I just read a lovely post on the blog “Et Tu?”, written by Jennifer, a former atheist who found truth in Catholicism, and in particular in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger. I resonated with her post. Though I was not an atheist, more an agnostic before I woke up and started searching for God, I was not always a Christian, didn't become a Christian until my mid-30's, and spent time in the Evangelical world before becoming a Catholic. In the Evangelical world, I definitely got relationship with Christ and grounding in scripture, and very warm community. But I did notice there was a lack of, well, intellectual challenge, really thinking through all the implications of faith.
Sometimes it was subtle, such as in the preaching of accepted theological “truths” that, in time, I began to notice weren’t always consistent with, and sometimes contradicted, what I was reading in the bible, though they claimed to take the bible “literally.” And sometimes it was overt, like the time when, idling around after church one day, I saw a pastor heft his bible in the air and say to bystanders, “We don’t need anything but this! We don’t need college degrees, or psychology, or anything else except the bible!” It struck me as odd – especially as an intelligent, fairly intellectually-inclined woman. God did give us brains, you know. Aren’t we supposed to use them?
When I began to encounter Catholic teaching, I also began to encounter real intellectual challenge and rigor of a kind I didn’t know existed in the Christian world - I have to say the greatest intellectual challenge and rigor I've ever encountered anywhere, an unflinching, relentlessly logical examination of the reality of life, what it means to live, and how to live. The light of Revelation, explained and articulated by the Catholic Church, is no myth - it is the brilliant light that illuminates reality, shows us reality, what reality really is, and how to live in and according to it.
Anyone who thinks Catholicism is just a collection of superstitions or myths or fables simply does not know what they are talking about. They've either never examined, or not with real intellectual honesty, what the Church actually teaches, or have examined it with such deeply ingrained prejudices that they simply cannot see the truth for what it is (and I have met a few like that). I challenge anyone to honestly study and reflect on the Church teachings of recent decades, with the aim to truly understand them, not simply mock or try to disprove them, and not come away profoundly moved and awed.
I studied, and I am a Catholic today as a result. I found truth here of a kind nowhere else on earth, because it is not of earth, but of God, Whom I now profoundly believe in with both the assent of faith and with the truth of reason – God the Creator and Source and Orderer of all reality, of all that is, in Whom and only in Whom can one truly understand everything else that is.
And the Pope, contrary to what some may think, is not just a man playing dress-up, engaging in power games or intruding unnecessarily into people’s lives or bedrooms, but is truly the mouthpiece of God on earth, the explainer and articulator of the truth about life; and Pope Benedict, in my opinion, is one of the best representatives of such.
