Gives Sufficient Grace to All, but not an Equal Amount. Grace and the Freedom of the Human Will. Predestination. The Little Flower on the Unequal Distribution of Grace. ......151
CONTENTS
xiii CHAPTER XX. Fruits of Sanctifying Grace: Good Works
Every Christian Bound to Perform Good Works. Good Works Meritorious only through Sanctifying Grace. The Good Works of the Sinner. What We Merit by Good Works. Good Works and Good Intention. Some Objections Answered. ......156
CHAPTER XXI. Eternal Life
The First and Last Words of the Creed. The Beatific Vision. The Bliss of Heaven not Equal in Degree for All. St. Augustine, St. Columban and St. Thomas on the Joys of Heaven. ......159
CHAPTER XXII. Purgatory
There Is a Purgatory. The Doctrine of Purgatory Most Reasonable. The Lot of the Poor Souls. St. Augustine and His Mother St. Monica. Importance of the Doctrine of Purgatory. Bishop Vaughan on Prayers for the Dead. ......162
CHAPTER XXIII. Eternal Death
Who Will Be Cast. into Hell ? The Punishment of the Damned Eternal. The Sufferings of the Damned. The Doctrine of Hell and Human Reason. ......166
CHAPTER XXIV. The Resurrection of the Dead and the General Judgment
The Particular Judgment. The End of the World. Resurrection of the Body. The Risen Body. The Last Judgment. The Purpose of the General Judgment. The Circumstances of the General Judgment: The Time, the Place, the Judge, the Judged, the Account, the Sentence. A New Heaven and a New Earth. ......170
INDEX ......177
SECTION I
FAITH AND THE SOURCES OF FAITH
CHAPTER I
Our Knowledge of God
'The fool said in his heart: There is no God."-Ps. 52,1.
1. How We Know God.-Our first duty is to know God. In Heaven we shall know Him face to face, but in this life He is hidden from our direct knowledge. We can, however, know something about Him by carefully noticing the things He has made, and still more by firmly believing what He has told us about Himself. In other words, we know God both by the natural light of reason and by the supernatural light of faith.
2. What Our Reason Tells Us About God.-Our reason tells us that there is one true God, the beginning and end of all things, our Creator and Lord; and that we must worship Him and do His will as it is written by Him in our hearts.
That there is an almighty God must be clear to every thinking person, for the fact is clearly proved by the whole visible world with its wise arrangement as well as by the voice of conscience.
a) No one can reasonably think that the world made itself; nor that the heavenly bodies could begin to move through space by their own power .
b) The wonderful arrangement and perfect order of the world lead us to infer that it was planned and carried out by a Being of supreme intelligence and skill.
c) All men who are in a normal state of mind know that they are bound in conscience to do certain acts and to avoid other acts, and feel that they are responsible for their conduct to a Supreme Judge who is the avenger of evil and the rewarder of good.
d) All the nations and races of men have always had an inner conviction of the existence of a Supreme Being. If there are any barbarous tribes that practice no religion, they can be such only as are degraded by vice below the normal condition of human beings. The Scripture says: ..The fool said in his heart: There is no God" ( Ps. 52,1). Those who deny the existence of God are called Atheists (Greek a-,
2 FAITH AND ITS SOURCES
not, and theos, God) .Such people usually have reasoned themselves, or have been led by others, into a state of doubt in regard to the existence of God. Their state of mind arises either from pride, or from corruption of heart, or from a misguided education, or from all three. "He Who denies the existence of God," says St. Augustine, "has some reason for wishing that God did not exist."
3. God Reveals Himself.-But God wished us to know much more about Himself-and about ourselves too-than our reason alone can tell us. From time to time, in His wisdom and goodness, He drew aside the veil that hides Him from us. He revealed Himself and His eternal decrees to us. He told us things about Himself which we could not otherwise know at all or not with certainty.
Revelation (Latin re-, back, and velum, a veil) means both the manifestation by God of His will and truths to man, and the body of truths thus manifested. It is called supernatural or divine revelation, as opposed to the natural revelation of Himself that God makes through the visible world.
4. We Know God's Revelations by Faith.-God did not reveal Himself directly to all men, or even to very many, but only to a few. These men were told by Him to make His revelations known to their fellow-men. Since God does not speak directly to each one of us, we have to take the word of those to whom He did speak for what He told them. In other words, we take God's revelations on faith. To take something on faith means to believe or hold as true what another tells us.
If we believe what a fellow-man tells us on his own authority I or on the authority of another fellow-man, we have human faith.. If we hold firmly and without doubting what someone tells us on God's authority, we have divine faith, for in that case we really believe God Himself.
5. God's Spokesmen and Their Credentials.-But how do we know when a human being tells us something on God's authority ? We ask him to present his credentials, that is, we ask him to prove to us that he is really a messenger of God, and speaks in God's name; just as we ask anyone who claims to be the ambassador or representative of an earthly potentate to show us his credentials before we believe him.
Miracles and Prophecies are the only infallible credentials which God gives His spokesmen. If God puts His miraculous power at the disposal of a human being or permits him to look into the
secrets of the future, we can say without hesitation or fear of error that such a person has been sent by God.
Miracles are extraordinary works which cannot be done by the powers of nature, but only through the omnipotence of God; for example, to raise a person from the dead.
Prophecy is a clear and definite foretelling of an event that can be known to God alone, because it depends either on the free will of God or on the free will of man. To foretell an eclipse of the sun or of the moon, is not a prophecy; but it is a prophecy to foretell the exact manner of one's own death at the hands of others.
6. Who Were God's Spokesmen?-The things which God wished us to know for our salvation He made known to us by the Patriarchs and Prophets, and above all by His Son Jesus Christ and the Apostles.
Jesus Christ claimed to be not only a messenger of God, but the true Son of God Himself. He proved His claim by the supreme holiness of His life, by numerous miracles and prophecies during His life on earth, and by the crowning miracle of His Resurrection. He guarantees for us the revelations made to the Patriarchs and Prophets, as well as those made by His own Apostles.
7. Revealed Mysteries.-Since, then, God Himself has spoken to us, all that He has told us about Himself and about our own origin and destiny must be absolutely true, for God can neither deceive nor be deceived; if He could, He would not be God. Hence, even when He tells us things which we cannot understand -mysteries-we none the less firmly believe them, because He has revealed them.
Mysteries are revealed truths that are above and beyond our reason though not contrary to it. There are many natural mysteries, such as the growth of trees and plants and the marvelous instinct of birds and animals, which we do not understand; is there any wonder that mysteries should be found among the revealed truths? The Trinity is a mystery, because we cannot understand how one God can subsist in three Persons; but it is in no way contrary to our reason: we do not believe that three gods are one God, nor that three persons are one person, which would be a contradiction.
SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND REVIEW
- What do we know about God by the light of reason ?
- What is the difference between human and divine faith ?
- What does the word "reveal" mean ? Explain its origin.
- Give five examples from the Old Testament illustrating the manner in which God revealed things to men.
- How did Moses prove to the Pharao that he was sent by God ?
- How did Our Lord prove that He is the Son of God ?
- Is the following statement true or false: "A mystery is a revealed truth [that is contrary to our reason" ?
- Copy the following texts: Heb. 1,1-2; Rom. 1,20; Acts 14,16; John 1,18. Use these texts to illustrate various points touched upon in this chapter : for example, Rom. 1,20 shows that we can know God by the light of reason.
- Reading: Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, The Question Box, pp. 41-45, on Miracles.
THE ARAB'S PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
An Arab in the desert was once asked how he knew there is a God. "In the same way," he said, ''as I know by the footprints on the sand that a man or an animal has passed this way."
ST. ANTONY'S BOOK
The thousands of men who visited St. Antony in the desert were astonished at his wisdom and good sense. Asked where he had acquired such solid wisdom, he replied, pointing with one hand to the heavens and with the other to the earth: "There is my book; I have no other: all should study it : in considering the works of God, they will be filled with admiration and love of Him who created all things."
LORD BYRON ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
"How, raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of God? - or how, turning them to what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more noble and durable than the clay of which we are formed?"
Excerpted from The Chief Truths of the Faith by Fr. John Laux
1928/1934, TAN Books and Publishers, Used with permission.
Sample Pages from [em]The Chief Truths of the Faith[/em] by Fr. John Laux
r,..,..,.. ~ '.. CONTENTS SECTION I GENERAL MORAL PAGE INTRODUCTION I I. God's Will the End of Life I 2. God's Will the Basis of Morality 2 3. Catholic Moral Science 3 CHAPTER I. Conditions of Morality A. FREE WILL I. Nature of Free Will 5 2. Free Will in the Light of Faith and Reason. 6 l 3. Hindrances to Free Will 8 I B. LAW ! I. The Natural Law 10 i 2. The Positive Divine Law 12 3. Human Positive Laws 15 C. CONSCIENCE 17 D. COLLISION OF RIGHTS AND DuTIEs... 21 CHAPTER II. Moral Good I. Elements of a Moral Act 25 2. Virtue, or Moral Good as a Habit 27 3- The Moral Virtues 28 4. Christian Perfection : 30 5. The Evangelical Counsels 32 6. The Religious State 35 CHAPTER III. Moral Evil I. The Nature of Sin 40 2. Kinds of Sin 42 3. Temptation and the Occasions of Sjn 44 4- Sin and Punishment 47 SECTION n SPECIAL MORAL INTRODUCTION 50 CHAPTER I. Our Duties to God A. THE THRI;;E THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES 53 ix l ~ ~ x CONTENTS PAGE I. Faith: a) Nature, Properties, and Duties of Faith. " 53 b) Sins Against Faith 55 c) Dangers to the Faith 58 2. Hope. 59 3. Chan.ty, or Love of God , 61 B. THE VIRTUE OF RELIGION , 63 I. Direct Acts of Religion: a) Prayer. , ...66 b) Liturgical Prayer and Sacrifice. The Lord's Day. 72 c) Oaths and Vows 75 d) Sins Against the Virtue of Religion. 77 e) Christian Science and Spiritism 79 2. Indirect Acts of Religion: or the Veneration of the Saints: a) Veneration of the Saints 82 b) Invocation of the Saints 84 c) Special Veneration of the Mother of God. 86 d) The Veneration of Images 88 e) The Veneration of Relics 89 CHAPTER II. Duties Towards Ourselves I. Duties in Regard to the Intellect and the Will. 98 2. The Dignity of the Human Body 99 A. Positive Duties Towards the Body: a) Food and Clothing 100 b) Recreation and Amusement 103 B. Negative Duties Towards the Body: a) Suicide. 104 b) Indirect Suicide and Risking One's Life 105 c) Cremation 106 3. Chastity and Its Violation 107 4. Duties Concerning Material Goods : a) The Right of Private Property 112 b) Capitalism and Socialism 115 CHAPTER III. Our Duties Towards Our Neighbor I. Nature and Properties of Christian Charity. 122 2. Well-Ordered Charity 123 3. Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. 126 4. Love Your Enemies 129 5. Violations of Charity 131 6. Thou Shalt Not Kill 133 7. Thou Shalt Not Steal 136 8. The Duty of Truthfulness and Fidelity. 138 9 Our Neighbor's Reputation 140 CONTENTS xi PAGE CHAPTER IV. Our Duties as Members of the Family, the State, and the Church I. The Christian Family ; 147 2. Masters and Servants; Workmen and Employers 150 3. The Rights and Duties of Citizens 151 4. Sancta Mater Ecclesia 153 5. The Christian Ideal 155 INDEX " , , 161 ! I. -, .c SECTION I GENERAL MORAL --- Introdu~tion I. GoD'S WILL THE END OF LIFE What Is the Meaning and Purpose of Life?-This is the all- important question for every human being; for what will ~ll the world beside profit us if we miss the whole purpose of our existence, if we fail to attain our true destiny ? I. Both reason and revelation tell us that God is the author and the last end of our life. Being creatures of God, the work of His hands, we belong to him absolutely. "In Him we live and move and are" (Acts 17,28). The last end of man can be nothing else but God from whom he came, "for of Him, and by Him, and in Him are all things (Rom. 11,36). Hence the pur- pose of our life is to do the will of God, as it is written in indelible characters in every human heart, as it was proclaimed on Sinai and on the Mount of the Beatitudes, as it is manifested in the duties of our state and calling, and as it is made known to us by those who share in God's authority here on earth in the family, the State and the Church. But our submission to God's holy will must not be founded on servile fear; it must be a voluntary, loving and generous self- surrender to His will. Our service must be the service of a soldier who unhesitatingly carries out the commands of his general; but also the service of a child that sees in God his loving Father and his greatest benefactor . 2. This ideal of perfect harmony between the human will and the divine will is realized in the life of the God-M an J esus Christ. He came on earth, as He Himself tells us, simply to glorify His Father and to do His will. He speaks of His Father's will as His food and drink, as the atmosphere He breathes, as His unfailing consolation. His whole life from the Crib to the Cross was one act of obedience to His heavenly Father. In His life and death He fulfilled most perfectly what the Angels I -~- ~;:r~_'r"i SECTION I GENERAL MORAL Introduc;tion I. GoD.S WILL THE END OF LIFE What 18 the Meaning and Purpo8e of Life?-This is the all- important question for every human being; for what will all the world beside profit us if we miss the whole purpose 0'� our existence, if we fail to attain our true destiny ? I. Both reason and revelation tell us that God is the author and the last end of our life. Being creatures of God, the work of His hands, we belong to him absolutely. "In Him we live and move and are" (Acts 17,28). The last end of man can be nothing else but God �rom whom he came, "�or of Him, and by Him, and in Him are all things (Rom. 11,36). Hence the pur- pose of our life is to do the will of God, as it is written in indelible characters in every human heart, as it was proclaimed on Sinai and on the Mount of the Beatitudes, as it is manifested in the duties of our state and calling, and as it is made known to us by those who share in God's authority here on earth in the �amily, the State and the Church. But our submission to God's holy will must not be �ounded on servile �ear; it must be a voluntary, loving and generous sel�- surrender to His will. Our service must be the service of a soldier who unhesitatingly carries out the commands of his general; but also the service of a child that sees in God his loving Father and his greatest bene�actor . 2. This ideal of perfect harmony between the human will and the divine will is realized in the li�e of the God-M an J esus Christ. He came on earth, as He Himself tells us, simply to glori�y His Father and to do His will. He speaks of His Father's will as His food and drink, as the atmosphere He breathes, as His unfailing consolation. His whole life from the Crib to the Cross was one act of obedience to His heavenly Father. In His li�e and death He fulfilled most perfectly what the Angels I ~ ~i;~ - 2 GENERAL MORAL proclaimed in their Christmas message: "Glory to God in the highest." Hence He could say on the eve of His Passion: "I have glorified Thee on the earth, I have finished My work Thou gavest me to do; and now glorify Thou Me, O Father, with Thyself" (John 17,4). Christ is, therefore, the bright and shining example for all who seek to attain their life's purpose in its "height and breadth and depth", and thus to lay the foundation of their own perfect happiness; for true happiness can be found only in seeking God's honor and glory by doing His will. "God asks no service from us," says a wise and holy man, "which does not promote our highest welfare, and no glory in which we, His creatures, do not share. God seeks His glory in our happiness." Hence the simple words which we find on the first page of the little Catechism express the highest wisdom: "We are in this world to do the will of God and thereby to gain everlasting happiness in H eaven." 2. GOD'S WILL THE BASIS OF MORALITY I. To give glory to God by doing His holy will: this is the end, the purpose of human life. All our actions should be directed to this end. Every action that brings us nearer to this end is a i good action; every action, on the other hand, that leads us away [ from this end, is a bad action. Because "only one is good, God" , (Mark 10,18), all morality, all moral goodness is based on Him; only that is good which corresponds to His holy will. But God is also the Creator, the Lord of heaven and earth, and therefore He alone can impose His will on mankind, from Him alone comes all moral obligation. 2. That our actions are morally good or morally bad according as they agree or disagree with the divine will, is clearly taught in Scripture. "N ot everyone that saith to Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doth the will of My Father who is in Heaven, he shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matt. 7,21 ) ."If thou wilt enter into life," Christ said to the rich young man, "keep the commandments" (Matt. 19,17). For the Son of God Himself the will of God is the rule of life and action. "Did you not know that I must be about My I. Father's business ?" he said to His Mother, who had gently up- i braided Him for remaining behind in the temple. -~~ INTRODUCTION 3 3. For the Apostles, too, the �ulfillment of the divine will is the only rule of action. "Be not con�ormed to this world," St. Paul tells the Romans, "but be ye trans�ormed by the renewing of your mind, so that ye may find out what is the will of. Go~, what is good, well-pleasing and per�ect" (Rom. 1;2,2) .It IS his earnest and unceasing prayer that his converts "may be filled with the knowledge of the will of God, that they may walk worthy of God in all things" (Col. I,9-1O). St. John calls those liars who say they know God, but do not keep Hi& commandments. "But he that keepeth His word, in him in very deed the love of God is perfected" (I John 2,5). THE CALL OF CHRIST "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." (Matt. 16, 24) 3. CATHOLIC MORAL SCIENCE That part of the science of religion which teaches us how to direct our actions to God, our last end, is called Catholic Ethics or Catlwlic M oral Science. It is based on Christian principles and draws its conclusions �rom divine revelation. As a part of the Christian doctrine-the doctrine of the things we must do, doctrina faciendorwn-it is confided to the keeping of the Catholic Church. Hence the Catholic Church can, in virtue of the divine assistance granted to her, in�allibly define what is good and what is bad, what is permitted and what is �orbidden. k -~~ ;,~,,?:-:::c~~~~~ 4 GENERAL MORAL The general principles of morality are common to all men; but Christian moral differs essentially from purely natural moral : a) Christian moral directs man to a supernatural end, which can be at- tained only by supernatural means, based upon faith and grace ; b) It holds out motives for right conduct of which unaided reason is either totally ignorant or has only an imperfect knowledge ; c) It establishes most of its conclusions on divine revelation, while natural moral derives its principles from the native power of reason alone ; d) It offers means of which natural moral knows nothing. Hence Catholic moral is incomparably more sublime, far-reaching, certain, and effectual than merely natural morality. The history of mankind shows that "morality lives by faith and dies by infidelity." "What Greek culture did for the intellect, Christ did for morality: the human race owes its moral power to Him" (CHAMB~IN). Catholic Moral is divided into "General" and "Special". General Moral treats of the conditions of morality and of moral good and moral evil; Special Moral applies the general principles of morality to the various circumstances of individual and social life. The conditions of morality are freedom of will, law, and conscience: fr?edom is the basis, law is the external, and conscience the internal norm of morality. SUGGES I. What is the purpose of our life ? Briefly explain your answer. How does the Our Father answer this question ? 2. What kind of submission to God's will should we cultivate ? Are we children or slaves of God? 3. Was ever a human will in perfect harmony with the divine will ? Would not such a Person be a perfect model for us ? Show how the God-Man Jesus Christ is such a model. + When are our actions good ? When are they bad ? Prove your answers from Holy Scripture. S. Wha,t is the science called which teaches us how to direct our actions to God? 6. How is CiN"istian Moral divided ? What does each division treat of ? 7. What are the conditions of morality ? If you had no free will, could you perform a moral act; that is, an act for which you could be held responsible ? 8. Reading: I mitation of Christ, Bk. III, ch. 9, "That all things must be referred to God as the final end."
Excerpted from The Chief Truths of the Faith by Fr. John Laux
Used with permission.
Sample Pages from [em]The Chief Truths of the Faith[/em] by Fr. John Laux
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. Our Life's Purpose
Our Desire for Happiness. Earthly Goods and Happiness. "God Alone Sufficeth." How We Can Possess God. Grace and Our Life's Purpose. The Study of Religion the Most Important Study. ........xv
SECTION I
FAITH AND THE SOURCES OF FAITH
CHAPTER I. Our Knowledge of God
How We Know God. What Our Reason Tells Us About God. God Reveals Himself. God's Revelations Known by Faith. God's Spokesmen and Their Credentials: Miracles and Prophecies. Who Were God's Spokesmen? Revealed Mysteries. .....I
CHAPTER II. The Church, the Guardian and Teacher of Divine Revelation
How God's Revelations Were Preserved and Handed Down. Faith, a Divine Gift to Help Us Believe God's Revelations........ 5
CHAPTER III. The Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture
A. HOLY SCRIPTURE IN GENERAL
I. Definition and Division...... 9
2.Divine Origin: Inspiration .... 10
3. Canon, or Official List, of the Sacred Books.... II
4. The Languages of the Bible... I4
5. Translations of the Bible.... I5
6. Interpretation of the Scriptures.... I7
7. Reading of the Bible.... I7
CHAPTER IV. Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture (Continued)
i B. THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT i I. The Historical Books 20 I 2. The Doctrinal or Poetical Books 27 i 3. The Prophetical Books 34 I iCHAPTER v. Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture (Continued) C. THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT I. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. 42 2. The Epistles 45 3. The Apocalypse. 48 \ ix -- ' f", x CONTENTS !' CHAPTER VI. The SoUl"ces of Faith: Tradition I. MEANING AND NECESSITY OF TRADITION What Tradition Means. Scripture and Tradition of Equal Value. Necessity of Tradition. The Catholic Rule of Faith. 50 I2. THE RECORDS OF TRADITION Traditions Recorded. Decrees of General Councils and Popes. Acts ~re~::tyr.s: .~~~~~~i~~~ .~.~~~~.. ~~r.~s. .~f. ~~~ .~~t~.e.r~: .~~~~~~~t.s: 5I 1 CHAPTER VII. Necessity and Qualities of Faith I. Faith Necessary to Salvation 55 2. Qualities of Faith. Dangers to the Faith. 56 CHAPTER VIII. Profession of Faith. Sign of the Cross. 60 SECTION n CHIEF TRUTHS OF FAITH INTRODUCTION. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. 63 ICHAPTER I. NatUl"e and Attributes of God I. NATURE OF GOD Who God Is. What Scripture Tells Us About God. God and Human Reason. 66 2. ATTRIBUTES OF GOD A. Attributes of the Divine Nature God is Eternal, Unchangeable, Immense. 68 B. Attributes of the Divi,~e Intelligence God is A1I-Knowing, A1I-Wise. 69 C. Attributes of the Divine WiU God is Almighty, Holy, Just, Good, Merciful, Patient, Truthful, Faithful. 70 CHAPTER II. The Most Blessed Trinity The Blessed Trinity in the Old Testament. Christ Reveals the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity. The Church Defends the Mystery against Heretics. The Athanasian Creed. The Trinity, the Greatest of Mys- teries. The Trinity and Human Reason. Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity. 73 CHAPTER III. The Creation of the World God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. The World Not Eternal. God Created the World of His Own Free Choice for His Own Glory. The Work of the Six Days. The Work of Creation and the Week of Seven Days. Science and the Biblical Account of Creation. 79 I f I. CONTENTS xi CHAPTER IV. Divine Providence God Preserves and Governs the World. Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil. Christian Optimism. 82 CHAPTER V \ The Spirit World The Invisible Creation. Scripture and the Spirit World. The Spirit World and Human Reason. Number and Dignity of the Angels. Good and Bad Angels. Our Guardian Angels. The Evil Spirits. Possession and Exorcism. 85 CHAPTER VI. Origin of the Human Race Man the Crown and Lord of the Visible Creation. Origin of the Human Body. Origin of the Human Soul. The Soulof Man Spiritual and Immortal. All Men Are Descended from One Pair. The Age of the Human Race. ,..,"', 91 CHAPTER VII. Elevation and Fall of Man 1. ELEVATION OF MAN Man an Image of God. The Supernatural Image of God in Man. Special Privileges of Our First Parents. " A Little Less than the Angels."' The Golden Age. 96 :2. THE FALL OF MAN The Trial. The Fall. The Consequences of the Fall. 97 CHAPTER VIII. Original Sin, the World's Tragedy Why Adam's Sin is Called Original Sin. Scripture and Original Sin. Tradition and Original Sin. Original Sin a State, not an Act. Original Sin and Baptism. Importance of the Doctrine of Original Sin. 100 CHAPTER IX. The Immaculate Conception What is meant by the Immaculate Conception. Definition of the Dogma. An Argument from Reason. 103 CHAPTER X. Promise of a Redeemer and Preparation for His Coming Need of a Redeemer. Promise of a Redeemer. His Coming Delayed. Preparation of the Jews for His Coming. Preparation of the Pagan World. The Great Advent. 106 CHAPTER XI. Jesus Christ-the Promised Redeemer The "Fullness of Time." The Names of the Redeemer. Jesus Christ the Promised Messias. Prophecies and Figures Fulfilled. 109 CHAPTER XII. Jesus Christ-True God and True Man in One Person I. JESUS CHRIST Is TRUE GOD The Testimony of the Church. The Testimony of the Apostles. The Testimony of Christ Himself. Christ Confirms His Testimony - xii CONTENTS by the Holiness of His Life, by Miracles and Prophecies. He Seals His Testimony by His Death. 114 2. JESUS CHRIST Is TRUE MAN The Incarnation. J esus Christ a Perfect Human Being. The Ideal of Human Beauty? 118 3. JESUS CHRIST GoD AND MAN IN ONE PERSON .120 4. SUMMARY OF THE CHURCH'S TEACHING ON THE INCARNATI()1t 121 CHAPTER XIII. Prerogatives of the Human Nature of Christ Vision of God Face to Face. Absolute Sinlessness. Christ's Human Nature Claims Our Adoration. The Sacred Heart of Jesus. Cardinal Newman on Devotion to the Sacred Heart; 122 CHAPTER XIV. Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer Mary, the Mother of God. Mary's Co-operation in the Redemption. Mary's Divine Motherhood the Source of all her Graces and privi- leges. An Objection Answered. The Assumption. St. Joseph, the Spouse of Mary and Foster-Father of Jesus. 126 CHAPTER XV. The Work of Redemption Accomplished The Redemption a Great Mystery. The Savior's Sacrifice Freely Of- fered. Why Christ Chose Suffering and Death. The Cross, the School of Love. The Savior's Sacrifice Offered for All Mankind. The Fruits of the Redemption. The Church's Thanks to God for the Redemption. .131 CHAPTER XVI. The Functions of the Redeemer Christ Our High Priest, Teacher, and King. Our Duties to Christ the King. ; 137 CHAPTER XVII. The Redeemer Living and Working in ms Church Christ Invests His Apostles and Their Successors with His Threefold Office. How the Church Discharges Her Threefold Office. Christ and His Priests. The Holy Ghost and the Threefold Office of the Church. The Work of the Holy Ghost in the Church and in the Hearts of the Faithful. 142 CHAPTER XVIII. The Work of Sanctification: Sanctifying Grace Christ Restores the Supernatural Order. What is Sanctifying Grace ? How It Is Conferred upon Men. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Can We Be Certain of Being Justified ? Cardinal Newman on the In- dwelling of the Holy Ghost. 145 CHAPTER XIX. Actual Graces Difference between Actual and Sanctifying Grace. Efficacy of Actual Grace. Necessity of Actual Grace. God Gives Sufficient Grace to All, but not an Equal Amount. Grace and the Freedom of the Human Will. Predestination. The Little Flower on the U nequal Distribution of Grace. 151 ~f~ r' CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER XX. Fruits of Sanctifying Grace: Good Works Every Christian Bound to Perform Good Works. Good Works Meri- torious only through Sanctifying Grace. The Good Works of the Sinner. What We Merit by Good Works. Good Works and Good In- tention. Some Objections Answered. 156 CHAPTER XXI. Eternal Life The First and Last Words of the Creed. The Beatific Vision. The Bliss of Heaven not Equal in Degree for All. St. Augustine, St. Co- lumban and St. Thomas on the Joys of Heaven. 159 CHAPTER XXII. Purgatory There Is a Purgatory. The Doctrine of Purgatory Most Reasonable. The Lot of the Poor Souls. St. Augustine and His Mother St. Monica. Importance of the Doctrine of Purgatory. Bishop Vaughan on Prayers for the Dead. 162 CHAPTER XXIII. Eternal Death Who Will Be Cast. into Hell ? The Punishment of the Damned Eternal. The Sufferings of the Damned. The Doctrine of Hell and Human Reason. 166 CHAPTER XXIV. The Resurrection of the Dead and the General Judgment The Particular Judgment. The End of the World. Resurrection of the Body. The Risen Body. The Last Judgment. The Purpose of the Gen- eral Judgment. The Circumstances of the General Judgment: The Time, the Place, the Judge, the Judged, the Account, the Sentence. A New Heaven and a New Earth. 170 INDEX 177 ~~ ~ ;;! SECTION I FAIm AND THE SOURCES OF FAIm CHAPTER I Our Knowledge of God .'The foot said in his heart: There is no God."-Ps. 52,1. 1. How We Know God.-Our first duty is to know God. In Heaven we shall know Him face to face, but in this life He is hidden from our direct knowledge. We can, however, know something about Him by carefully noticing the things He has made, and still more by firmly believing what He has told us about Himself. In other words, we know God both by the natural light t of reason and by the supernatural light of faith. t 2. What Our Reason Tells Us About God.-Our reason tells us that there is one true God, the beginning and end of all things, our Creator and Lord; and that we must worship Him and do His will as it is written by Him in our hearts. ; That there is an almighty God must be clear to every thinking person, for the fact is clearly proved by the whole visible world with its wise arrangement as well as by the voice of conscience. a) No one can reasonably think that the world made itself; nor that the heavenly bodies could begin to move through space by their own power . b) The wonderful arrangement and perfect order of the world lead us to infer that it was planned and carried out by a Being of supreme intelligence and skill. c) All men who are in a normal state of mind know that they are bound in conscience to do certain acts and to avoid other acts, and feel that they are responsible for their conduct to a Supreme Judge who is the avenger of !;. evil and the rewarder of good. ' d) All the nations and races of men have always had an inner conviction I. of the existence of a Supreme Being. If there are any barbarous tribes that ' I' practice no religion, they can be such only as are degraded by vice below the normal condition of human beings. ' The Scripture says: ..The fool said in his heart: There is no God" ( Ps. 52,1). Those who deny the existence of God are called Atheists (Greek a-, I :;~ :,~ - 2 FAITH AND ITS SOURCES not, and theos, God) .Such people usually have reasoned themselves, or have been led by others, into a state of doubt in regard to the existence of God. Their state of mind arises either �rom pride, or �rom corruption of heart, or �rom a misguided education, or �rom all three. "He Who denies the existence of God," says St. Augustine, "has some reason �or wishing i that God did not exist." ~ 3. God Reveals Himsel�.-But God wished us to know much more about Himself-and about ourselves too-than our reason alone can tell us. From time to time, in His wisdom and goodness, He drew aside the veil that hides Him from us. He revealed Himself and His eternal decrees to us. He told us things about Himself which we could not otherwise know at all or not with r certainty. Revelation (Latin re-, back, and velum, a veil) means both the mani�esta- tion by God of His will and truths to man, and the body of truths thus mani�ested. It is called supernatural or divine revelation, as opposed to the natural revelation of Himsel� that God makes through the visible world. 4. We Know God's Revelations by Faith.-God did not reveal Himself directly to all men, or even to very many, but only to a few. These men were told by Him to make His revelations known to their fellow-men. Since God does not speak directly to each one of us, we have to take the word of those to whom He did speak for what He told them. In other words, we take God's revelations on faith. To take something on faith means to believe or hold as true what another tells us. I If we believe what a fellow-man tells us on his own authority I or on the authority of another fellow-man, we have human fait If.. [ If we hold firmly and without doubting what someone tells us on t iGod's authority, we have divine faith, for in that case we really believe God Himself. 5. God's Spokesmen and Their Credentials.-But how do we know when a human being tells us something on God's authority ? We ask him to present his credentials, that is, we ask him to prove to us that he is really a messenger of God, and speaks in God's name; just as we ask anyone who claims to be the ambassador or representative of an earthly potentate to show us his credentials before we believe him. Miracles and Prophecies are the only infallible credentials which God gives His spokesmen. I f God puts His miraculous power at the disposal of a human being or permits him to look into the r- OUR KNOWLEDGE O:i" GOD 3 , secrets of the future, we can say without hesitation or fear of error that such a person has been sent by God. .Miracles are extraordinary works which cannot be done by the powers ! of nature, but only through the omnipotence of God; for example, to raise a person from the dead. Prophecy is a clear and definite foretelling of an event that can be known to God alone, because it depends either on the free will of God or on the free will of man. To foretell an eclipse of the sun or of the moon, is not a prophecy; but it is a prophecy to foretell the exact manner of one's own death at the hands of others. 6. Who Were God's Spokesmen?-The things which God wished us to know for our salvation He made known to us by the Patriarchs and ProPhets, and above all by His Son J esus Christ and the Apostles. Jesus Christ claimed to be not only a messenger of God, but the true Son of God Himself. He proved His claim by the supreme holiness of His life, by numerous miracles and prophecies during His life on earth, and by the crowning miracle of His Resurrection. He guarantees for us the revelations made to the Patriarchs and Prophets, as well as those made by His own Apostles. 7. Revealed Mysteries.-Since, then, God Himself has spoken to us, all that He has told us about Himself and about our own origin and destiny must be absolutely true, for God can neither deceive nor be deceived; if He could, He would not be God. Hence, even when He tells us things which we cannot understand -11tysteries-we none the less firmly believe them, because He has revealed them. Mysteries are revealed truths that are above and beyond our reason though not contrary to it. There are many natural mysteries, such as the growth of trees and plants and the marvelous instinct of birds and animals, which we do not understand; is there any wonder that mysteries should be found among the revealed truths? The Trinity is a mystery, because we cannot understand how one God can subsist in three Persons; but it is in no way contrary to our reason: we do not believe that three gods are one God, nor that three persons are one person, which would be a contradiction. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND REVIEW I. What do we know about God by the light of reason ? 2. What is the difference between human and divine faith ? 3. What does the word "reveal" mean ? Explain its origin. 4. Give five examples from the Old Testament illustrating the manner in which God revealed things to men. -- 4 FAITH AND ITS SOURCES 5- How did Moses prove to the Pharao that he was sent by God ? 6. How did Our Lord prove that He is the Son of God ? 7. Is the following statement true or false: "A mystery is a revealed truth [that is contrary to our reason" ? 8. Copy the following texts: Heb. 1,1-2; Rom. 1,20; Acts 14,16; John 1,18. IUse these texts to illustrate various points touched upon in this chapter : for example, Rom. 1,20 shows that we can know God by the light of reason. ! 9. Reading: Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, The Question Box, pp. 41-45, on r Miracles. THE ARAB'S PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD An Arab in the desert was once asked how he knew there is a God. "In the same way," he said, ''as I know by the footprints on the sand that a man or an animal has passed this way." ST. ANTONY'S BOOK The thousands of men who visited St. Antony in the desert were astonished at his wisdom and good sense. Asked where he had acquired such solid wisdom, he replied, pointing with one hand to the heavens and with the other to the earth: "There is my book; I have no other: all should study it : in considering the works of God, they will be filled with admiration and love of Him who created all things." LORD BYRON ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD "How, raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of God ?-or how, turning them to what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more noble and durable than the clay of which we are formed ?"
INTRODUCTION. Our Life's Purpose
Our Desire for Happiness. Earthly Goods and Happiness. "God Alone Sufficeth." How We Can Possess God. Grace and Our Life's Purpose. The Study of Religion the Most Important Study. ........xv
SECTION I
FAITH AND THE SOURCES OF FAITH
CHAPTER I. Our Knowledge of God
How We Know God. What Our Reason Tells Us About God. God Reveals Himself. God's Revelations Known by Faith. God's Spokesmen and Their Credentials: Miracles and Prophecies. Who Were God's Spokesmen? Revealed Mysteries. .....I
CHAPTER II. The Church, the Guardian and Teacher of Divine Revelation
How God's Revelations Were Preserved and Handed Down. Faith, a Divine Gift to Help Us Believe God's Revelations........ 5
CHAPTER III. The Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture
A. HOLY SCRIPTURE IN GENERAL
I. Definition and Division...... 9
2.Divine Origin: Inspiration .... 10
3. Canon, or Official List, of the Sacred Books.... II
4. The Languages of the Bible... I4
5. Translations of the Bible.... I5
6. Interpretation of the Scriptures.... I7
7. Reading of the Bible.... I7
CHAPTER IV. Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture (Continued)
i B. THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT i I. The Historical Books 20 I 2. The Doctrinal or Poetical Books 27 i 3. The Prophetical Books 34 I iCHAPTER v. Sources of Faith: Holy Scripture (Continued) C. THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT I. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. 42 2. The Epistles 45 3. The Apocalypse. 48 \ ix -- ' f", x CONTENTS !' CHAPTER VI. The SoUl"ces of Faith: Tradition I. MEANING AND NECESSITY OF TRADITION What Tradition Means. Scripture and Tradition of Equal Value. Necessity of Tradition. The Catholic Rule of Faith. 50 I2. THE RECORDS OF TRADITION Traditions Recorded. Decrees of General Councils and Popes. Acts ~re~::tyr.s: .~~~~~~i~~~ .~.~~~~.. ~~r.~s. .~f. ~~~ .~~t~.e.r~: .~~~~~~~t.s: 5I 1 CHAPTER VII. Necessity and Qualities of Faith I. Faith Necessary to Salvation 55 2. Qualities of Faith. Dangers to the Faith. 56 CHAPTER VIII. Profession of Faith. Sign of the Cross. 60 SECTION n CHIEF TRUTHS OF FAITH INTRODUCTION. The Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. 63 ICHAPTER I. NatUl"e and Attributes of God I. NATURE OF GOD Who God Is. What Scripture Tells Us About God. God and Human Reason. 66 2. ATTRIBUTES OF GOD A. Attributes of the Divine Nature God is Eternal, Unchangeable, Immense. 68 B. Attributes of the Divi,~e Intelligence God is A1I-Knowing, A1I-Wise. 69 C. Attributes of the Divine WiU God is Almighty, Holy, Just, Good, Merciful, Patient, Truthful, Faithful. 70 CHAPTER II. The Most Blessed Trinity The Blessed Trinity in the Old Testament. Christ Reveals the Mystery of the Blessed Trinity. The Church Defends the Mystery against Heretics. The Athanasian Creed. The Trinity, the Greatest of Mys- teries. The Trinity and Human Reason. Importance of the Doctrine of the Trinity. 73 CHAPTER III. The Creation of the World God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth. The World Not Eternal. God Created the World of His Own Free Choice for His Own Glory. The Work of the Six Days. The Work of Creation and the Week of Seven Days. Science and the Biblical Account of Creation. 79 I f I. CONTENTS xi CHAPTER IV. Divine Providence God Preserves and Governs the World. Divine Providence and the Problem of Evil. Christian Optimism. 82 CHAPTER V \ The Spirit World The Invisible Creation. Scripture and the Spirit World. The Spirit World and Human Reason. Number and Dignity of the Angels. Good and Bad Angels. Our Guardian Angels. The Evil Spirits. Possession and Exorcism. 85 CHAPTER VI. Origin of the Human Race Man the Crown and Lord of the Visible Creation. Origin of the Human Body. Origin of the Human Soul. The Soulof Man Spiritual and Immortal. All Men Are Descended from One Pair. The Age of the Human Race. ,..,"', 91 CHAPTER VII. Elevation and Fall of Man 1. ELEVATION OF MAN Man an Image of God. The Supernatural Image of God in Man. Special Privileges of Our First Parents. " A Little Less than the Angels."' The Golden Age. 96 :2. THE FALL OF MAN The Trial. The Fall. The Consequences of the Fall. 97 CHAPTER VIII. Original Sin, the World's Tragedy Why Adam's Sin is Called Original Sin. Scripture and Original Sin. Tradition and Original Sin. Original Sin a State, not an Act. Original Sin and Baptism. Importance of the Doctrine of Original Sin. 100 CHAPTER IX. The Immaculate Conception What is meant by the Immaculate Conception. Definition of the Dogma. An Argument from Reason. 103 CHAPTER X. Promise of a Redeemer and Preparation for His Coming Need of a Redeemer. Promise of a Redeemer. His Coming Delayed. Preparation of the Jews for His Coming. Preparation of the Pagan World. The Great Advent. 106 CHAPTER XI. Jesus Christ-the Promised Redeemer The "Fullness of Time." The Names of the Redeemer. Jesus Christ the Promised Messias. Prophecies and Figures Fulfilled. 109 CHAPTER XII. Jesus Christ-True God and True Man in One Person I. JESUS CHRIST Is TRUE GOD The Testimony of the Church. The Testimony of the Apostles. The Testimony of Christ Himself. Christ Confirms His Testimony - xii CONTENTS by the Holiness of His Life, by Miracles and Prophecies. He Seals His Testimony by His Death. 114 2. JESUS CHRIST Is TRUE MAN The Incarnation. J esus Christ a Perfect Human Being. The Ideal of Human Beauty? 118 3. JESUS CHRIST GoD AND MAN IN ONE PERSON .120 4. SUMMARY OF THE CHURCH'S TEACHING ON THE INCARNATI()1t 121 CHAPTER XIII. Prerogatives of the Human Nature of Christ Vision of God Face to Face. Absolute Sinlessness. Christ's Human Nature Claims Our Adoration. The Sacred Heart of Jesus. Cardinal Newman on Devotion to the Sacred Heart; 122 CHAPTER XIV. Mary, the Mother of the Redeemer Mary, the Mother of God. Mary's Co-operation in the Redemption. Mary's Divine Motherhood the Source of all her Graces and privi- leges. An Objection Answered. The Assumption. St. Joseph, the Spouse of Mary and Foster-Father of Jesus. 126 CHAPTER XV. The Work of Redemption Accomplished The Redemption a Great Mystery. The Savior's Sacrifice Freely Of- fered. Why Christ Chose Suffering and Death. The Cross, the School of Love. The Savior's Sacrifice Offered for All Mankind. The Fruits of the Redemption. The Church's Thanks to God for the Redemption. .131 CHAPTER XVI. The Functions of the Redeemer Christ Our High Priest, Teacher, and King. Our Duties to Christ the King. ; 137 CHAPTER XVII. The Redeemer Living and Working in ms Church Christ Invests His Apostles and Their Successors with His Threefold Office. How the Church Discharges Her Threefold Office. Christ and His Priests. The Holy Ghost and the Threefold Office of the Church. The Work of the Holy Ghost in the Church and in the Hearts of the Faithful. 142 CHAPTER XVIII. The Work of Sanctification: Sanctifying Grace Christ Restores the Supernatural Order. What is Sanctifying Grace ? How It Is Conferred upon Men. The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Can We Be Certain of Being Justified ? Cardinal Newman on the In- dwelling of the Holy Ghost. 145 CHAPTER XIX. Actual Graces Difference between Actual and Sanctifying Grace. Efficacy of Actual Grace. Necessity of Actual Grace. God Gives Sufficient Grace to All, but not an Equal Amount. Grace and the Freedom of the Human Will. Predestination. The Little Flower on the U nequal Distribution of Grace. 151 ~f~ r' CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER XX. Fruits of Sanctifying Grace: Good Works Every Christian Bound to Perform Good Works. Good Works Meri- torious only through Sanctifying Grace. The Good Works of the Sinner. What We Merit by Good Works. Good Works and Good In- tention. Some Objections Answered. 156 CHAPTER XXI. Eternal Life The First and Last Words of the Creed. The Beatific Vision. The Bliss of Heaven not Equal in Degree for All. St. Augustine, St. Co- lumban and St. Thomas on the Joys of Heaven. 159 CHAPTER XXII. Purgatory There Is a Purgatory. The Doctrine of Purgatory Most Reasonable. The Lot of the Poor Souls. St. Augustine and His Mother St. Monica. Importance of the Doctrine of Purgatory. Bishop Vaughan on Prayers for the Dead. 162 CHAPTER XXIII. Eternal Death Who Will Be Cast. into Hell ? The Punishment of the Damned Eternal. The Sufferings of the Damned. The Doctrine of Hell and Human Reason. 166 CHAPTER XXIV. The Resurrection of the Dead and the General Judgment The Particular Judgment. The End of the World. Resurrection of the Body. The Risen Body. The Last Judgment. The Purpose of the Gen- eral Judgment. The Circumstances of the General Judgment: The Time, the Place, the Judge, the Judged, the Account, the Sentence. A New Heaven and a New Earth. 170 INDEX 177 ~~ ~ ;;! SECTION I FAIm AND THE SOURCES OF FAIm CHAPTER I Our Knowledge of God .'The foot said in his heart: There is no God."-Ps. 52,1. 1. How We Know God.-Our first duty is to know God. In Heaven we shall know Him face to face, but in this life He is hidden from our direct knowledge. We can, however, know something about Him by carefully noticing the things He has made, and still more by firmly believing what He has told us about Himself. In other words, we know God both by the natural light t of reason and by the supernatural light of faith. t 2. What Our Reason Tells Us About God.-Our reason tells us that there is one true God, the beginning and end of all things, our Creator and Lord; and that we must worship Him and do His will as it is written by Him in our hearts. ; That there is an almighty God must be clear to every thinking person, for the fact is clearly proved by the whole visible world with its wise arrangement as well as by the voice of conscience. a) No one can reasonably think that the world made itself; nor that the heavenly bodies could begin to move through space by their own power . b) The wonderful arrangement and perfect order of the world lead us to infer that it was planned and carried out by a Being of supreme intelligence and skill. c) All men who are in a normal state of mind know that they are bound in conscience to do certain acts and to avoid other acts, and feel that they are responsible for their conduct to a Supreme Judge who is the avenger of !;. evil and the rewarder of good. ' d) All the nations and races of men have always had an inner conviction I. of the existence of a Supreme Being. If there are any barbarous tribes that ' I' practice no religion, they can be such only as are degraded by vice below the normal condition of human beings. ' The Scripture says: ..The fool said in his heart: There is no God" ( Ps. 52,1). Those who deny the existence of God are called Atheists (Greek a-, I :;~ :,~ - 2 FAITH AND ITS SOURCES not, and theos, God) .Such people usually have reasoned themselves, or have been led by others, into a state of doubt in regard to the existence of God. Their state of mind arises either �rom pride, or �rom corruption of heart, or �rom a misguided education, or �rom all three. "He Who denies the existence of God," says St. Augustine, "has some reason �or wishing i that God did not exist." ~ 3. God Reveals Himsel�.-But God wished us to know much more about Himself-and about ourselves too-than our reason alone can tell us. From time to time, in His wisdom and goodness, He drew aside the veil that hides Him from us. He revealed Himself and His eternal decrees to us. He told us things about Himself which we could not otherwise know at all or not with r certainty. Revelation (Latin re-, back, and velum, a veil) means both the mani�esta- tion by God of His will and truths to man, and the body of truths thus mani�ested. It is called supernatural or divine revelation, as opposed to the natural revelation of Himsel� that God makes through the visible world. 4. We Know God's Revelations by Faith.-God did not reveal Himself directly to all men, or even to very many, but only to a few. These men were told by Him to make His revelations known to their fellow-men. Since God does not speak directly to each one of us, we have to take the word of those to whom He did speak for what He told them. In other words, we take God's revelations on faith. To take something on faith means to believe or hold as true what another tells us. I If we believe what a fellow-man tells us on his own authority I or on the authority of another fellow-man, we have human fait If.. [ If we hold firmly and without doubting what someone tells us on t iGod's authority, we have divine faith, for in that case we really believe God Himself. 5. God's Spokesmen and Their Credentials.-But how do we know when a human being tells us something on God's authority ? We ask him to present his credentials, that is, we ask him to prove to us that he is really a messenger of God, and speaks in God's name; just as we ask anyone who claims to be the ambassador or representative of an earthly potentate to show us his credentials before we believe him. Miracles and Prophecies are the only infallible credentials which God gives His spokesmen. I f God puts His miraculous power at the disposal of a human being or permits him to look into the r- OUR KNOWLEDGE O:i" GOD 3 , secrets of the future, we can say without hesitation or fear of error that such a person has been sent by God. .Miracles are extraordinary works which cannot be done by the powers ! of nature, but only through the omnipotence of God; for example, to raise a person from the dead. Prophecy is a clear and definite foretelling of an event that can be known to God alone, because it depends either on the free will of God or on the free will of man. To foretell an eclipse of the sun or of the moon, is not a prophecy; but it is a prophecy to foretell the exact manner of one's own death at the hands of others. 6. Who Were God's Spokesmen?-The things which God wished us to know for our salvation He made known to us by the Patriarchs and ProPhets, and above all by His Son J esus Christ and the Apostles. Jesus Christ claimed to be not only a messenger of God, but the true Son of God Himself. He proved His claim by the supreme holiness of His life, by numerous miracles and prophecies during His life on earth, and by the crowning miracle of His Resurrection. He guarantees for us the revelations made to the Patriarchs and Prophets, as well as those made by His own Apostles. 7. Revealed Mysteries.-Since, then, God Himself has spoken to us, all that He has told us about Himself and about our own origin and destiny must be absolutely true, for God can neither deceive nor be deceived; if He could, He would not be God. Hence, even when He tells us things which we cannot understand -11tysteries-we none the less firmly believe them, because He has revealed them. Mysteries are revealed truths that are above and beyond our reason though not contrary to it. There are many natural mysteries, such as the growth of trees and plants and the marvelous instinct of birds and animals, which we do not understand; is there any wonder that mysteries should be found among the revealed truths? The Trinity is a mystery, because we cannot understand how one God can subsist in three Persons; but it is in no way contrary to our reason: we do not believe that three gods are one God, nor that three persons are one person, which would be a contradiction. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND REVIEW I. What do we know about God by the light of reason ? 2. What is the difference between human and divine faith ? 3. What does the word "reveal" mean ? Explain its origin. 4. Give five examples from the Old Testament illustrating the manner in which God revealed things to men. -- 4 FAITH AND ITS SOURCES 5- How did Moses prove to the Pharao that he was sent by God ? 6. How did Our Lord prove that He is the Son of God ? 7. Is the following statement true or false: "A mystery is a revealed truth [that is contrary to our reason" ? 8. Copy the following texts: Heb. 1,1-2; Rom. 1,20; Acts 14,16; John 1,18. IUse these texts to illustrate various points touched upon in this chapter : for example, Rom. 1,20 shows that we can know God by the light of reason. ! 9. Reading: Rev. Bertrand L. Conway, The Question Box, pp. 41-45, on r Miracles. THE ARAB'S PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD An Arab in the desert was once asked how he knew there is a God. "In the same way," he said, ''as I know by the footprints on the sand that a man or an animal has passed this way." ST. ANTONY'S BOOK The thousands of men who visited St. Antony in the desert were astonished at his wisdom and good sense. Asked where he had acquired such solid wisdom, he replied, pointing with one hand to the heavens and with the other to the earth: "There is my book; I have no other: all should study it : in considering the works of God, they will be filled with admiration and love of Him who created all things." LORD BYRON ON THE EXISTENCE OF GOD "How, raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them to the earth, can we doubt of the existence of God ?-or how, turning them to what is within us, can we doubt that there is something more noble and durable than the clay of which we are formed ?"
Excerpted from The Chief Truths of the Faith by Fr. John Laux
Used with permission.
Sample Pages from [em]The Chief Truths of the Faith[/em] by Fr. John Laux
CONTENTS PAGE IINTRODUCTION: The Nature and Value of Apologetics A. Knowledge and the Sources of Knowledge. , xi B.FaithandltsJustification xii C. Nature and Division of Apologetics xiv D. The Value of Apologetics xiv SECTION I REASONABLENESS OF OUR BELIEF IN GOD CHAPTER I. The Exist~nce of God A. The Arguments for the Existence of God in General. I B. The Teleological Argument, or the Reign of Law in the Universe 4 C. The Cosmological Argument, or God and the Origin of the Universe 10 D. The Moral Argument, or God in Conscience. !4 E. The Historical Argument, or Man's Need of God. 17 F. The Nature and Attributes of God 19 CHAPTER ". Man and His Place in the Universe A. The Immortality of the Soul 25 I. The Possibility of Immortality 26 2. The Fact of Immortality 28 3. Objections to the Belief in Immortality 3! B. Man and the Lower Animals 32 C. Prehistoric Man 35 D. The Age of Man 37 SECTION n REASONABLENESS OF OUR BELIEF IK CHRIST CHAPTER 1. Revelation and the Signs of Revelation. 47 CHAPTER ". Sourees of Our Knowledge of Christ and His Teaching A. Non-Christian Sources 53 B. Christian Sources 55 I. The Epistles of St. Paul and the Other Apostles. 55 2. The Four Gospels 5; a) The Gospels are Genuine 58 b) The Gospels are Intact 62 c) The Gospels are Truthfnl 65 3. TheActsoftheApostles 68 ix x CONTENTS ! CHAPTER III. The Claims of Jesus A. JesusClaimedtobetheMessias.,..., , ",.,...,"" 71 B.Jesus Claimed to be the SonofGod ",..., , 7] C. Some Difficulties Solved ,...,..,.,.."..."..., , 75 CHAPTER IV. Jesus Justified His Claim!; A. The Perfect Holiness of Jcsus , ,. 82 B. The Superhuman Wisdom of Jesus , ,. R3 C. The Miracles of J esus , 86 SECTION In REASONABLENESS OF OUR BELIEF IN THE CHURCH CHAPTER I. The Founding of the Church, , ..., , , , , 93 CHAPTER II. The Constitution of the Church. ., , , ., ., .., , .99 CHAPTER III. The Primacy of St. Peter. , ., , 1O3 CHAPTER IV. The Primacy of the Roman Pontiff. , .., .., 1o9 CHAPTER V. The Infallibility of the Church and the Pope A. The Church of Christ Must Be Infallible , 115 B. The Infallibility of the Pope 117 C. Some Objections Answered , " 118 CHAPTER VI. Outside the Church There Is No Salvation. 123 INDEX ,', , 131 r ! Introduction THE NATURE J\ND V ALUE OF ApOLOGETICS A. Knolvledgc (uld the ,~ources 01 Knolvledge I. We possess all our knowledge in the form of judgments. -We know something only when '\'e state, at least mentally, that two ideas or concepts, one of which is called the subject, the other the predicate, agree with each other, or do not agree with each other, I f I say: "Shakespeare is a dramatist," I assert the agree- ment of the two concepts "Shakespeare" and "dramatist." I f I say: "Men are not angels," I assert the disagreement of the t\VO concepts "men" and "angels." 2. If our judgment is in harmony with reality, it is a true judgment, as "Heat expands iron" ; if it is not in harmony with reality, it is a false judgment, as " A circle is not round," I four judgments are uttered without fear of error, they are cerfain; if they are uttered with fear of error, they are ftnccrfain, and therefore mere opinions. "Twice two is four," is a certain judg- ment; "Tomorrow will be rainy," is nothing but an opinion. 3. Before making a judgment we must have a reason for doing so.-We get our reasons for forming our judgments from what are cal!ed the sources of knO'ltIledgc. There are of various kinds : a) Some truths are in themselves so evident as to be clearly understood by al! who have the use of reason, as soon as they are put in words. Such truths are cal!ed sclf-evident, because they require no demonstration. For example, when once we understand the meaning of the terms, we cannot fail to grasp that "the whole is greater than its part," or that "the radii of a circle are equal," or that "everything which begins to exist must have been brought into existence by something distinct from itself," or that "what is, is, and cannot at the same time not be." b) From these self-evident and necessary truths another class of truths is drawn by a process of reasoning, that is, not by com- paring two concepts directly ,vith each other, but by comparing each with a third, on the principle that two things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. xiii -:T- INTl{ODUCTION c) Other things we know to be true from the evidence of our se1JSes. We can trust our senses unhesitatingly if the sense we are using, e.g., sight or hearing, is in a normal condition and properly applied to the object. d) Lastly, there, are many things which we do not know of our- selves, but which we accept on the authority of otl1er people. If our belief rests on the testimony of man, who can err, it is human faith; i f it rests on the testimony of God, who cannot err, it is Divine Faith.. B. Faith and Its Justification I. To have Divine Faith means to hold firmly and without doubting, all that Go<.! has revealed and, through His Church, pro- poses for our belief. The truths of revelation are the Object of Faith; the authority of God, implying infallibility in knowledge, and truth in utterance, is the M olive of faith, the reason 'It,hy we believe what God has revealed. The Church is the ordinary and infallible means by which we know the truths revealed by God. Our reason left to itself gives assent only to such judgments as are evidently true. Hence, since the Articles of Faith are not evident, the u.j/l plays a very important part in the making of an Act of Faith. O11ly he can belil"lle '(('ho is '(t.illillg to believe. The will gives assent to the word of God because it sees in God its highest good. With Simon Peter it says: "Thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6,69). In giving its assent, the will is ele- vated and strengthened by the grace of G od. By grace, our Faith becomes supernatural; by the assent of the will, it becomes a free , moral, and, therefore, meritorious act. 2. Our Faith is not an affair of sentiment, a leap in the dark, or an "abdication of our reason" ; on the contrary, it is a "seeing faith," a "reasonable service." Every intelligent Catholic should be in a position to justify his Faith at the bar of his reason and his conscience. He must, in other words, be able to form the fol- lowing judgments : a) I tI~ay and can believe these truths proposed for my belief, because God has revealed them ; b) I must believe these truths, because God is my supreme Lord and my only salvation. The first of these judgments, which is called the judgment of ~- INTRODUCTION xv "Lord to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of , eternal life." (John 6, 69) crcdibility (judiciun� credibilitatis) rests on three other judg- ments: I. There is a God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. 2. This God has revealed Himself to tIS in the Old Testament through the Patriarchs and the Prophets, in the New Testament through Christ and the Apostles. 3. Christ fo�mdcd a ChurcJ~ which He endowed with infallibil- ity for the safeguarding and propagation of Divine Revelation. These three judgments are called motives of credibility ( 7notiva rrcdibilitatis) .The first is philosophical, the other two are histori- cal. In the case of the second, viz., that God has revealed Himself to us, it is sufficient to prove that J esus Chrlsl ir Ike S(71t (7/ C(7tt' ond //w rn.rJ'rUntC;1tJ' (7/ .D"VI:'t"" ..R """/al'..0,,,,- He guarantees for us the revelations =ade ir7 the Old Testarnent j and by His teaching and the sending of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, He also guar- antees the revelations made through the Apostles. 3. The Mysteries of our Faith cannot be proved from reason INTRODUCTION xv "Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life." (John 6, 69) credibility (judiciunt credibilitatis) rests on three other j udg- ments: I. There is a God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. 2. This God has re'"llealed Himself to us in the Old Testament through the Patriarchs and the Prophets, in the New Testament through Christ and the Apostles. 3. Christ fotmded a Church which He endowed with infallibil- ity for the safeguarding and propagation of Divine Revelation. These three judgments are called motives of credibility ( 1notiva credibilitatis) .The first is philosophical, the other two are histori- cal. In the case of the second, viz., that God has revealed Himsel f to us, it is sufficient to prove that lest's Christ is the Son of God and tlze instruntent of Divine Revelation. He guarantees for us the revelations made in the Old Testament; and by His teaching and the sending of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles, He also guar- antees the revelations made through the Apostles. 3. The Mysteries of our Faith cannot be proved from reason xvi INTRODUCTION and history, because they are beyond reason and therefore incom- prehensible. "The divine mysteries," says the Council of the Vatican, "by their own nature so far transcend the. created intelligence that, even when delivered by Revelation and received by Faith, they remain covered with a veil of Faith itself, and shrouded in a certain degree of darkness, so long as \ve are pilgrims in this mortal life, not yet with God."* In regard to these mysteries we must content ourselves \vith proving that they are not contrary to reason and that they possess an ine~timable value for our souls. It is different with the three truths on which the reasonableness of our Faith rests. The exist- ence of God, the Divinity of Christ, and the divine institution of the Church can be proved by philosophical and historical arguments. c. Nature and Division 01 Apologetics The science which proves the reasonableness of the Catholic Faith is called Apologc.tics, from the Greek word apologia, "de- fense," "justification." "Be ready always," says St. Peter, "to .I"atisfy everyone that asketh you a reason of that hope which is in yOlI" (I Pet. 3,15). I. Apologetics answers three questions.- I. ~Vhy 1nust we worship God? 2. rv.h.v m/.tst 'l{'e be Christians? 3. ~Vhy mJ.tst 'l('e be Caiholics? 2. In our defense of our Faith we have three classes of opponents to deal with.- I. .4thcists, Pantheists, and .L11aterialists, who deny the exist- ence of a Living, Personal God; i.e. of a Being endowed with intelligence and free will, the First Cause of all things distinct from Jlimself. 2. J e'lt'S, M ohammedans, Deists ( Rationalists) , and lndiffer- ('ntists, who deny the divine origin of the Christian Religion. 3. If eretics of various kinds, \V ho deny one or more articles of the Catholic Faith. D. The "alue 01 Apologetics I. Apologetics cannot produce supernatural Faith.-Faith is a gift of God. In Baptism God even "gives us the eyes with which to see Him." Besides, Apologetics appeals entirely to the *Vatican Council I (1870) is referred to here. -Editor (1990). - INTRODUCTION xvii THE HARMONY OF FAITH AND REASON intellect, whereas Faith is a matter both of the intellect and th~ will. "Faith," says St. Thomas, "is an act of the ltnderstanding adhering to Divine Truth by command of the will moved by the grace of God." 2. Apologetics does not claim to be able to prove the foon- dations of Faith with mathematical certainty.- The proposi- tion "The whole is greater than its part" forces conviction on us because the contrary proposition is unthinkable. But the proposi- tion "Jesus of"Nazareth arose from the dead" is not evident in the same way. It is an historical statement, the contrary of which is not impossibIe or unthinkable. The highest kil1d of certainty We can have in regard to it is that Jvhich t';rclttdcs a!! reasonab!r doubt. Our proofs are conclusive, but not coercive. They carry convictiol1 to those who consider them with open minds, but not to those who are blinded by Passion or preJudIce. "lIlathematical propositions," says the French philosopher Malebranche ,re ~ot attacked sim?ly because the human passions are not interested i; ~cki?g t?em. But If the Pythagorean proposition imposed any moral !Igatlon, It would certainly be attacked If Some AcademfS. t h S..Yo Clence re o set up. t. e Ixth and Seventh Commandments as scientific propo- D~S. the valIdIty of these propositions would immediately be called in stlon by all the adulterers and thieves in the world." -- INTRODUCTION xvii THE HARMONY OF FAITH AND REASON intellect, whereas Faith is a matter both of the intellect and th- will. "Faith," says St. Thomas, "is an act of the Itnderstandin9 adhering to Divine Truth by command of the will moved by the grace of God." 2. Apologetics does not claim to be able to prove the foun- dations of Faith with mathematical certainty.-The proposi- tion "The whole is greater than its part" forces conviction on us because the contrary proposition is unthinkable. But the proposi- tion "Jesus of"Nazareth arose from the dead" is not evident in the same way. It is an historical statement, the contrary of which is not impossible or unthinkable. The highest kind of certainty we can have in regard to it is that \vhich e.rclude.1' allreasonabll' doubt. Our proofs are conclusive, but not coercive. They carry conviction to those who consider them with open minds, but not to those who are blinded by passion or prejudice. "Mathematical propositions," says the French philosopher Malebranche, "are not attacked simply because the human passions are not interested in attacking them. But if the Pythagorean proposition imposed any moral obligation, it would certainly be attacked. If some Academy of Science were to set up the Sixth and Seventh Commandments as scientific propo- sitions, the validity of these propositions would immediately be called in question by all the adulterers and thieves in the world." c I a xviii INTRODUCTION 3. The real function of Apologetics is twofold.-(a) to sat- isfy the intellect of the honest inquirer, and, with the aid of grace, to awaken in him the pius credulitatis affectus-the pious longing for the Faith; ( b) to strengthen in the believer the resolve never to barter his holy Faith for the shallow theories of a false philos- ophyor the mess of pottage of a false morality. In a letter dated January 6, 1815, Volta, the famous scientist, declares: "I have always believed and still believe the holy Catholic Faith to be the one true and infallible religion. In this Faith I recognize a pure gift of God, a supernatural grace. But I have not neglected those human means which confirm belief and overthrow such doubts as may arise to tempt me. I have given attentive study to the �oundations of my Faith. I have read in the works both of defenders and assailants of the Faith arguments �or and against it, and have derived thence arguments in its �avor which render it most acceptable even to the purely natural reason and prove it to be such that any mind unperverted by sin and passion, any healthy and generous mind, carnlot but accept and love it" (Kneller, Christianity and the Repre- sentatives of Moder,~ Science, St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., p. 116). 4. In order to profit by the study of Apologetics, we must approach it in the right spirit-the sfririt of h~tmility; for if there is a God, the attitude of ollr soul towards Him must necessarily be the humble petition: "Lord, that I may see." And we must purge our hearts from the dominion of the passions, for only the pure of heart shall see God-in this life as well as in the next. 5. The student of Apologetics should heed the admonition of St. Augustine : "We must not want to solve all the difficulties against the Faith before \\.e believe, in order that our life may not come to an end without faith. Simple faith gives us an ever deeper understanding of the things of faith. By faith we subject ourselves to God. If we subject ourselves to God, we shall live right; if we live right, our heart becomes pure; and if Ollr heart is pure, we shall see the truth of what we believe." Supplementary Reading Faith Is a Gift of God Faith is a gift of God, and not a mere act of our own, which we are free to exert when we will. It is quite distinct from an exercise of reason. though it follows, upon it. I may �eel the force of an argument for the divine origin of the Church; I may see that I ought to believe; and yet I may be unable to believe. ...Faith is not a mere conviction in reason, it is a firm assent, it is a clear certainty greater than any other certainty; INTRODUCTION xix and this is wrought in the mind by the grace of God, and by it alone. As then men may be convinced, and not act according to their conviction, so may they be convinced, and not believe according to their conviction. ... In a word, the arguments fQr religion dQ not compel anyone to believe, just as arguments for good conduct do not compel anyone to obey. Obedience is the consequence of willing to obey, and faith is the consequence of willing to believe; we may see what is right, whether in matters of faith or obedience, of ourselves, but we cannot will what is right without the grace of God. -NEWMAN, Discourses to Mired Congregations, p. 224. The Study of the Science of Apologetics N ecessary Especially in Our Dajl Though the existence of God is a truth koowable, and easily knowable, \y the light of reason, there are many that call that truth in question. Professed Agnostics are perhaps more numerous now than they have ever been before. How to account for this increase in Agnosticism, who can tell ? The advances made in physical science can give no clue to it. ... But whatever the reason may be, Agnosticism is apparently on the increase. It is difficult to avoid contact with Agnostics. They are to be met with in every rank of life. Some of them are aggressive and wish to meet us in discussion. Others profess a wish to believe, and invite us to remove their difficulties. If we ought to be prepared to justify the faith that is i~ us, much more ought we to be prepared to justify that conviction of God's existence, which is presupposed by all our faith. We ought to be able to defend this conviction against any that might choose to assail it; and still more ought we to be able to extend a helping hand to such as might come tD us in the spirit of honest inquiry. We say in a spirit of honest inquiry, for it may very well be that one who has through no fault of his lost belief in God, is no\V honestly endeavoring to find his way back to the truth. -GILDEA, Introduction to HAMMERSTEIN, Foundations of Faith, St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., p. ix. SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY AND REVIEW I. In what form do we possess all our knowledge ? 2. When are our judgments true ? false ? certain ? uncertain ? 3. What is meant by the sources of knowledge ? 4. What is meant by self-evident truths ? Give examples. S. How do we acquire knowledge of truths which are not self-evident ? 6. When are our senses infallible sources of truth ? 7. What is the difference between human and divine faith ? 8. Define divine faith. VlThat is its motive ? its object ? 9. What part does the will play in the act of faith ? 10. Is faith an abdication of reason ? Why not ? 11. What is meant by the judgment of credibility ? On what other judgments does it rest ? What are these called ? - xx INTRODUCTION 12. What is our position in regard to mysteries ? 13. Define Apologetics. What three questions does it answer ? 14. Who are the opponents of the Catholic Apologist ? 15. What kind of certainty can we attain in regard to the foundations of our faith ? 16. What is the real function of Apologetics ? 17. Why should we study Apologetics in the spirit of humility ? 18. Write a brief paragraph on each of the following : Agnostic, St. Tholnas Aq..inas, Vatican Council, J.falebranche, Volta, Sf. Augusfine. (Consult the New Catholic Dictionary or the Catholic Encyclopedia.)
Excerpted from The Chief Truths of the Faith by Fr. John Laux
Used with permission.