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Matthew Olson

Mr. Nickell

ENGL1213

10 February 2014

Catholicism: An Unquestionable Burden

The Church is my greatest weight. Of course, the weight of over a billion souls would likely be rather

large, especially post-McDonald's, so I suppose that nothing else is really comparable.

What does this mean? In an age of moral relativism, instability, and self-gratification, much like the

age of the Roman Empire prior to its Christian conversion, I found myself alone and empty after a

scarring experience. So, I sought the counsel of philosophy and history – surely, men had answered my

questions before! – and I was, after seemingly endless struggles with myself and others, eventually

comforted. The Church became vindicated in my heart.

The more I study, the more I am forced to accept Catholicism as the true Faith. The depth and size of

it, as well as its impacts on culture, force any serious student to step back and pay at least a bit of

attention. It took me a while to overcome my initial ambivalence toward any religion in particular –

though I was always appreciative of God and enamored with the subject in general – but once I had

crossed the proverbial Tiber, there was no going back.

I was baptized Catholic, and I vaguely recall some crossing with holy water and lighting prayer

candles, but I was hardly raised to practice the Faith. In high school, I dug into a box of things from my

infancy. I spotted a rosary within it, along with a note saying that it belonged to my great-grandmother.

I mentioned it to a Catholic friend, and he gave me some information about it. That set of events started

the arduous process of reconciliation.

Later, at the urging of the aforementioned friend, I casually flipped through the writings of the

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Church Fathers (prominent ancient Christian leaders). I quickly became impressed. I only did this,

originally, to assuage my ego. I had made a theological speculation, and he answered me with, “Well,

did the early Christians believe that?” I did not know. Anyway, he was right, and I was wrong.

My advice for anyone that wishes to be a Protestant is to avoid the Church Fathers like one would

avoid a plague. I once remarked to a professor that introducing the former to the latter is like shaking a

baby: it might teach them a lesson, but it also might kill them.

In my search for the Truth (capital 'T' intended), I asked a long series of questions.

On the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Church, I asked: Does God still reveal things to us, or

does His message end with the Bible? What would He reveal things through?

The idea that God arbitrarily ended His message with the Bible and deliberately chose to allow

confusion over doctrine became untenable to me, especially in light of verses like Deuteronomy 31:6

(He will never leave us) and John 17:11 (He requests Christian unity). The Protestant position on this

(Sola Scriptura) then made little sense. How could that idea, unprecedented before the Renaissance and

ungrounded in Tradition or common sense, be true? I have found no sensible argument in favor of it.

What would His mouthpiece be, though? His Bride (Mark 2:18-20), the Church, of course! As a wife

understands the workings of her husband, so does the Church understand Christ. From there, how is

She structured? This is where apostolic succession (the lineage of bishops from the time of the Apostles

to the present) comes in. Bishops are given special power (Luke 21:15) – which even Simon Magus

knew was handed down (Acts 8:18-19) – after the laying on of hands (1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6)

in their consecration ceremonies. They can trace themselves back to the very beginning of Christianity.

All of this “clicked” in my head when I first read these words from St. Ignatius of Antioch: “See that

you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the

apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected

with the Church without the bishop.” (Ignatius)

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Now, who leads it? This is answered by Matthew 16:18, the famous verse, which helped me grasp

that Christ built His Church on Peter (aka Cephas), the faithful “rock” (Greek, Aramaic). It's a parallel

to the story of Eliakim (Isaiah 22:20-22), who represented his king. St. Peter, called by Christ to “feed

[His] sheep” (John 21:17), likewise represented his King. Some in the historical-critical movement

have, naturally, raised objections to St. Peter's primacy. But even agnostic Protestant historian John

Julius Norwich wrote of the pope, “It seems more likely than not that St. Peter did in fact come to

Rome and was martyred there, probably somewhere on the Vatican Hill…[and] there can be little doubt

that he was the generally acknowledged leader of Christ's disciples.” (Norwich 9) Whenever I doubt, I

latch on to this information: the historical basis for the Papacy is rock-solid.

My goal is to increase the powers and jurisdiction of this great entity to the fullest capacity, because I

recognize the impact that She has had and can have on the world. Documents like Humanae Vitae and

Evangelium Vitae urge respect for the sanctity of life, Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno offer

economic principles rooted in good morals, and so on. If only humanity would follow the path that the

Church has set forth! This temporal aspect, even by itself, is enough to drive me, despite how

burdensome this desire can be.

In conclusion, I will leave the reader with a quote from G. K. Chesterton. “The difficulty of

explaining 'why I am a Catholic' is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that

Catholicism is true.” (Chesterton)

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Works Cited

1. St. Ignatius of Antioch (translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson). The Epistle of

Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans. Chapter 8. From Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.

2. Norwich, John Julius. Absolute Monarchs. New York: Random House, 2011. p. 9. Print.

3. Chesterton, G. K.. "Why I am a Catholic." Catholic Education Resource Center. N.p.. Web. 10 Feb

2014. <http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0075.html>.