BECOMING a CATHOLIC
Then let a Rosary ever be in its hands.
A reader of these “Comments” who is obviously not Catholic asks how to become one. It may be a question that interests more than just this reader. May Almighty God bless all such readers, because it is surely a grace of His that is prompting them to take a serious interest in joining the one true Church that is His – the true Roman Catholic Church. Today one has to add the adjective “true” because of course the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) fabricated a whole false Church designed to lead souls to eternal Hell instead of eternal Heaven. This can only complicate today the question of how to join the true Church, but if a soul is honestly searching for it, God has countless ways of reaching that soul with all help needed, despite any roadblocks thrown in His way by misguided or delinquent men. Let such a soul trust that God wants to bring him or her to Heaven, and He needs only the on-going cooperation of that soul to succeed.
Being a Catholic is about getting to Heaven, which is the uninterrupted supernatural bliss, intrinsically far above and beyond all our natural powers of mind and will as human beings. The bliss consists in the supernatural vision of God as He is in Himself and not just as we can glimpse Him from His natural creatures which surround us in our brief life on this earth. The gateway to this bliss is God’s supernatural gift of Faith, which reaches far above our natural reason. Whether or not I receive from God this gift of His, basic to eternal salvation, depends entirely on Him and not on me, but on the other hand there is an old saying to the effect that to whoever does all that it lies within his nature to do, God does not deny His (supernatural) grace. This is a kind of common sense, but beware, Faith remains, essentially, God’s free gift. What I can do, once I realise how indispensable for salvation is the gift of Faith, is bend all my powers to ask Him in prayer to give it to me. (It can be highly recommended to pray the Rosary even if someone does not yet believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary is and was the Mother of God. She will step in . . . )
What I can also do is to apply all my reasoning faculties to examining three great propositions which I can accept by mere (but upright!) human reasoning. If I do so, they can definitely help God to give me the gift of Faith, but they cannot, just by themselves, pull down God’s gift, which remains His free gift. As the half-believing sinner said in the Gospel, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” He may have been no theologian, but he was talking Catholic sense (Mark IX, 24). These three propositions are, 1) God exists, (2 Jesus Christ was and is God, and 3) The (true) Roman Catholic Church was instituted by Jesus Christ.
1) God exists – the most obvious argument from His creatures (as from effect to necessary cause) is the argument from intelligent design. The intelligence is visible everywhere in His creation, but it cannot come from the creatures which are themselves unintelligent, like animal, vegetable, mineral. Just one example – no spider ever steps on the sticky parts of its own web! Only the spider’s victims do that.
2) Jesus Christ is and was God – during His life on earth, He worked numberless miracles which God alone can work, because the Author of Nature alone can interrupt at will the normal course of nature. The raising of Lazarus (see Jn. XI) was a stupendous miracle wrought directly in front of a largely hostile crowd. Relics of Our Lord revealing to modern science traces of His DNA show evidence of His human mother but none of any human father. Indeed He was born of Mary, but conceived by the Holy Ghost.
3) Jesus Christ instituted the (true) Roman Catholic Church and no other. Mankind’s history shows all other “Christian” denominations to have started centuries after He lived on earth (1–33 AD). As for all non-Christian religions, they all deny that He was God, Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost. All such religions cannot be true, and if like Vatican II they pretend that they can still be a way to Heaven, they lie again, because there can be no place for lies in the true God’s true Heaven.
If after working over these three preliminary truths, a soul still wishes to become Catholic, then it goes to see a Catholic priest to ask to be baptised, which is the normal way of entering the Church.
Kyrie eleison
