How Can Catholicism Be True When Catholics Are So Dead?
... To argue that Catholicism is untrue because it doesn't transform the lives of those who don't practice it, is like arguing that aspirin doesn't work because it doesn't relieve the headaches of those who don't take it.
My family claims to be Catholic, but they don't take it seriously, either.
Try to remember that many people are Catholic by default. If you ask them what they are, they'll say, "Oh, I'm Catholic." But what they mean is, "My ancestors were Catholic." It's more an ethnicity than a religion for some people. It's what they
are, not what they
believe.
I agree with the basic teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church. But, I am still in the Baptist church. That is because I don't see enough fruits coming from the Catholic Church.
Actually, it's an individual (not a church) that's supposed to produce good fruit. A church can only proclaim the Gospel and introduce people to the One Who alone can make them bear fruit, but it can't make people believe its teachings, and it can't make people live its life. Good fruit, then, is how we tell if an individual is a faithful disciple. The fact is, you can find plenty of good fruit in the Catholic Church, and you can find plenty of good fruit in the various Protestant churches, too. And that's because the secret to bearing fruit is to have a living, vital relationship with Jesus Christ, who is the source of all grace and life. And because the Catholic Church has been endowed with the fullness of the means of grace that Christ established, a Catholic is able to have the closest possible relationship with Jesus, including even the reality of physical communion with Him.
But notice I say, "is able to have," not "is guaranteed to have." There are indeed plenty of people who call themselves Catholic, but who refuse to believe the Church's teachings, refuse to obey its precepts, and refuse to live the life it calls them to live. Not surprisingly, these people aren't magically converted into living saints just by walking through the Church door. So, if you want to look for fruit, be sure you look on the tree. You can't expect to find fruit on the dried-up branches that have severed themselves from the tree, and that are strewn all about it. I'll be the first to admit that the Catholic faith doesn't work if you don't practice it. It doesn't work by osmosis, or by genetics, or by proximity. You actually have to believe it, and live it. You have to have a living relationship with the Lord Jesus in order to bear fruit, and many "Catholics" have rejected that relationship, despite being given every opportunity to embrace it.
How can the Catholic Church's claims be true when so many Catholics are so dead?
I've known such people. It's truly sad. But to compare the best Evangelicals with the worst Catholics is hardly fair. If you want to see the real fruit of the Catholic faith, look at the people who actually put it into practice. As you know, the Catholic Church has produced some of the greatest, most on-fire saints the world has ever known. Some of them converted whole nations to Christ. We still marvel at their faith and holiness many centuries after they died.
How can I move from such a dynamic soul-winning church that I am in now into such a seemingly dead church seemingly full of untransformed people?
Before I became Catholic, I asked myself the same question, because I'd heard all sorts of horror stories about how dead the Catholic Church was, and since I'd known several Catholics who were as worldly as any pagan, I believed them. So as I became more and more convinced that the Catholic Church taught the truth, I thought, "But Lord, they're all so dead." And then I remembered His words: "What is that to you? You follow me." And I realized that it really wasn't important whether the guy in the pew next to me was living the faith, it was important whether
I was. It was as if the Lord was saying to me, "You need to follow the truth, even if you're the only one who does."
Happily, my fears turned out to be unfounded. I've met plenty of on-fire Catholics since I've joined the Church, and I've found several local parishes where the faith is truly lived and preached.
A girl that I am friends with, who has little knowledge of the theological issues between Catholics and Protestants said simply, "I am not a Catholic because they don't emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus." I am sure that many committed catholics such as yourself have vastly different experiences, but you must admit, the problem of simply going through the motions with little understanding of the significance seems rampant in the Church. Am I being unfair?
Yes. As I said, you're comparing the best Evangelicals with the worst Catholics. But I do think it's easier to be a nominal Catholic than to be a nominal Evangelical. Catholicism is an embodied faith. It's very physical, expressing itself through signs and meaningful rituals and practices. Ideally, those practices are joyful ways of expressing the interior reality of God's grace in our lives. They give form and substance to the reality of our faith. But if that reality isn't there, it's still possible to go through the physical motions of the faith because of habit, or whatever. In other words,
it's possible to mistake faith's expression for faith itself, as if the outward signs of our faith, and not the reality they are meant to express, are what's important. That does happen, and it's a shame, because going through the motions won't get anybody to Heaven.
On the other hand, Evangelicalism is largely devoid of physicality. It is a religion almost exclusively characterized by intellectual commitment. Therefore, if you don't have that commitment, there's nothing else there, so you leave. This is good in the sense that it focuses on the primary importance of belief and conversion of heart, and because it's more difficult to fool yourself into thinking you're a "good Christian" when you're not, but Evangelicals really are missing something by not having a rich physical tradition with which to express their faith. When you combine real interior faith with meaningful exterior expression, the result is incredible, believe me. And the best Catholics, like the best Evangelicals, know that a personal relationship with Jesus is the goal of the Christian life. We just have a whole lot of ways to express and experience that relationship.
How Can Catholicism Be True When Catholics Are So Dead?
