Why Not Visit a Catholic Church?

WHY NOT VISIT A CATHOLIC CHURCH?

Just as no one should be timid as far as approaching a Catholic priest is concerned, no one should be timid about entering a Catholic Church. The doors are always open every day of the week. Each morning the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is offered up in the church if there is a resident priest present. All through the day the living Christ is in the tabernacle inviting the silent worshipper. You may enter and feel the quiet presence of God. Religion, you know, is not a thing that should be relegated to an hour or so on Sunday. The Catholic feels that every hour of every day should be consecrated to God and the church stands open every day to invite the faithful to a quiet visit with God.  

And though many outside her fold know little or nothing of Catholic worship or doctrine, this is certainly not the intention of Christ or the Church. As her founder wishes her to be, the Catholic Church is open and frank and honest in her doctrine, her morality and her manner of worshipping.  She has nothing that she wishes to hide.  

But if you enter a Catholic Church, do not be surprised if Catholics worshipping there take little notice of you. They are there for what they imagine you came for, to worship God. Hence they will be intent upon one thing and one thing alone while they are in church, the worship of God. With them you too can slip into a pew, look up at the altar and commune with your God.  

The Next Step

THE NEXT STEP

The next step you should take on your way home is to seek the assistance and direction of a priest. Any priest will be only too glad to give you what help he can. This is a part of his vocation, one of the duties of the office he fills. Christ Himself said: "Other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." (Jn. 10, 16)

But if you do not feel confident enough to introduce yourself to a priest, ask some Catholic friend of yours to do so. The priest may seem strange to you at first, but you will find him surprisingly reasonable and human. The Catholic priest by the Sacred Orders he receives, has a special work to perform. He is chosen from among men and set aside to offer up worship at God's altar. But though he is set apart and anointed for a holy work, he is still a human being, very glad to be of service in God's cause and in the service of his fellowmen.

We are all, Catholics and non-Catholics, children of God, bound by the charity of Christ to love one another. The very greatest love that we can show one another is that love whereby we are anxious about the salvation of our neighbor. This is the love that impelled the Son of God to descend to earth and take upon Himself our flesh in order to save the sheep of Israel that were lost. This is the same love that impels the missionary to leave family and friends to travel to distant parts of the earth to win souls for Christ. This is the only reason why the Catholic priest is anxious that the truth of Christ be made known to you and to all men.  He is absolutely confident that he is a member of and a leader in the Church in which Christ meant that all men should work out their salvation. 

How Shalll I Go About It?

HOW SHALL I GO ABOUT IT?

If I wish to investigate the claims of the Catholic Church with a view to entering it, providing I discover it to be the one true Church Christ founded, how shall I go about it? What steps shall I take? Well, the first step you must take in this matter is to pray. As a humble seeker after truth, ask God for light to know His holy Will. Like the beggar in the Gospel, cry out with the loud voice of your soul: "Lord, that I may see." For faith is a gift of God, that God gives to those who ask for it. Christ has promised that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in His Name, you shall receive."  "Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you."  

The great Cardinal Newman, one of the keenest minds of all time, took over twenty years to find his way back into the Church of his fathers. He had been a member of the Anglican Church, and he wished to remain a member of that Church if such were the will of God. Amid the doubts and perplexities that tormented him, he wrote the beautiful lines of the hymn 'Lead Kindly Light.' We too can repeat his words in prayer:  

Lead kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead thou me on.

The night is dark and I am far from home,

Lead thou me on.

God finally answered his humble prayer, giving him not only the light of mind that he begged for, but adding also the strength of soul that would enable him to follow the inspiration of God. From that time forward  no sacrifice that he would be called upon to make could deter him from answering Christ's call to return to the Church of Christ.

"Without faith," Scripture tells us, it is impossible to please God." (Heb. 11, 31)  But without God's grace, we cannot possess faith. That is why there are many men in the world today who are convinced that the Catholic Church is the one, true Church founded by Jesus Christ, yet who have not entered it because God did not give them the gift of faith. Such a man was Cobbett, author of a history of the Protestant Reformation in England. Though Cobbett was not a Catholic, in his history he gave irrefutable proofs that there was no need of any such reformation in England, that the Catholic faith was literally stolen from the people, that they did not willingly give it up. On one occasion Cobbett was asked by a Catholic: "Why, then, do you not embrace the Catholic faith? You seem to defend it in everything." Cobbett replied: "I am surprised that you, a Catholic, should ask me that question. You certainly should know that there is a great difference between conviction and conversion." In other words Cobbett was intellectually convinced that the Catholic Church was the true Church of Christ, and yet he lacked the grace of God to live up to his convictions. To merit the grace of embracing the Catholic faith means more than just making an intellectual study of it. It means in addition humble prayer that God will give you not only the light of mind that you may see your way but also strength of soul, that you may have the courage to walk therein.

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

Holiness of The Church

Holiness of The Church

Not only must the Church Christ established be Catholic but, as the Nicene Creed  professes, she must be Holy too. In other words Holiness must be a distinguishing mark of Christ's Church. The Catholic Church has that mark for she is Holy in her founder Jesus Christ, who was holy with the holiness of God. The Church is also holy in her doctrines. The entire world testifies to this.  It recognizes the Catholic Church as a tremendous force for good in the world precisely because of the doctrine she teaches. This is the very objection that some of those outside her fold hold against her, that she expects too much of frail human nature and holds her children to the practice of too high a morality. Such people do not want a church that will refuse them divorce as the Catholic Church does. They don't want a church that will stress the awful malice of sin, and the great punishment God has in store for unrepentant sinners. They don't want the Church as Christ made it, but they want a church of their own making, a church that will not bother them too much with thoughts of the next life. And they refuse to acknowledge that if the morality of the Catholic Church is high, it is because Christ made it so, as He declared: "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."

Nor is the Church Holy only in her founder and her doctrine. She is holy also in the remarkable holiness of so many of her children, the Apostles who gave their lives to the spreading of Christ's kingdom upon earth, the early martyrs who likewise gave their lives to testify to their faith, and after the Apostles and Martyrs hundreds of thousands of Confessors and Virgins, men and women who in every age through the grace of God rose to sanctity in the Church He founded. Of course there are Catholics in the past and in the present who have not led and who do not lead holy lives. But this is because they do not live up to the teaching of the Church of which they are members. Christ's Church was made not only for the salvation of the just but for the salvation of sinners as well. Granted, then, that there are Catholics whose lives are not what they should be, this is but a small part of a large picture; of the Church of Christ coming down through the ages as an inspiration and a help for millions of common men and women to lead holier lives in Christ.  

Catholicity of The Church

Catholicity of The Church

Catholicity is the third mark by which the true Church can be known. The Church Christ founded should be Catholic, that is universal. It should embrace all nations and all men of all races and colors. "Go forth and teach all nations," said Christ, and the Apostles and their successors in the Catholic Church have gone forth to all nations and men of all nations have embraced the faith. This is the Church that is as much at home in England as it is in Italy, in France as well as in China, in Japan, in Germany, in the United States, in the most remote regions of Africa and Alaska. The hearts of all men, savage and civilized, throb to the beauty of its worship as their minds submit to the truth of its doctrine. The beauty of the Catholic faith has been compared to the beauty of the rainbow. In the rainbow all the colors of the spectrum blend perfectly. In the Catholic faith men of all races and colors and conditions in life kneel as one before the altar of God and find the inner-most yearnings of their soul satisfied. The Catholic Church is humanity caught up and made one in Christ.

I remember the colored porter on a train on a certain occasion telling me of his religious experience. He said he had been a Baptist once, but later on had changed his religion and had become a Presbyterian. I asked him to recite the Nicene Creed. Now the Nicene creed is that profession of faith drawn up by the Bishops of the Catholic Church far back in the fourth century of the Christian era. When the porter recited it for me, he came to the words: 'I believe in the Catholic Church.' "So," I said, "you are a Catholic."
"Oh, no," he hastened to reply. "I'm a Presbyterian."
"But," I pointed out, "you said, 'I believe in the Holy Catholic Church'. "
"Yes, I did," he admitted. "It is queer how that never occured to me before."

Nor does it occur to most Protestants. And yet every time they say the Nicene creed, they are uttering the very profession of faith the Catholics formulated in the fourth century. The words, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church" meant then just what they mean now, the universal Church founded by Jesus Christ, which is the Church that still glories in the name Catholic.

Unity of The Church

Unity of The Church

Christ intended that the Church He founded should remain one and undivided until the end of time. Unity then must be a mark of the one, true Church. "And there shall be," says Christ, "but one Fold and one Shepherd." Nowhere but in the Catholic Church do we find the perfect example of such unity, all Catholics the world over believing the same doctrines, offering up the same sacrifice, and governed by the one visible head, the Pope, the Vicar of Christ upon earth. This is the unity Christ Himself prayed for the night before He died.  "And not for them only do I pray, but for them also who through their word shall believe in Me; that they all may be one, as Thou Father in me, and I in Thee;  that they also may be one of us, that the world may believe that Thou has sent Me." (John 17; 20, 21). The night before He died Christ not only prayed that His Apostles would remain united and all those with them who through the preaching of the Apostles should believe in Christ but He also adds the prayer that the world witnessing the perfect unity existing in His Church, may be drawn to believe in Christ Himself. Unity then must be an outstanding mark of the true Church.

Some non-Catholics like to talk of the Catholic Church as the Mother Church, as though it were a matter of merit to have sprung from the Mother Church. But in reality it is of little merit to have sprung from the Mother Church when to have sprung or descended from the Catholic Church means that that you are now split away, divided from and cut asunder from the Church Christ founded. Christ never meant that the Church He founded should give birth to a dozen others. And in the back of the mind of many non-Catholics this feeling ever persists, as is exemplified in the story of the following conversion.  

Norway today is not the Catholic country it once was, and yet Norway too witnesses its conversions to the faith of its fathers.  One such was the conversion of Mrs. Marie Elizabeth Brataas.  She was the daughter of Peter Overn and Maren Flannum, both strict Lutheran Norwegians.  One Sunday, coming home from the Lutheran Church, she asked her husband also a Lutheran, what the minister meant when he preached about the one Fold and the one Shepherd. She told him that she had always thought that the Lutheran religion was the one Fold but, to her amazement, she heard him say:  "No!  not the Lutheran but the Catholic is the one Fold and the One True Religion."  Her sister Petrea, in the meantime, had become a Catholic and a Carmelite nun. When she asked her Pastor, Krogh Tonning, for permission to have her name taken off the church registers, as she was becoming a Catholic, he answered:  "You are taking the right path."  Later on he followed her into the Catholic Church.  

This unity of faith is not only one of the glories of the Catholic Church, a mark to show that she has been divinely instituted but it is a thing that Christ Himelf earnestly prayed for.  Holy Scripture is the revealed word of God.  Through it God speaks to us clearly and plainly. And in the strongest words possible Christ makes it plain in Holy Scripture that His followers should persevere in the unity of faith, should admit no doctrines contrary to those He Himself had taught the Apostles. St. Paul gives us a striking warning in this matter. Speaking to the Galatians he says: "If anyone preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema."  (Gal. 1. 8-9)

To preach a doctrine then, other than that which Christ taught the Apostles, is not to preach the Christianity of Christ. To set up a division in Christianity, that is to establish a sect, is directly contrary to the command of Christ. For this reason the establishing of sects, divisions of Christian believers, is listed as one of the greatest of sins. In his letter to the Galatians St. Paul says: "Now the works of the flesh are manifest which are fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, witchcraft, enmity, emulations, wraths, quarrels, dissention, etc., of which I foretell you, as I have foretold you, that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.  (Gal. 5. 19-21). Hence though millions of men have embraced this sect or that in the course of time, and particularly since the Protestant Reformation, it was neither the wish nor the intention of Christ, that they should save their souls anywhere else but in the bosom of the One True Church He Himself founded.