Can We Afford to Remain Indifferent?

Can We Afford to Remain Indifferent To God?

The true Church then is One; it is Holy; it is Catholic; it is Apostolic. These are the four great marks Christ has imprinted upon His Church in order that it may be distinguished from imitations of the true Church even in this day of multiplication of sects. In this day of widespread doubt and confusion, you need truth and security as you seek the salvation of your soul; you want to feel sure you are on the right path. If you do, you will honestly and sincerely investigate the claims of the Catholic Church.

Holy Scripture warns us: "It is a terrible thing to fall in the hands of the living God." It is not comforting then to consider the state of those who live their lives indifferent to the claims of God. Such people bother little whether the church in which they worship is the church Christ established. As the lady remarked to me on a certain occasion: "Oh! any Church is good enough for me, except the Catholic Church." Yet this lady knew little or nothing about the Catholic Church. Her eyes were closed to the truth. She did not want to investigate. She preferred to listen to the gross calumnies against the Catholic Church, and to be content with the misrepresentations by which its doctrines are depicted.

This attitude of being indifferent to the truth, leads in the end to indifference to all religion, which is the great sin of America today. How many people will tell you frankly "I don't go to any Church. My children sometimes go but neither I nor my wife go. We have got out of the habit of going." Or they will say: "When I do go, I go to the Church that has the best preacher. I like to hear a good sermon."

On one occasion I asked a young man where he had been baptized. "Father," he said, "I really do not know, but it was in the church that was nearest to the house in which we were living at that time. There are four boys in our family. None of us go to Church any more, nor do my parents, but we were all baptized, and as it so happens, in different churches." This is undoubtedly the wrong attitude to take regarding one's religion. To attend a Church because its pastor is the most popular preacher or because it is the most convenient to reach would seem to imply that God's truth rests upon popularity or convenience. This attitude of the mind is the cause of what is present in the United States today, a woeful indifference to religion in any form, indifference to the extent that some sixty to seventy million of our citizens admit that they worship God in no Church whatsoever.

Photo History:

Drive In Church - St. Petersburg, Florida - 1946