And I'm going to repost my personal reasons, formally written. I hope others do not mind the length.
Catholicism is the antidote to nihilism. And by nihilism I mean not the sour, dark, often violent nihilism of Nietzsche and Sartre, but the nihilism that enjoys itself on the way to oblivion, convinced that everything — the world, us, relationships, beauty, hardship, the currents of history — is really just a cosmic joke. Against the nihilist claim that nothing is really of consequence, Catholicism insists that everything is of consequence, because everything has been redeemed by Christ.
And if you believe that, it changes the way you see things. Authority and the sacramental imagination - they change the way everything looks.
Authority: The Reason for Catholicism
A Religious Rule of Law
The debate between Protestants and Catholics primarily concerns authority: is it to be found ultimately in the Church or in the Bible? It would at first glance appear obviously clear that the Protestant answer is correct. The Bible, not an institution or its leaders, should be the believer’s guide in all things. One is then liberated from the arbitrary will of those holding ecclesiastical power.
This is deceiving, however, for the Bible does not plainly interpret itself. There is much that is not just verified but illuminated by a lively history, for Christianity is a religion that necessarily insists upon extraordinary historical claims. If someone, as his own “priest,” can enjoy direct access to the meaning of the text and the will of God absent the guidance of an authoritative body, what are believers to do when unsure of what the Bible means, or when there is sensible, intense, and important disagreement as to interpretation? The standard Protestant answer is that the Holy Spirit will lead the believer toward understanding. Then what criteria are there for determining exactly what the Spirit is saying, or whether He is actually speaking at all?
Here one must inevitably rely upon private judgment. The result, notoriously, has been the splintering of Protestantism into many denominations and subdenominations, not to mention heretical and semi-heretical sects. The Bible says whatever the individual thinks it says, regardless of how ill-educated or bigoted that believer might be and whatever extra-Biblical agenda may unconsciously tiptoe into its reading. Every man becomes, in theory and in practice, his own specialist. As a consequence, there is no real authority at all.
In this way, there is no rule of law in the religious sphere, only lawlessness: the majestic and objective will of God as enshrined in the Bible is in some way tainted by the stunted, subjective preference of the interpreter. The individual is free to establish an institution, thus creating a sphere within which to enforce a will. Such a sphere undermines valuable, valid links to the continuous past, allowing a new order from the ground up on the basis of nothing more than supposed insight. Every sectarian in history has set out to reinvent the theological wheel, promising that in these teachings we have, finally, a truer, more complete understanding of God. “Faith alone” by this approach is the underpinning of knowledge and salvation.
The Catholic view has for many centuries been that the preacher, theologian, or mystical visionary has a solemn duty to test claims against the light of historical reason and against the truths of Scripture. Further, Scripture must be understood, not according to the limited perspective of the reader, but within this light of reason and of the Tradition of which the Bible is the major part, a holy and complex body of teaching passed down from the apostles. Its contents are enlightened by an innumerable number of great figures, all as subject to these formidable spiritual workings as any other believer. The Catholic Church does not create but rather conserves and conveys. Change occurs infrequently, deliberately, gradually, minimally, and always to draw out the implications of what is present rather than introducing the novel and conceivably foreign element.
The authority of councils and popes is like the authority of the watchman guarding a museum whose works he could not have created and would not presume to tamper with. The teachings of a pope are never exactly his teachings. They are instead those of a temporary steward of a 2,000-year old institution. He must submit as dutifully as any of the faithful. Far from an unpredictable if pious administrator, he is the servant and executor of a system he did not make and cannot change. Dishonorable men have occupied the office. He will always lead a collection of sinners unworthy for forgiveness from a holy God. The key distinction of His organized worship is a rule of law, or rather its theological equivalent, at the core of Catholicism. And its rejection is the essence of Protestantism.
Interpretation
In Catholicism there is a mechanism for the application of fundamental principles and beliefs rooted in ancient and incomparable teachings to new circumstances - be they social, political, scientific or technological. For our benefit a broad (and not infrequently very difficult) collection of guidance is preserved most critically in the Bible. Even so, there is through the Catholic Church a basis for concluding “authenticity” far beyond asserting Lutheranism to be more accurately Christian than Calvinism, for example, or a particular view of an important theological subject more genuine, sensible, and religiously legitimate than another.
Protestants must at some point acknowledge the proposition that doctrinal differences are acceptable so long as the “essentials” of faith are right. Yet problems remain, namely which tenets are essential, as well as how they are to apply to a person and a community. There is in Protestantism no adequate defense mechanism against sacrilege. Teachers ever more devout and learned can be found on all sides of key interpretational disputes. The American landscape in particular is littered with houses of worship whose fortunes rise and fall with those of its founder or leader. Even as it is correct to focus on “Jesus as personal Lord and Savior,” it is not sufficient to combat the creeping of heresy.
Catholic theology rests on the authority enshrined to it by Christ to a small number of followers. Concerning Holy Scripture, it offers the most sensible and defensible interpretations of the Bible - the very Bible argued over and presented to believers and the outside world by Catholic bishops beginning in the third century after Christ and formalized more than one thousand years later at the Council of Trent. Consider the following, rich in their “Catholicity.” Christ made statements about the apostles having power to bind and loose (Matt. 16:18 and 18:18) and about their power to forgive sins (John 20:21-23). Further, many of the Catholic distinctions often under criticism are based in the taking of Scripture at face value. “Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you’” (John 6:53); “This is my body . . .” (Luke 22:19); “I tell you the truth, unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:5); “[D]on't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom. 6:3); “baptism . . . now saves you . . .” (1 Pet. 3:21); “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven” (John 20:23); “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18).
Sola Fide & Sola Scriptura
It is beneficial to briefly examine two elementary doctrines of Protestantism: sola fide, the claim that we are saved by faith alone, and sola scriptura, the claim that Christians are to use only the Bible in matters of doctrine and practice. The first is problematic by virtue of passages in Scripture that contradict it. In Romans 2:7, for example, the Apostle Paul tells his readers that God will give the reward of eternal life to those who “seek after glory, honor, and immortality by perseverance in working good.” In Galatians 6:6-10, Paul tells his readers that those who “sow to the Spirit” by “doing good to all” will from the Spirit reap a harvest of eternal life. It is noteworthy that these verses are in Romans and Galatians, the very Epistles on which Protestants claim to base the doctrine of justification by faith alone.
These verses do not mean we earn our salvation by good works, a doctrine many mistakenly attribute to the Catholic Church. They do indicate, though, the “faith alone” formula is not an accurate description of what the Bible teaches about salvation. These passages reveal that, as a result of God's grace, we are capable of doing acts of love that please God. He then freely and undeservedly chooses to reward. One of the rewards, the primary reward, is the gift of eternal life (Rom. 2:6-7). Is it so outlandish to take seriously the very large claim that the Catholic Church is the direct inheritor of the apostles, those granted authority by Christ? Did not the Lord tell that small, carefully chosen community: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven” (Matt. 16:19, Matt. 18:18)?
Consider also passages like Romans 3:28, where Paul says that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. Paul was writing about the Mosaic Law in Romans and Galatians on the notion that it was not necessary to be circumcised to obtain salvation. What Paul writes is true: we are justified by faith apart from works of the Mosaic Law. This would be more obvious to English-speaking readers if translators used the Hebrew word for law, Torah, which is also the name of the first five books of the Bible. They contain the laws of Moses. Paul said, “We hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Torah” (Rom. 3:28). Looking at the very next verse proves this: “Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also” (Rom. 3:29).
If Paul did not mean “works of the Torah,” then this question and its answer would be meaningless. By the phrase “works of the Law,” Paul refers to something Jews have but Gentiles do not, the work of the Mosaic Law. He makes this point in the next verse: “Since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised [Jews] on the ground of their faith and the uncircumcised [Gentiles] through their faith” (Rom. 3:30). So the “works of the Law” Paul talks about in verse 28 are those works characterizing Jews, not Gentiles, the chief work being circumcision (3:29-30). The Jewish laws of circumcision, ritual purity, kosher dietary prescriptions, and the Jewish festal calendar are, now that we are under the New Covenant in Christ, irrelevant to our salvation. Keeping the ceremonial Law of Moses is not necessary for Christians. What is important is keeping “the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), summarized as “faith working through love” (also translated as “faith made effective through love” [Gal. 5:6]). This is the work of the Church.
Luther inserted the word “alone” in his German translation of Romans 3, although he must have known the word “alone” was not in the Greek. Nowhere did the Holy Spirit ever inspire the writers of Scripture to say we’re saved by faith alone. Paul teaches in Galatians sinners are saved by faith working in love. This is the family way. A father doesn’t say to his children, “Since you're my family and all the other kids who are your friends aren’t, you don't have to work or obey; you don’t have to sacrifice because you’re saved. You're going to get the inheritance no matter what you do.” Sola fide and sola scriptura are not demonstrated by the Bible or by the Traditions highlighted by Paul in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. They are presuppositions.
Peterine Primacy
In Matthew 16 Christ says, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.” Protestants contend the rock on which the “church” was built is the revelation that Jesus is the Christ. Yet there is a structural feature in the text that requires Peter to be the rock. In Matthew 16:17-19, Jesus makes three statements to Peter: (a) “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah,” (b) “You are Peter,” and (c) “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” The first statement is clearly a blessing, which magnifies Peter. Christ declares him blessed because he received a special revelation from God. He will further give the keys to the kingdom, also magnifying Peter.
As Christ's first and third statements to Peter are blessings, the middle statement, in its immediate context, is a blessing. In order to defend the view that Peter is not the rock on which the Church is built, one must appeal to a minor difference in the Greek text between the word used for Peter (petros) and the word used for rock (petra). According to the standard anti-Catholic interpretation, petros means “a small stone” while petra means “a large mass of rock;” and the statement “You are Peter (Petros)” should be interpreted as something that stresses Peter's insignificance. They picture Christ as having meant, “You are a small stone, Peter, but I will build my church on this great mass of rock which is the revelation of my identity.”
The problem with this interpretation is that while petros and petra did have these meanings in some Greek poetry, the distinction was gone by the first century when Matthew's Gospel was written. At that time the two words meant the same thing: a rock. Another problem is that when he addressed Peter, Jesus was not speaking Greek, but Aramaic, a cousin language of Hebrew. In Aramaic there is no difference between the two words that in Greek are rendered as petros and petra. They are both kepha; that's why Paul refers to Peter as Cephas (1 Cor. 15:5, Gal. 2:9). What Christ actually said was, “You are kepha and on this kepha I will build my church.” Yet even if the words petros and petra did have different meanings, the Protestant reading of two different “rocks” would still not fit the context. The second statement to Peter would be something that minimized or diminished him, pointing out his insignificance. Jesus would be saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, you are an insignificant pebble. Here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” Such a sequence of statements would have been not merely odd, but inexplicable.
Notice how the Lord's three statements to Peter had two parts. The second parts explain the first. The reason Peter was “blessed” was because “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (v.17). The meaning of the name change, “You are rock,” is explained by the promise, “On this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v.18). The purpose of the keys is explained by Jesus’ commission, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v.19). A careful reading of these three statements, paying attention to their immediate context and interrelatedness, demonstrates that Peter was the rock about which Jesus spoke. This is what an unbiased reader looking at the grammar and literary structure of the text should conclude.
If Peter is the rock, he was the head apostle. The Greek text reveals that Peter alone was singled out for this praise, and he alone was given the special authority symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The other disciples of Jesus also shared in a more general sense Peter's authority of binding and loosing (Matt. 18:18). Yet if he was the head apostle, then once Christ had ascended into heaven Peter would have been the earthly head of the Church, subordinate to Christ's heavenly headship as the great lawgiver and sustainer of grace. He was the leader not only of believers in the capital of the Roman Empire, martyred by the mad tyrant Nero, but the founder of the community from which believers from all over the world took authoritative guidance. The practices of the Church today are a continuation of this crucial early Christian development.
The Sacramental
There is a sacramental principle found throughout the Bible. In both the Old and the New Testament there are incidents where God uses physical methods to convey grace. One striking example is the woman suffering hemorrhage. “When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see the people crowding against you,’ his disciples answered, ‘and yet you can ask, “Who touched me?”’ But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering’” (Mark 5:27-34).
This passage contains all the elements of sacramental principle: the woman's faith, the physical method (touching the clothes), and the supernatural power that went out from Jesus. When the woman came up to Him and with faith touched His garment, the power of God was sent forth and she was healed. This is how the sacraments work. God uses physical signs (water, oil, bread, wine, the laying on of hands) as vehicles of grace, which we receive in faith.
Another passage that highlights the sacramental manner in which God gives us His grace is 1 Peter 3:20-21. “God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also; not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” The meaning of Peter's statement, “baptism now saves you,” is clear from the context of the passage. He’s referring to the sacrament of water baptism, because he says eight people were “saved through water.” The merely physical effects of water in baptism are unimportant. What counts is the action of the Holy Spirit though baptism, as we “pledge . . . a good conscience toward God,” (that is, we make a baptismal pledge of repentance) and are saved “by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
St. Thomas Aquinas writes we are not merely spiritual beings but physical creatures also. It is fitting for God to give us the gift of grace through the physical. Even Luther recognized this. In his Short Catechism, he states baptism “works the forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and grants eternal salvation to all who believe.” He ignored the Biblical evidence for five of the seven sacraments (retaining baptism and the Lord's Supper). Most Protestants lost even Luther’s view of the sacraments as a transfer of grace, departing from the Biblical teaching that “baptism now saves you.”
God sometimes gives saving grace apart from baptism (Acts 10), but He ordained the act of baptism. Peter told the crowd on the day of Pentecost, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). Paul was told at his baptism, “And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16). It is right for worship to be anchored in these conduits of grace.
The Covenantal
Scripture presents God as a covenantal Creator. Catholicism, through the Sacraments, presents this truth more fully. Take as an example the Sacrament of Marriage. The marital act is not just a physical act; it’s a spiritual act that God has designed by which the marital covenant is renewed. And in all covenants there is opportunity for renewal, for the act of covenant rebirth is a moment of grace. Grace is life; grace is power; grace is God's own love.
From the marital covenant God has engineered the marital act to show the life-giving power of love. God has desired that when the two become one, they become one so that nine months later a name might be bestowed. The conceived child embodies the oneness God has made. He said as the earth was formed, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” God, who is three in one, made man, male and female, and commended them to this union. The two do become one, a third gift of life in the family unit. They are, by the grace of God, three in one.
The Catholic Church is the lone Christian tradition on earth long insistent of this teaching, one beautifully revealed in Scripture. In the 1920s, revivalist polygamist movements spread like wildfire across Utah and continue strongly. In the 1930s, the Anglican Church began to allow contraception. Shortly thereafter, almost every mainline Protestant denomination caved in to the mounting pressure of the sexual revolution. By the 1970s, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America endorsed not only contraception and abortion on demand, but their federal funding. Even if others do not go quite that far, there is within Protestantism little stringency against the strong forces of human devaluation and in favor of the sanctity of life. This is an abomination.
Unyielding Christian truth, a strong pro-life stand and the long-held teaching that marriage is indissoluble – firmly against the prevailing winds of what is popular, even as most denominations are incapable of taking position on the most basic of moral issues – are signs the Catholic Church is founded upon ancient religious belief, the internalization of actual, supernatural events. There is solidity and consistency because the foundation is firm. Personal reconciliation of difficult but wholly orthodox Christian doctrine requires the subordination of sovereignty in judgment from the individual to the voice of Christ in the Church He founded.
In Protestantism the idea of covenant is understood as synonymous with contract. You give God your sin; He gives you Christ. Covenant, however, differs from a contract as marriage differs from prostitution. In a contract property is exchanged, whereas in a covenant persons are exchanged. In a contract individuals say, “This is yours and that is mine,” but Scripture shows how in a covenant one must say, “I am yours and you are mine.” When God makes a covenant with us, He says, “I will be your God and you will be my people.” ‘Am,’ the Hebrew word for people, literally means kinsman, family: I will be your God and father; you will be my family, my sons and my daughters, my household. Covenants form kinship bonds, which forges familial communion with God.
Christian covenant with Divinity signifies sonship. For Luther and much of Protestantism, God is a judge, the covenant a courtroom scene whereby all are guilty criminals. And since Christ endured punishment, righteousness is the exchange for sins. Many Protestants view salvation as not unlike legal maneuvering, the bargain of sin for Christ. But for Paul in Romans, for Paul in Galatians, salvation is much more. It isn't strictly an exchange afforded by the ultimate authority figure, as the covenant doesn't point to a courtroom so much as to a family room. God is not a detached judge; God is the Father who renders fatherly judgments. Christ is not just someone who represents an innocent victim under affliction for our penalty; He is the firstborn among all brethren. By this covenant Christ doesn't intervene only in a legal sense. He offers, by the chosen path of humanity, His own sonship so that we may become children of God through His righteousness.
Scripture
To return to the Protestant ideal of the Bible as the final, fundamental authority of Christian orthodoxy, there is the question of how we can know which books belong in the Bible. Certain books of the New Testament, such as the synoptic gospels, present reliable historical accounts of Jesus’ life, but there are a number of New Testament books (Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation) whose authorship and canonical status were debated in the early Church. And eventually it was the Church, a unified Christian association working under the Holy Spirit through councils, deciding in their favor and including them in the canon of inspired books. How may a person two thousand years removed from these writings have any possibility of proving them genuinely apostolic? It is simplistic yet little exaggeration to assert that all must take the Church’s word.
This is to say that for one vital Christian inquiry – the notion of what Scripture is – one must trust the Church (pre-schism communities under the direction of Rome). The key point is that there is no way to show from within Scripture itself what the books of the Bible should be. The “Bible only” theory is self-refuting. Scripture offers no indication of which books belong. The canon was not settled until many centuries after the last apostle died. And only one entity had the unquestioned authority to settle questions of divine inspiration. Until the temporal tensions of East and West Roman Empire and of European princes grasping for power tore Christian-based politics apart, remarkable theological concord was a rule of Christianity, not the exception. Rome played no small part in shaping and sheltering Scripture.
The Insufficient
It is not enough to belong to a church for habit, the worship service, or the pastor. These are easy, undemanding preferences. Belonging to a community beyond personal inclination, where authority is present, valid, and necessary, is a gift from God. This Church stands in marked contrast to a Presbyterianism far too easily a victim to fashionable cultural change, a Baptist tradition that defines itself by autonomy, resulting in considerable doctrinal distinctions, an Anglicanism teetering towards chaos and schism for homosexuality, or a Methodist form of worship inadvertently born of Wesley’s desire to reform, and stay within, Anglicanism. The Catholic Church was not created by a rejection, a reactionary definition set against; its authority comes from God, through His blessedly chosen representatives, not men and their preferences.
Protestant denominations are an association of like-minded Christians. They are human creations, a group gathered together to express, “we are a church.” No matter how strong the theological foundation, there remains a key reason for separation: teaching according to a certain way of belief (usually that of the pastor). The Church was meant to have unity in structure and faith, from the time Christ prayed for his followers to be one, and from the time Paul spread the seed of truth in his letters, writing that God’s household was “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Eph. 2:20). There is little need for a mystical religious body if truths might be navigated through fracture-prone denominations and their leading personalities. Yet social customs and celebrity are hardly satisfactory for a more complete Christian life. And if a church body cannot claim to be critical for spiritual guidance, what need beyond material care is there for its existence? Should an institution teach the young in faith with authority, it must have authority in its very being.
The More Sufficient
There are, then, two options: congregationalism (in which each gathering of Christians filter and shape essentials) or Catholicism. The latter is based upon a divinely-charged principle of unity and time-tested historical validity. Congregationalism offers nothing like these two great strengths. The Councils of Nicaea are far more relevant to Christians today than the National Council of Churches. And now, as yesterday, only the Catholic Church imparts unity on a global scale. The alternative, through history to the present, is doctrinal chaos and disunity. When Protestants decided through private judgments which parts of the Catholic faith to keep and which to reject, did they intend for their successors to so vehemently and schismatically continue a process of revision, the results constantly codified as revealed truth?
The great guardian against Islamic invasion, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, declared that it is untenable for an ill-tempered, unbalanced, and unhappy monk to be right in his opinion while the whole of Christendom should be in error for well over a thousand years. The present inheritors of Luther, fewer and fewer of whom adhere to the church organized in his honor, are mired deep in the modern mental disease of assuming human intellect and insight only increase as eras fade. To wash the mind in Christian history is to be cleansed from the fractious existence of the church-shopping Protestant.
Since the excesses of the Reformation, the authority of the Catholic Church has been replaced by the arbitrary authority of schismatic individuals, and not infrequently for personal gain. In some once-Christian denominations, such as the Unitarians, the descent into confusion allowed for revealed truths to be eclipsed by the conviction there are no moral absolutes. More recently, absurd yet commercially successful theories of the end times and charismatic “word of faith” preachers test the edge of elementary Christian belief. The Church’s religious authority, when supplanted by personas, in due course devolves into an organized unit of the like-minded circling fads. The result is not simply believing differently yet remaining under God’s providence. Much of what has passed through the generations is a milieu Christian only in name and devoid of confidence in certainty and wisdom.
Catholicism is thus the most complete and vital form of Christianity. Despite its many human faults, the Catholic Church stands alone among assorted Christian societies as a truly global institution and the direct inheritor of Christ’s religious commands. It reflects the way He works, and spoke for more than one thousand years through the inevitable, shameful sins of Christian humanity as a unified voice. It still does, despite serious divisions among Christ’s followers. Nevertheless, God still calls us to Him through the sacraments. There is no intimidating, authoritarian chain of command prompting self-consciousness among Catholic faithful about presenting a petition directly before Him or calling upon Him as Father. The Communion of the Saints, seen and unseen, enriches spiritual relationships. For if I try to relate on my own, of my own initiative, the bond is subject to my limitations. But if I relate to Him as part of a formal fellowship with other believers, founded by Christ, then my personal association is vastly expanded by that interaction. Such is the work of a universal Church.
