Happily Being Proven Wrong
"Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the Church of God, which he obtained with his own blood." Acts 20:28
When I started looking into the Catholic Church as a Protestant over a decade ago, I experienced the phenomenon of “happily being proven wrong.” I had a lot of misconceptions about the Catholic Church, but when they were knocked down, one by one, I realized they resolved massive problems that I had as a Protestant. This is the Good News that Catholicism is true, and accepting that the Catholic Church is the true Church of Jesus Christ will resolve a lot of questions and issues you face as a Christian.
#1: The Church is united. All Protestants instinctively know Christian denominations are evil, in that the concept of denominations, which are walls of division, are of the devil, not God. God did not make the Baptists, Lutherans, Orthodox and others. He made one Church. Jesus’ prayer that we all be one was affirmatively answered by God the Father, and we are one. A Protestant has to continually reckon with a disunited Body of Christ, which makes no sense for God to allow. God would not allow His Bride to be divided like that. He would never give the devil such a victory over His Beloved. The Catholic Church is the Bride of Christ, and there is one doctrine and no denominations. Anyone who is saved in the end is a member of the Catholic Church, and anyone who is validly baptized is only baptized into the Catholic Church, whether they know it or not. Joining a non-Catholic denomination out of ignorance and without a legitimate ability to know the truth is not held against a person, but there is only one Church - the Catholic Church. Therefore, the Pope and Bishops are in charge of every person who will go to heaven, even if they do not acknowledge the leaders Christ appointed.
#2: We do not die if we are in Christ. Once we go to heaven, we continue to serve God, just like the Israelites continued to fight for all Israel once they came into the Promised Land. When they came into the land, some of what was Canaan was uninhabited and free to be dwelt in. Certain Israelite tribes technically did not have to fight, they could have built their houses and moved on. But they all continued to fight until the Canaanites were driven from the entirety of the land and they could all build together as one united nation. Similarly, the Saints are still part of the Church, and they are fighting on our behalf. They’re in the Promised Land and are Church members who can pray for us the same as Church members on earth, because our God is the God of the Living, not the dead. Eventually, all those in heaven will also be restored to their glorified bodies, and we will live in a physically restored earth that includes the Tree of Life, as God intended for humanity from the beginning.
#3: We are saved by our relationship with Christ. Many Protestants boil soteriology, or how a person is “saved,” down to a legal transaction, despite believing that Christianity is a “relationship, not a religion.” This legalism is not only wrong, but presents a lot of problems. We are not saved because God looks at us and sees Jesus’ flawless criminal record. We are saved via our adoption by Christ, as His sons and daughters. Salvation is due to our relationship with Jesus, which is Covenential. The New Covenant is basically the terms of our adoption as Sons and Daughters of God. Christ’s Blood is the Blood of this New Covenant. Christ calls us to join this Covenant and gives us the grace to do so, as without such grace we could not accept it. Yet we accept or reject it of our own free will. God gives us enough power to accept it. And the terms are easy - be baptized, leave grave sin and receive the Eucharist to help you become more like Christ over time.
#4: Christ is literally making us like Himself. As 2nd Peter 1:4 says, we become partakers of the Divine Nature once we escape the world and its corruption caused by sinful desire. When we get to heaven, it’s possible for us to hear the prayers of those on earth because we become similar to the glorified Christ when He rose from the dead. We have abilities that are far beyond a mortal. While we can never be as powerful as God Himself, we become like God not only morally in heaven, but physically in the sense we are then immortal, and possess superhuman powers such as the ability to hear prayers. This concept is called “theosis” or “divinization” by the Catholics and Orthodox. We can participate in this process of theosis right now, by conforming ourselves to the example of Christ, although its ultimate fulfillment is down the road after dying an earthly death. We have the Saints to also assist us as examples, because sometimes they are more relatable and they show us how to become exemplars of the faith in different circumstances.
#5: We can touch Christ physically. Jesus is not just with us spiritually now. The Mass is a partaking in one eternal event. It’s one giant Last Supper, and all Christians who participate in it are united with Jesus and His Disciples through eternity each Mass. The bread we receive is the same as if Christ had broken it with His own hands at the Last Supper and had given it to us personally, there in the room with Him circa 33 AD, because He did through a Priest who sits “in persona Christi” (2nd Corinthians 2:10). This bread is Christ’s physical presence. If you ever wanted to give Jesus a hug and just embrace Him, you have a chance to feel His physical embrace each day at a Catholic Mass. The same blood that was shed for our sins we physically touch in the Communion wine each Mass, and it’s the same blood that dripped from Him hanging on the cross to His grieving mother and St. John below.
#6: We do not have to figure it out on our own. We don’t have to read the Bible and figure out what is the proper way to interpret major teachings or passages. Protestants rarely do this anyway, they find a Protestant teacher of one of many denominations to give their opinion, and adopt that opinion if they like it. They can’t have any assurance that they are believing the truly correct thing besides emotional peace, and have to come up with new systems to synthesize the fact that you can have 100 Christians in a room all believing different things on important doctrines. We can rest on the Faith once and for all delivered to the Apostles, and preserved perfectly through the Catholic Church. Jesus wants us to become “little children” and “sheep.” We should follow the leader in humility. He does not want us to start dictating revelation and doctrine like Martin Luther and John Calvin attempted to do almost from scratch, but to receive it from those chosen to dispense it after He already delivered it. If Jesus wanted us to follow a book, He would have written it Himself and there would have been zero ambiguity. Instead, He gave us a Church to follow instead, and that Church gave us the Holy Bible. The Bible is not always simple to interpret, and all Protestants know this. This is why Study Bibles are best-sellers.
#7: We find harmony among the “right” and “left.” Protestant denominations typically fracture into hyper-politicized groups. You have the Southern Baptists who are very conservative (although at one point they were largely pro-abortion, they were once pro-slavery, and they were racially segregated until fairly recently), and the Methodists who are now very liberal. In the Catholic Church the conservative person and liberal person are forced to accept one doctrine and benefit one another, and work towards the good of one another. Their worst impulses are kept in check. There are extremist progressive and conservative elements within the Catholic Church, but they are so limited in what they can achieve they are typically brought to obedience, or they leave in anger at not getting their way. If one believes Pope Francis is progressive, it’s extremely noteworthy that he has not changed a single dogma, and has officially affirmed Church teaching on things like homosexuality and transgenderism, despite any incorrect personal opinions or gaffes. Pope Francis is proof of Church indefectibility.
#8: The Church is Indefectible. As a Protestant, you have to believe God would be so cruel as to allow His Church to fall into false doctrine for over 1000 years. He would just abandon his Bride, and all the verses about the Church being a Shining City on a Hill are wrong. This is not only painful to swallow, but spiritually sickening. It says that God is either not strong or willing enough to preserve His Church and the true teaching, and it’s mostly up to man to do it through careful study. Since Protestant teaching was non-existent until the 1500’s, Protestants have a weird view of Christian history where it is basically snuffed out during the reign of Nero and comes back with Martin Luther and John Calvin 1450 years down the road. Catholics see one, glorious continuous Christian history from the Apostles until now. We accept and love the writings of the Church from the 200’s, 400’s, 700’s, 1100’s, etc, without reservation or insulting men like St. Aquinas or St. Augustine by thinking they were not as smart or educated as us moderns with our Hillsong music.
#9: The Church is also physical. Most Protestants spiritualize a lot of things away: Baptism is just a symbol, the Eucharist is just a symbol, the Church is just a spiritual association, and you are saved by a mental-ascent based faith. Once you spiritualize things away, people don’t take them seriously and they become non-tangible, which is why Protestants usually see Baptism as optional, do not respect communion and do not take it often in most cases, and often quit going to church, since it’s non-essential. As Catholics, things are spiritual and physical. We are spiritual and physical creatures, so the true faith must be as well. A lot of the physical attributes of a Mass, such as incense burning, appeals to the senses, and are what the ancient Jews practiced.
#10: A Continuity with Old Testament Believers. Protestant churches are a far cry from the Old Testament Temple, in most cases, particularly with Evangelicals and Baptists. The Temple is so foreign and strange Protestants tend to view it almost like a sort of valid form of paganism. On the other hand, a Catholic Mass is extremely similar to the Temple and the Judaism of the Bible. We have the Liturgy of the Word where the Bible is read, and then expounded upon by a Priest or Deacon the same way a Rabbi would expound upon a Scripture reading in a Synagogue. We have a Sacrifice, which is essential for worship, where Christ is given up for us. We eat that sacrifice, the same as the Jews ate their sacrifices, to complete the act (I noticed that Protestant scholars often leave out the part where sacrifices are eaten when describing Old Testament sacrificial practices). We burn incense, we have a liturgy and liturgical vestments similar to the ancient Priests. We have Priests, and nuns who are similar to the Temple consecrated virgins. It’s easy to see why St. Edith Stein and the Chief Rabbi saw in Catholicism the religion of their ancestors. As Fr. Klyber puts it, “If there is any notion that must be stressed both for Christians and Jews it is that Jesus did not give to the world a new religion, but only a New Covenant or Testament concerning the Old Religion which he himself had given to the Jews.” Only Catholicism, with its Apostolic Succession, has a seamless connection with the religion of the Old Testament in a way that we can say they’re the same religion. Protestants like Pastor John Hagee and many others see two distinct religions where the Holy Bible teaches there is only one from ancient times until now.