Ch’^rc'h - A'

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Catftolic s Crutb ^ Socictp.

WHY I AM A CATHOLIC.

BY REV. CHAS. A. RAMM.

\^77ie following lecture was delivered hy Rev, Charles

A, Ramm of St, Mary's Cathedral^ San Francisco^ and
gives an account of the reasons which led him to enter the

Catholic Church, Through his courtesy^ the Catholic

Truth Society publishes the lecture in pamphlet form,
~\

The question which I am to treat as the subject of
this evening’s lecture, namely, “ Why I Am a Catho-
de,” may be interpreted in either of two senses. It
rnay be taken to mean simply. What reasons have I to
give for the faith that is in me ? Or, inasmuch as I
was not born or reared a Catholic, it may be under-
stood to mean, How did I come to be one '? What line
of reasoning was it which led me to my present posi-
tion ? Of course, the second interpretation, in a
measure, embraces the first; but it includes besides,
and is mainly concerned with, the account of my
change from a former religious faith to the one which
I now hold.

Since both interpretations are clearly within the
scope of the question, I prefer to choose the second.
Were I to take the other, I should be obliged to start
27

°



WHY I AM A CATHOLIO.

where I am, in the Church, and give a more or less

abstract argument for her truth. In the other alter-

native, I shall retrace the concrete path which I my-

self actually followed; I shall begin, as 1 did, from a

non-Catholic’s starting point, and approach the Church

from the outside. I may thus hope to lend to what I
may say the personal interest which always attaches
to the story of a mental change, especially a religious

change.

I cannot expect in the compass of an evening's lec-

ture to draw more than the outlines of the broad ar-

gument which led me through the gates of the fold.
There are a thousand ^nd one converging lines of rea-

soning which a Catholic may give for his faith. Some
of these will appeal to one soul, some to another. One

man may be mainly impressed by the perpetuity of the
Church; another by her marvelous unity; a third by

the unexampled works of Christian charity which she

is always and everywhere accomplishing; a fourth by

her architecture or by her liturgy. These arguments

are all moral, and consequently theiv force will sever-

ally vary with the temperament, needs, education,

moral life, or antecedent experiences of different men.

I shall confine myself, as I have said, to the one

which chiefly appealed to me. Even this I shall not

endeavor to develop fully; neither shall I have much

to say about the tributary arguments which swelled

the main stream.

It is never pleasant to speak in public of one's self,

especially of one's religious experiences. I am, how-

ever, encouraged to do so in the present case by the

thought that someone may benefit by it. While it is
true that we are living in the midst of an appalling
amount of religious indifference, yet it is equally true

that there are many people among us who, because
they are unsettled in their faith, have a deep interest

in questions of religion. They listen hopefully to every

new exponent of a creed, be he an Oriental, clad in

foreign robes, or a Westerner in the garb of a demo-

cratic American. They try one philosophical substi-

tute for religion after another; they are Spiritualists

for a while, and for a while they are Theosophists, or

they are Christian Scientists. They wander into



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 3

church after church with the vague hope of finding

what they want. Many of them are sincere and
earnest, feeling, perhaps, the crushing weight of sins

upon them. They realize they have souls to save, and

want to save them. But they are not satisfied. They

go about seeking rest and finding none. They are

harried by doubts and plagued with uncertainty.

They feel that they are in a desert with the darkness

of night upon them. They are hungering for the truth

and straining their vision for the light. Some there

are disposed to give up the quest as hopeless.

As my own wanderings in this dismal region were
real, it is possible that my experiences in getting out
of it may be of service to another. I give them, there-
fore, with the hope that they may help someone else
out of the labyrinth and haze of doubt into the straight

and clear path of truth.

Inasmuch as it is the evident intention of the ques-

tion, “ Why I am a Catholic,” to grant me as proven
the truth of the Christian religion, I need not waste

any time this evening in establishing the doctrines of

the Trinity, the Redemption, the Divinity of Christ,

and the existence and truth of His supernatural Rev-

elation. These doctrines all Christians accept, and

as i am addressing Christians, I shall therefore start
on this common ground and pass to the parting of the

ways—Why am I a Catholic rather than a member of
one of the sects ? ^

There is one further introductory remark which I

wish to make. What I shall say in the course of my
lecture is in no sense intended to be controversial. I

am reminded that truth is stronger than any of its
advocates. Presented, therefore, in its native force,

it may hope to win victories where, if clothed in con-
troversial armor, it would only succeed in repelling,

irritating or wounding its often sincere antagonists. I

propose simply to give some account of my religious
history. The statements which I shall make concern-
ing certain religious bodies, as well as the illustrations

which I shall adduce in support of them, no one, I

think, will be disposed to question. The reasoning

which I shall found upon them is, of course, my own



4 WHY I AM A CATHOLIC.

and must stand upon its own merits. I ask for it only
an impartial consideration.

My very early religious training amounted practi-
cally to nothing. My parents were Lutherans, and
although I presume they were fairly well instructed in

their faith, they made no efforts to teach it to me. I
do remember that my mother once taught me some
prayers, but that was all. What contributed, besides
the all too natural tendency to give it up, to the ab-

sence of all practical religion in the family, was the

fact that there was no church of any kind within ten

miles of us. There was for some time, however, a

Sunday school in the town in which we lived, which I
attended, rather, I think, for the novelty of the thing

than for any better reason. I know that I learned

some Bible texts and answered some Biblical conun-

drums at this Sunday school. I discovered which was

the shortest verse in the Sacred Volume and which

was the longest, and some other facts of about the

same practical importance; but I cannot remember

that I learned any religion there beyond a few pray-

ers. My teachers never taught me the fundamental
doctrines of the Trinity, the Incarnation or the Re-

demption. In fact, I have no recollection of ever hav-

ing heard of them in those days. I soon forgot to say

the prayers I had learned and lapsed into that total

neglect of all religion which, I suppose, is the normal

condition of the vast majority of the population of this

country.

When I was thirteen years of age I took my first
step as a Christian—or, rather, it was taken for me.
I well remember the day and the circumstances. For

some years a German Lutheran minister had been in

the habit of traveling in his circuit through the re-

gion of country in which we lived. On the particular
occasion to which I refer it was determined, I forget

by whom, that he was to baptize all the children of

the family. There were five of us besides the baby.

He stood us all up in a row, and passing along in front
of us with a basin of water, he baptized us where we

stood, beginning with the eldest.

The whole proceeding, I have thought since, was

rather remarkable. I had at the time not the faint-



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 5

est idea of what the Sacrament of Baptism was. The

minister gave me no instructions upon it either before
or after administering the sacred rite. He went on
his way rejoicing, I suppose, and I was reminded of

my baptism only by the fact that it was regarded by
the boys of the town as so unusual an occurrence

that they made it the subject of merriment. To me
it was an enigma.

Two years later I was sent to a boarding school in
Berkeley. Here the boys were expected to attend

church services every Sunday, unless excused by their

parents. While I was granted my freedom in the
matter, I nevertheless generally attendedsome church.

I went to them all, one after another, but I do not re-

member that anything religious ever impressed me
very deeply. It was in Berkeley that I first entered

a Catholic church, and first witnessed the celebration

of Holy Mass. Of course, I knew nothing of its mean-

ing. I remember that some of the boys who had to

go to church somewhere used to go to the Catholic

church because its services were earliest over.

These few facts constitute all my religious history
up to the time when I left this school and entered Col-

lege. If I knew little about religion, I had at least

one great blessing; I had no prejudice, either in fa-

vor of, or against any creed or sect.

My first religious affiliations began two or three
years, later, with the Episcopal Church. I did not so

much enter it as drift into it. My becoming a member
of it was mainly a matter of personal inclination and

of attachment for the pastor of the church in which I

worshipped. Besides this, most of my friends wor-
shipped there. This manner of becoming identified

with a Church is, I think, quite common among non-
Catholic people. Interest in a minister, apart en-

tirely from his teaching, or in some one who attends
his church, or in the music; the culture or social

standing of the congregation, convenience of geo-

graphical location or accessibility by a neighboring

car line; these are not unfrequently the determining

motives for their belonging to one Church or sect

rather than to another. I am very far, of course,
from implying that these more or less trivial cirqum-



6 WHY I AM A CATHOLIC.

stances may be the occasion of one's coming to belong
to a certain Church, but they are hardly rational mo-

tives for adhering to it.

So far as I was concerned, I never made, nor was I
ever asked to make any profession of faith in any-
thing when I entered the Episcopal Church. I under-

went no course of instruction and was never formally

received into it, although I was recognized as a mem-
ber of it and received communion in it. I joined in

the worship, following the ritual of the Book of Com-

mon Prayer. I was satisfied to accept the funda-
mentals of Christianity with but a very imperfect

grasp of their meaning or of the reasons for them. I

verified them thoroughly only at a later date. I recited

the Creed with only a vague understanding of what it

meant.

This rather nebulous state of mind continued for

some years, until a circumstance began the evolution

of order out of it. A number of my friends, as well
as my pastor, began to entertain it as a pious belief
that it was my vocation to be a clergyman, a state of
life for which I felt absolutely no attraction. On the
contrary, I had a repugnance for it to the very end,

which nothing but a sense of duty enabled me finally
to overcome.

The pious belief waxed into a settled conviction in

their minds, and my position became in consequence
extremely uncomfortable. On the one hand, I owed a
deference to the judgment of those who took so kind

an interest in me; while on the other, I could find in

myself no affirmative response to the vocation which

they were persuaded was mine. I was of necessity

driven to examine closely into my own feelings and
convictions, especially into the grounds upon which

my position in the Episcopal Church rested. Before
I could even think of being a teacher in it I must find

out just what I would be expected to profess and

teach; and then, what were the reasons for this pro-

fession ? In other words, I was forced to determine

two vital questions before I could act rationally and

considerately in the position in which 1 found myself;

viz.. What did the Episcopal Church teach ? and, On
what basis did she rest her teachings ?



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 1

To the first question I could find no satisfactory an-

swer. I found that the Church taught everything and

and that she taught nothing. There were the Broad

Churchmen, and the Low Churchmen, and the High
Churchmen, and the Ritualists; and among them they
taught about the whole cycle of Christian Doctrine,

and among them too they denied almost as much.

There were those who believed in seven Sacraments

and there were those who believed in but two, or in

none; those who believed in the Real Presence and

those who believed in the “Real Absence;” those who
believed in Confession and those who abominated it;

those who considered the Mass as the central act of

Christian worship and those who, in the words of the

Thirty-first Article, regarded it as a “ blasphemous

fable and a dangerous deceit;” there were those who
believed in Sacred Orders and there were those who

denied them. And these were all alike good Episco-
palians, one as good as another.

It was obviously impossible in the face of facts like

these to expect any teaching of the Episcopal Church

as a whole. To be sure, there were still the formu-

laries like the Thirty-nine Ar tides, but these were

held only in a “ non-natural” sense—that is, in any
sense you please, or in no sense. And there was the
Creed; but even that, while it was professed as a

whole, could be freely denied in more than one of its

articles.

Lest these statements should appear too strong, I

may be permitted to illustrate them by a few facts.
In this question of teaching I may identify the Epis-
copal Church in this country with the Established

Church in England.

In the London Tablet an Anglican clergyman,

who signs himself “Priest of the Church of Eng-

land,” writes indignantly as follows: “I want

to ask a question—viz.. What part of the Christian
faith (if any) is a Church of England clergyman not

permitted to deny ? Of course, all the world

knows that the Real Presence, the Eucharistic

Sacrifice, Prayer for the Dead, Purgatory, Ne-

cessity for Episcopal Ordination, Absolution, etc., [all

of which the writer believes in] are open questions

—



8 WHY I AM A CATHOLIC.

the divinity of our Lord, the worth of the Old Testa-

ment, everlasting punishment and the truth of mir-

acles are all denied with impunity. The present Dean
of Ripon denies the whole Christian faith, if we are to
believe correspondents of the Church Review, ’’

—

{Tablet^

2d May, 1896.)

Certainly here is small reverence for even the

Creed. This writer, it is to be inferred, believes in

the Christian Priesthood and in the Eucharistic Sac-

rifice. But the Archdeacon of Liverpool, in the same

Church, Dr. A. P. Taylor, writes in the same paper

that ‘‘the Reformers, the men who drew up the
Prayer Book and the Ordinal in the sixteenth cen-

tury—utterly rejected the sacrificial idea, and ex-
punged it from the liturgy of the Church.” And he
adds that he is of the “opinion that some thousands of

the clergy even still are in substantial agreement with

them.” (Ibid.)

There is nothing High Churchmen contend for more

strenuously than the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and

the consequent power of offering the Sacrifice of the

Mass by those who have received it. Yet the Arch-

deacon just quoted says : “ For those who, like myself,

do not hold that the Christian ministry is a sacrificing

priesthood, but is simply ambassadorial, ministerial,

pastoral and didactic, and its absolution only declar-

atory, Anglican Orders are perfectly satisfactory.”

{Tablet, 18th April, 1896.)

Another Churchman writes thus, complacently—if
not very reverently—of his Church : “We all agree to
follow Christ; the manner of following is left to the in-

dividual. Although we use the term, ‘ Loyalty to the

Prayer Book,’ we do not care two straws for articles,

rubrics or formularies, unless they are susceptible of

an interpretation which harmonizes with our private

views, but being consistently inconsistent, we are anx-

ious to concede to others the toleration we claim for

ourselves. In a word, we are members of the Church

of England, not because we accept or advocate its

particular doctrines, whatever they may be, but be-
cause we are Englishmen [geographical reasons, ob-

serve]; and even if we possessed any tribunal with

authority to decide questions of faith and discipline,



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 9

as self-respecting Protestants we should never think

of submitting to it.” (Ibid.)

Mr. Augustine Birrell, the author of “Obiter Dicta,”

who is a Churchman, I think—certainly he is not a
Catholic—in the Nineteenth Century of April, 1896,
proposes to make the Sacrifice of the Mass the

test of continuity -in the Established Church, between

the pre- and post-Reformation times. “ It is impos-

sible,” he says, “to believe that a mystery so tre-

mendous, so profoundly attractive, so intimately asso-

ciated with the keystone of the Christian faith, so

vouched for by the testimony of saints, can be allowed

to remain for another hundred years an open question

in the Church which still asserts herself to be the

guardian of faith.” (Ibid.) Upon which the writer
just quoted remarks serenely: “ Surely this kind of an

alarm is sounded twenty or thirty years too late for

an excursion. The Gorham judgment (1850) has al-

lowed Baptism to remain an open question in the Es-

tablished Church, and why should there be any diffi-
culty about the Real Presence or the Real Absence in

the Eucharist when, at the present day, the Amateur

Catholic [Ritualist, he means], who believes in Tran-
substantiation, the Socinian [denier of the divinity of

Christ], who regards the Lord’s Supper as a simple

meal in memory of Christ, kneel peaceably side by
side?” (Ibid.)

The London Spectator declares that if Mr. Birrell’s

advice that the Established Church should say clearly

what it believes about the Real Presence were fol-

lowed, “ the English Church would be rent into frag-

ments, never more to be joined.” {Tablet^ 11th April,

’96.) -

Quite recently a writer in the same London weekly

from which I have been quoting, in order to “test the

Anglican position” on a most vital doctrine, proposed

this question
—“May Divine honors be paid to the

Blessed Sacrament of the altar in the Church of Eng-

land? Can it be regarded and addressed as Very and
Eternal God, according to the doctrines of the Church

of England ? ” {Tablet^ 3d April, 1897.) In the next

issue of the paper an Anglican clergyman replies : “I

answer, without any hesitation, yes.” (Ibid, 10th



10 WHY I AM A CATHOLIO,

April.) Two weeks later a fellow clergyman writes
as follows: ‘‘I perceive that one clergyman of the

Church of England expresses in your columns his opin-

ion that ‘ Divine honor may certainly be paid to the
Sacrament of the Altar’ in our communion. I hope

you will kindly allow another clergyman to express

his view that such honors may certainly not be paid;
and further, that we have no sacrificing priesthood

and no altars in the Church of England at all. Of

course, this is only my own opinion; the Church her-
self leaves us in the dark.” (Ibid, 31 April, 1897.)

Both these clergymen are in good standing in the

Church; yet they hold diametrically opposed views

upon doctrines which are as vital as they can well be.

The same condition of things exists in the Episco-

pate. Net long ago the present Pope, after a most

careful examination, declared Episcopal Orders to be

‘‘utterly null and void,” a judgment, I may say, in
which he is at one with the Old Catholics, Orientals

and Creeks, none of whom is in communion with him.
A reply has been issued by the Archbishops of Can-

terbury and York, which has been extravagantly

praised by some Churchmen and as vehemently de-

nounced by others. One English Bishop (Sodor and
Man) writes: “So far as I am aware, the English
Bishops, as a body, were not consulted about this doc-

ument (for the obvious reason, it is said, that they

could not possibly have agreed about it), and, there-

fore, as such, cannot in any wise be held responsible

for it. Failing utterly to see how many of the princi-
pal arguments which it contained can be taken to re-

present the authoritative view of the Church of Eng-

land as regards the Character of the Christian minis-

try, I can only regard their Graces’ reply as an ex-

pression of their private opinion.” (The English

Churchman^ quoted in the Tablet^ 1st May, 1897.)

These are illustrations enough from over the water.

Similar doctrinal discord exists in the Episcopal

Church in our own land. It is not many weeks ago
since there appeared in our losal daily papers a rather

acrimonious controversy between two antagonists who

have the bay lying between them, concerning matters

so sacred that one is pained to see them dragged into



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 11

the public prints. I have myself seen a Congrega-

tionalist, known to be such to the officiating Episcopal

clergyman, receive communion from his hands with

the regular communicants of his flock.

A friend of mine told me that the present Bishop of
New York, Bishop Potter, shortly after his consecra-
tion, went to administer Confirmation in the Ritualist

Church of St. Ignatius in that city. The Rector, be-

fore the Bishop came, had carried the consecrated

particles, my friend told me, into the sacristy because
his lordship did not believe in the Real Presence.

I remember reading, under Episcopal Church No-

tices, in a Church Directory in a hotel in Chicago dur-

ing the Fair year, something about week-day Masses,

a nine o’clock children’s Mass with choral service, and

High Mass at 11 o’clock on Sunday. And there were
notices too for Confessions. Just below was the more

familiar notice about “morning prayer” and “Com-

munion services once a month.”

We all know what a bitter war has been waged for
some years past in this country in connection with the

the revision of the Prayer Book concerning the title

of the Church. The “advanced” members have en-

deavored to drop the word “Protestant” and have

themselves called “The Catholic Church of America,”
but just as good Episcopalians as themselves, and

just as vigorous, insist upon being called Protestants.

These instances may suffice for my purposes. I re-
peat I do not bring them forth for controversial uses. I

simply give them as recent illustrations of facts of my
own experience which I met with on every side when I
set about trying to find an answer to my first question:
What does the Episcopal Church teach ? The facts
themselves, I think, nobody will venture to quarrel

with; they may be abundantly verified any day by any-
one who cares to do so.
They bear out fully I think the conclusion I came to

that the Episcopal Church taught practically nothing;

that there was no such thing as a teaching of the

Church as a body. Consequently I was legitimately

dispensed from investigating the second question,

namely. By what authority does the Episcopal Church
teach ? As her teaching (if one may so name it) is



13 WHF I AM A CATHOLIC,

contrary on almost all points, it was perfectly obvious

that she possessed no authority to teach which was

worth discovering. It was even hard to see in what

sense she could b^e called the Church of Christ, so I

waived the second question. The Bishop from whom
I just quoted speaks indeed of the “Authoritative view

of the Church of England,’^ yet he ends the sentence

in which these words occur by declaring that the sol-

emn letter put forth by the two Archbishops of his
Church, a letter dealing expressly with a doctrinal

matter, and addressed in consequence “To the whole

bo4y of Bishops of the Catholic Church, can only be

regarded “as an expression of their own private

opinion.”

Indeed my own conclusions are admitted by a
clergyman from whom I have already quoted in lan-
guage which is stronger than my own. “All kinds of
different doctrines,” he says, writing of his own
Church, “have been tolerated in the Church of Eng-

land. We have no living voice; we are not members
of Ecclesia Docens like the Church of Rome; we are

left to believe what we like. And this in an uncertain

age, and in view of the progress of modern thought,

I look on as the great glory of the Church of England.”

{Tallet, 24 April 1897.)

In another letter he says, “I am able to give my
allegiance to my Church just because in her commu-
nion everyone believes and disbelieves just what he

likes. We live in an age of transition, when the old
moorings are dragged, and when we don’t know what

the future will bring forth. They therefore who have

felt the influence in the Zeitgeist are at home in a

communion which has no definite voice, which leaves

us largely to think what we will; we feel it well to be
members of an uncertain Church.” (Ibid. 5 June ’97.)

There is then in this Church admittedly no teaching

and no authority.

Here it may be asked, why I did not rejoice over
this fact with the writer just quoted, rather than

made it a cause for complaint. Since the Episcopal

Church was broad enough in her toleration to em-

brace the widest extremes of contradictory doctrine,



WET 1 AM A CATHOLIC, 18

why dia I not choose what suited me and stay where I
was, as so many others have done

.

My shortest answer to this is that my common
sense prevented any such course. I wanted to save

my soul. That was not to be accomplished by “be-
lieving and disbelieving just what I liked. The means

and conditions of salvation are of God’s naming, not

of mine. These means and conditions it was

the purpose of Christ’s Revelation to make known to

me. Therefore I was looking for Christ’s Revelation.

That was one and could be only one body of consistent

truth revealed for all men; and therefore it was in no

way dependent for its existence upon my choosing. It
must have an objective existence entirely apart from

my individual ideas about it. My choosing a lot of
doctrines does not make them true. To have been

eclectic in my Creed, to have picked out what I would
accept, and rejected the rest would have been to

make Christ’s revealed truth simply a subjective mat-

ter—the veriest creature of my own mind. What I
believe to be true is true for me; and what you be-

lieve to be true is true for you; and these two may be
contradictory.

If Christ’s revelation is to be subjected to that sort

of treatment it was surely a work of supererogation

to give it to us. He might as well not have made it,
andfhave allowed us from the first perfect freedom to

guess at the whole matter. Since He was sane, to
claim no higher prerogative for Him, His revelation

must be obviously one consistent whole. It was meant

for the redemption and salvation of all men to the end

of time. Therefore it was certainly a most serious

thing. Therefore He could by no means be indifferent
to what became of it; or whether it were accepted or

rejected. *It was impossible that it should be a mat-

ter of no consequence to Him, that men should find
and believe one-tenth of it simply because they liked

it, while they rejected the other nine-tenths; or ac-

cept six-tenths and reject the other four-tenths.

Revelation is of itself so remarkable a fact—God
breaking through the laws of Nature, and in this case

speaking not by His prophets, but by His own lips—



14 WHY I AM A CATHOLIC.

that our Blessed Lord never could have revealed a
truth which was of no use or not worth preserving.

It is but common sense therefore to conclude that
the fact alone of Revelation is sufficient proof, even

were there no other, that the matter of it was in-

tended by our Lord to be preserved intact. Only on

this condition could it possibly accomplish the work

for which it was given. Revealed truth which is lost

—dead and gone—is not likely to be a very potent
factor in the salvation of men. Therefore it must still

be in existence somewhere, not in a maimed, frag-

mentary condition, but whole and entire; it must still

be ^ together in one depository. It was moreover

meant for the instruction and salvation of the world;

therefore it must be discoverable by some simple

means easily within the power of ordinary men.

The question then arose: Where was the full re-
vealed truth of Christ to be found ? And here I might
have been answered, Why, in the Bible of course.

“The Bible and the Bible alone ” would have satisfied
all your requirements and would have made a good

Protestant of you.

Well, I thought of that and others helped me to
think of it; but I must confess I wasted very little

time chasing that delusive phantom. To begin with,

how did I know the Bible contained the whole of
Christ’s teachiug ? Or how was I to prove it ? St.
John says explicitly, “There are also many other
things which Jesus did, which if they were written

every one, the world itself I think, would not be able

to contain the books that should be written.” (St. John

xxL 25.) And we assume that one small volume con-
tains all, or at least His essential teaching.

Then, how did I know that the Book was inspired,

that it was the Word of God ? I could not and can-
not yet prove its inspiration on any Protestant prin-

ciple of which I am aware. If you think the proof is
easy, take as much paper as you please, sit down and
write out for instance the proof of the inspiration of

the New Testament. The truth of the matter is that
the vast majority of Protestants take this fact for

granted, or rather, they take it from the constant

tradition of the Catholic Church, which has always



WHY I AM A CATHOLIO. 13

taught it; and then for the most part they declaim

against “tradition’^ not realizing apparently that in

doing so they are cutting the ground from under the'r

own feet.

But even supposing this initial difficulty of inspira-

tion surmounted, I should still have been no nearer to

a solution of my question. The New Testament as we
have it to-day, in which some at least of Christ’s reve-

lation is contained, was not gathered together into

one volume until about two centuries after the writers

of its several books had died. Evidently the great

multitude of martyrs and doctors and confessors and

virgins of the first centuries, who were undoubtedly

good Christians, did not get their faith from “the

Bible and the Bible alone.” Therefore that was not

the source from which Christ meant His revelation to

be learned. When, then, did it become so ?

Moreover 1 soon discovered that however much men
might laud “the Bible and the Bible alone ” as the

“Rule of faith,” as a matter of fact, nobody followed

that rule. There is not one man in ten thousand, 1
venture to say, who gets his religion from the Bible

alone. They all get it from their grandmother or

from their parents or their Sunday School teacher or

their minister, or their religious weekly, or from

some creed or “Confession” written by a few solemn,

uninspired and very fallible divines a few centuries

ago. From one or more of these sources they take
their belief, already formed and expressed for them;

then they recruit from the Bible a battalion of texts

to defend it.

I believe that if he knew nothing about Christianity,
not one man in one hundred thousand would get any-
thing like the Christian religion as we have it to day
out of the Bible alone. He would for instance, hardly
deduce Infant Baptism from it; or the idea of a Sac-

rament; neither would he make much out of the cen-
tral doctrine of the Incarnation—two natures and
two wills divine and human in one Person. He would
find the four little words; “This is my body,” and he
would probably only succeed in adding one more to

the two hundred interpretations of them, which had

already been invented within fifty years after the



16 WHY I AM A CATHOLIC.

rise of Protestantism. So great a mind as Cardinal

Newman confesses, ‘‘I would not have found out the
doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the sacred text [of

Scripture] without previous traditional teaching.’’

(Diff. of Ang, II. p. 57.)

Indeed it seems to me evident on the most casual
inspection of the Book that Holy Scripture was never

intended to teach doctrine, but to prove it after it had

already been taught in some other way. The Epistles

of St. Paul, for example, all suppose that the Chris-

tian faith was already known to those to whom these
letters were written.

Besides all this, before I could have even pretended

to interpret the Scriptures intelligently, I should

either have had to make a supreme act of faith in

translators and interpreters or spend half a lifetime

stud}?ing Greek and Latin and Archaeology. I do not

believe our Blessed Lord ever meant to rule out nine-

tenths of the human race from the possession of His

truth in this way, or make the discovery of His reve-

lation a conundrum.

Here I must pause for a little digression. It may
be objected that I was giving altogether too much

prominence to the search for Christian doctrine; that

1 could have lived a good Christian life without bother-

ing my head about the number of the Sacraments, the
Real Presence or the Articles of the Creed.

This is the familiar contention of those who claim to

be liberal in the matter of religion; although I have

generally found that their liberalism is only another

name for indifference to the whole subject. They will
tell you that it doesn’t matter what you believe pro-

vided you lead a decent life.

Now, it seems to me that it ought not to be neces-
sary to waste much time in showing the dangerous

fallacy of this principle. People who take this view

of Christianity totally misconceive its character. If

it is anything it is dogmatic in its teaching. Its

Founder built it upon definite doctrines whose accept-

ance He made compulsory, and for whose truth He
laid down His life. He had many enemies in His day,
and was often assailed by them. I think, however,

that there is no serious instance in which they at-



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 17

tacked Him for His purely moral teaching. We do
not read, for example, that they objected to the Beati-

tudes. I3ut again and again they did attack Him for
His doctrinal teaching. The necessity of Baptism, the

promise and possibility of the Blessed Eucharist, exor-

cisms, the forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the

body and life everlasting—these were the subjects of
controversy, and they are all of them first matters of

helief and only secondly matters of conduct. And when
our Blessed Lord reached the end of His life. He died,
not for preaching the Sermon on the Mount, but for

asserting His Divinity, which is an Article of the

Creed.

Christ then made Christianity definitely dogmatic

from the beginning, and He commanded this charac-
teristic to *be perpetuated. ‘‘Gro,” He said to His
Apostles, “ and teach all nations all things whatsoever

I have commanded you. He that helieveth—Believeth
what ? Why, all things that you are commanded to

teach—he shall be saved; but he that helieveth not—
these same things—shall be condemned.” So that
salvation depends not only upon conduct, but also upon

belief in definite doctrines.

Of course, allowance must be made for those who

are in good faith; who before God are sincere in believ-

ing in a creedless Christianity; but their good faith,

while it may excuse them from sin, does not alter the
fact that their principle is false.

The Apostles did as they were told. They at once

began preaching the doctrine of the Resurrection;

that is to say, they began with an Article of the

Creed. St. Paul does not hesitate to^ay : ‘‘If Christ

be not risen again from the dead, then is our preach-

ing vain and your faith is also vain.”

Christian life and Christian virtue are only the prac-

tical cor sequences of belief in Christian doctrines. De-

stroy this belief, take away these doctrines, and Chris-
tian life and Christian virtue will inevitably cease to

exist. This is just what is happening in our midst at

the present time, although we do not perhaps realize

the fact. Multitudes of people still live an outward

Christian life simply in virtue of the inertia of Chris-

tian principles which they themselves have ceased to



18 WHY I AM A CATHOLIC,

hold. The atmosphere about us is still Christian. But

a change is in progress There is a tendency to re-

vert to pre-Christian principles of thought and life,

and because this tendency is particularly marked in
this country, a distinguished French publicist has re-

cently done us the honor to characterize it as the
“ Americanizing of morals.” “ Aryans and Semites,

de-Christianized Christians and de Judaized Jews,” he

says, “ are practically reverting to a sort of uncon-

scious Paganism.” {Israel Among the Nations^ p. 69.)
“What the Christian spirit has to battle against is

not so much the new science or the modern spirit,
with its confused aspirations, as the old Pagan in-

stincts, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life once

more unchained by the centuries.” (Ibid., p. 70.)
Christian principles, clearly enunciated and vigor-

ously insisted upon, overthrew the old Paganism, and

they alone at the present day can prevent the tide of

civilization from ebbing back into the ancient sea of

iniquity. Make Christianity creedless, eliminate from
it all dogmatic teaching, and it will cease to be a ra-

tional religion and become but an empty emotion or a

vanishing sentiment.

I was right, therefore, and perfectly logical in giv-

ing so much prominence to the search for the revealed

doctrines which lie at the basis of Christianity. These

are the foundation upon which Christian morality

rests. If I could once And them, if I could once cer-

tainly know what to believe^ it would be very easy for

me to know what to do.
I return now from my digression to the point where

I left ofl.

Not only was I trying to And out what truths Christ

had revealed for the salvation of men, but it will be

observed that I was all along in my investigation try-
ing to And some competent authority to teach them to

me. Christ’s revelation, as I have said, was not and

could not be a mere matter of every man’s opinion. It

was an objective truth which must be in existence

somewhere, else the purpose of the revelation has failed.

Even supposing that truth was in the Bible, I was

convinced, for the reasons which I have given, that I

could by no means be sure of flnding it there. Hardly



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, 19

two persons who search the Scriptures find the same

thing.

Now, in seeking for and confidently expecting to

find an authority, I was doing nothing unreason-

able. We learn almost everything from authority.
Why should the vital matter of religion be an excep-
tion ? In fact, it is not. For those who pretend to

get their religion from the Bible, the Bible is an au-

thority, although speechless and abused. Even these,

as I have shown, in reality are taught by living au-

thorities of one kind or another.

Besides, if one fact is clear from the New Testa-
ment, regarded simply as the authentic history of our

Lord ^s life and words, it is that He Himself taught as
one having authority, and in time formed a body of

men to whom He committed His entire doctrine with
the command to teach it to all men.

‘
‘ Go and teach all

things whatsoever I have commanded you.’* He wrote
nothing except a word in the forgetting sands at Hia

feet, as the adulterous woman stood before Him.
Neither did He command His Apostles to write any-
thing; but He taught, and He commanded them to
teach after Him. What they were to teach was His
revelation : ' All things whatsoever I have heard of

My Father I have made known to you.” The things
which the counsels of My Father decreed to make
known to men, these I have declared to you. They

are the words of life, go and teach them, not to your

own generation alone, but to all future generations as

well. “I am with you all days, even to the consum-
mation of the world.” It is not unreasonable, there-

fore, to expect to find that authoritative teacher

somewhere in the world to-day.

I say I was seeking a competent authority. To

none other would I submit myself. Now the first and
obvious requisite of a competent authority is that it

shall be consistent in its teachings. Unless it is con-

sistent it is merely guessing. That necessary char-

acteristic at once ruled out the Episcopal Church, the

teachers of which as I have shown are as the builders

of Babel, no man speaking the same language as his
neighbor. And it ruled out the sects as well, which
have been continuously engaged since they began in



WHY I AM A CATHOLIO.2e

splitting up into smaller bodies over rocks of disa-

greements, or in revising their Creeds or Confessions

to keep them up to date, declaring thereby that they

were wrong in the past, and admitting by implication

that they are probably wrong in the present.

This weakness of inconsistency is inherent in the

very nature of human institutions. History proves
nothing more certainly. No merely human authority,
therefore, is competent to teach revealed Christian

truth. Therefore the competent authority I was

searching for, if it exists, must be Divine] if Divine,

thpn unerring in its teaching.

This requirement of inerrancy arises not only from

the necessity of consistency in the teaching, but it

springs out of the very nature of the truth to be

taught. As I have already said, we get almost all

our knowledge, especially the beginning of it from au-

thority. Later on, as our minds grow, we can verify

much of this knowledge for ourselves, and seeing its

truth, we can then throw off the authority upon which

we first accepted it.

Not so is it with Christ’s teachings. His revelation

was supernatural, therefore, not truth of which the

human reason can ever fully see the intrinsic verity.

No amount of thinking or reasoning, for instance, will
enable us to see that there are three Persons in God,

or that there are two natures in Christ; that there

are Sacraments or that there is a life of grace. We
do not know these things and we never can know

them. We believe them; that is to say, ultimately,
our motive for accepting them is authority. Our

reason has to deal not with their truth, of which it is

no capable judge, but with the veracity and

competency of an authority who proposes them to us.

As we accept Christ’s revealed teaching on author-

ity, and as that teaching is by its very nature beyond

the sphere of reason, it follows that we can never

reach a time, as we may in the case of natural knowl-
edge, when we shall see it to be true, and be able to

dispense with the authority upon which we first ac-

cepted it. Think a moment and you will see this to be

true. Reject your authority for accepting the re-



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC. 21

vealed truths and at once you are unable to defend

your further belief in them. Authority must abide.

Now, evidently the only authority which is compe-

tent to teach revealed truth to us is God, because He
alone knows it. Whether He speaks to us directly,
as in Christ, or indirectly, through His ministers; He
speaks unerringly. So Christ spoke unerringly, and

when He commanded His Apostles to teach all He
had taught them, to teach His truth. He gave them
by implication that infallibility in their office without

which they would have been merely human teachers,

and therefore utterly incompetent to carry out the

command which He had laid upon them.
From both directions, therefore, the conclusion was

the same. The only competent authority to which I

could or would submit myself must be infallible.

When I reached this stage I was not far from home.
I looked about me and found only one body in the
world which even claimed to teach Christ’s revelation

infallibly. That was the Catholic Church. It only re-

mained for me to test her claim.
It has always seemed to me that infallibility is, in

the way in which I have pointed out, necessarily
bound up with the idea of revelation. Nothing but an

infallible custodian can possibly preserve revealed

truth. Human reason alone being incompetent to
deal adequately with it, will inevitably end by reject-

ing it on the ground of its incomprehensibility. Look

around you and observe how those who deny infalli-
bility are also gradually denying revelation. They

are only logical; without an infallible authority there

is no good reason for believing in revealed doctrine at

all. On the one hand, then, an infallible authority is
necessary: on the other the Catholic Church alone

claims to be that authority. The claim answers to

the necessity; therefore the Church is infallible.

To this all but conclusive antecedent presumption

in her favor, add the fact that she has always claimed

infallibility; then test this claim by history. Although

she has been defining doctrines for nineteen hundred

years, no man has yet been able to point out one in-
stance in which she has contradicted herself in her



23 WHY I AM A CATHOhIO,

dogmatic teaching. Do you think this doctrinal con-
sistency is humanly possible when three hundred
years have been abundantly sufficient for all sorts of

contradictions everywhere else ?

Look in the Scriptures and you see my line of reas-
oning verified. In the Old Dispensation, God the
Father spoke by the Prophets, who, speaking in His

name were therefore infallible. Then God the Son
spoke in His Own Person to the Apostles again in-
fallibly. Are we who are in a fuller, more perfect
dispensation than were the Jews of old, bereft of God's

living voice and unerring teaching ? No; when Our
Blessed Lord ascended on high to His Father He
sent down to His Church the Holy Ghost, the Third
Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, to preserve the

Revelation which He had made to men, and to per-
petuate the mission which He had inaugurated. “I
will ask the Father and He will give you another Par-
aclete, that He may abide with you forever, the spirit
of truth whom the world cannot receive because it
seeth Him not or knoweth Him; but you shall know
Him because He shall abide with you and shall he in
you,^^ (S. John. xiv. 16, 17). “The Paraclete the Holy

Ghost whom the Father will send in My name. He will
teach you all things and bring all things to your mind

whatsoever I shall have said to you." (v. 26). When
“all things" shall have been called to their minds by

God the Holy Ghost, the Apostles and their suc-

cessors can teach them as they were commanded to

do; not till then.

Accepting then this promise of the abiding presence

of the Holy Ghost within her, by God's grace I be-

lieved in the Holy Roman Catholic Church. With the
certainty of faith, I could say my Creed as alone a
Catholic can say it, “ I believe in God; I believe in Je-

sus Christ His Son; I believe in the Holy Ghost, and I

believe in the Holy Catholic Church."

That one fact of the infallibility determined, I had

only to go to the Church and ask to be taught, cer-

tain that she would teach me Christ's full revelation
and not the doctrines of men; for He had said to His



WHY I AM A CATHOLIC, OJ

Church : “He that heareth you heareth Me.
’

^
(S^ Luke

X. 16
)

Here was a simple, rational way of learning the
Christian religion. Its very simplicity and applica-

bility to all persons and times and places were a

strong confirmation of its correctness.

I have detained you too long already, and yet I

have given you only the general trend of the reasons

why I am a Catholic; the details which fortify the
argument, I have largely left out. Some such broad

argument as I have given must, it seems to me, have

been intended by our Divine Lord to bring man to His
fold. As St. Ambrose says, God never intended to
save his people by dialectics. Neither did He mean
to save them by an accumulation of texts. Our Lord

taught the people His truth. He commanded His
Apostes to teachii] they and their successors taught it

and are teaching it to this day as they were told to do.

The only question to be determined by an inquirer

after truth is their right to teach. In proof of that

there is besides the general argument I have given,

the wonderful fact of the Church’s existence. She

looks the world in the face and speaks out, and her

features and her voice are not of those of one born of

earth.

The Catholic Church is her own greatest witness.
She is too obvious in the world not to be seen. She is

a city on the hill, that has strengthened the bolts of

her gates and is a unit in herself and at peace. She

is everywhere over the face of the earth. Men can-
not close their eyes to her; her voice is always in

their ears. She lifts the symbol of the Son of Man on
high, and she never ceases to proclaim aloud her

teaching in unhesitating accents. She is too great to

be explained away by sophistries. Men can find no
adequate cause for her being, her might, her great-

ness, but that which she herself gives, that she is the

work of Jesus Christ, Who poured His blood into her
veins, and gave His power into her hands, and bade

her go forth in His name and be His witness, and
teach and do good. Her enduring life is the breath
of the Holy Spirit within her. She has scattered too



24 WHT I AM A CATHOLIC,

many blessings over this sorrowing earth and given
it too many holy men and women in every age to be
other than the Spouse of the King and the mother of

the children of God.

Catholic Truth Society, Room 37, Flood Buildino.

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