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Why I Am Catholic

Father Brown, the heroic Catholic priest who runs this website and offers the Traditional Latin
Mass in Elgin, Illinois, asked me to write a few things for his site. He said that I write well. After
my ego deflated from his kind comment I decided to help out in my small, insignificant way. I
thought I would begin by telling the readers why I am Catholic.

First, I use the term "heroic" to define Fr. Brown and all other such priests because this small
cadre of priests and religious who hold the true Catholic faith, "complete and undefiled," are a
heroic group. They keep that faith against all odds and against all enemies. The latter is a
formidable force that proceeds from the depths of hell to abolish and destroy the true faith of
Christ. Therefore, defenders of our Catholic faith are heroic. I can only pray for strength and
resolve when I am called each day to be "heroic." They, as well as the Saints in Heaven, must be
our models as human men, while Christ remains always our standard.

I'm a cradle Catholic. I give thanks to my mother and father for bringing me to the true Church,
and to Mr. and Mrs. George Murphy, who agreed to be my godparents. I appreciate their
boundless charity to my soul for it set me, as a mewling infant, on the path toward salvation.
While they did their job I must continue to do mine for the day of my salvation. And when I pray,
which too often is too infrequent, I remember their kind and loving souls to our Lord. My earnest
hope is they have already found favor and comfort in Heaven. If not, and bound in Purgatory, my
job in part is to pray for them.

I'm Catholic because I can be nothing else. Perhaps I'm not a great Catholic, but still I profess the
faith of Christ in Holy Mother Church, through the Chair of Peter to whom He gave the keys of
Heaven. What Peter and his priests bind on earth are bound in Heaven; what is loosed on earth is
loosed in Heaven. I need much loosening because, even though I am Catholic, I remain a
grievous sinner. St. Paul speaks so eloquently for me, and for most of us I’m sure, when he
complains in Romans 7. xiv-xxv, and most specifically in xix: “For the good which I will, I do
not: but the evil which I will not, that I do.” Wow, what honesty!

Still, I'm Catholic, no matter the evil I do but will not. Hey, I said "Catholic," not "perfect." As a
Catholic, I struggle through the rifts and rills of life, slog through the bitter marshes of sin, climb
the handholds of daunting mountains toward my goal- our goal- salvation...Heaven...living with
the Lord forever. Our Catechism informs us: “Why did God make me?”; “God made me to know
Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the world
to come.”

Sounds easy, doesn’t it? For modern man, it’s still too hard. Being a child-like idiot, requiring
things to be handed to him for which he does little work, modern man wants an even easier road
to salvation.

Modern man wants to "earnestly" believe in something easier to make the job of faith easier by
perching on the limb of convenience and easy salvation. You know, shaking the tambourines of
those various sects, "religions," "spiritual beliefs" that promise an easier salvation because their
god is a god of love and smiles...a nice guy god to offset the stereotypically inaccurate dour God
of Christianity. Our God, they say stupidly, is a God of anger, violence and revenge. Why work
towards salvation with stress and fear? All you have to do is "envision" god in the image you
desire to make the long journey toward Heaven so much easier. Being good is being saved...or as
the Protestants might claim..."once confessed always saved."
But beware of the God you worship; for all gods of the enemies of God are devils, and in
worshiping them, the “heaven” which you seek is actually hell. Protestants are always hectoring
Catholics on this point, while stupidly sliding into the same abyss for which, they claim, we are
destined.

Catholics, however, know the truth. We can be saved but not by guarantees from our subjective
belief—our individual assent---in Him. There is something else, something important. What is it?

Let’s just call it doing the Will of God. And where do we find that Will? In the Church of the
Apostles whose authority came from Christ and continues uninterrupted through the ages. The
Holy Catholic Church!! We know from whence we spring. The Protestants have no clue, but use
fable, hair-splitting, and denial to cobble bits and pieces of truth into a gross lie. Truth used
speciously, and partly, to create a new truth, must remain a lie. If they are liars, they must
therefore serve that from which all lies spring. It is NOT Christ, NOT the Church….but the father
of all lies: satan.

Well, I'm Catholic, not a fool. So, I need guidance for my soul. If I were to read and cobble my
own interpretations of His Word, I would fall immediately and deeply into error and heresy. I
would be squirming in theological molasses from which there is no escape. Such private
interpretation would condemn me by its very nature of subjectivity. It’s the nature of the man of
flesh to be more like God so we make Him more like us. We need so much more than that gross
reductionism.

I look to the Timeless Church for the truth… and find it, unlike Protestants who always seem to
stumble in their darkness, switching on what seems to be a light, then finding themselves, yet
again, wandering within another “church” or “denomination.” When the heathen, communist Mao
Zedong proclaimed in the “cultural revolution” in Communist China, “let a thousand flowers
bloom,” we hear a resonation in a satanic cry among Protestants to “let a thousand denominations
bloom.” Where will these madmen stop in their infamy?

I listen to the words of our ancients, the fathers, martyrs, saints, apostles, disciples and the army
of Christ who, preceding me, suffered and bled with Christ on their individual crosses. His yoke
is light, but the pain from the hatred of the world against us and our Lord is incredible. Only the
strong can endure. I am weak; my faith strengthens me!!

The faithless weak slide off into sects, errors, lies, and deceptions that pretend that all men are
good, all men strive toward god in their own way that is as valid as any other. Horsefeathers!!! In
their wretched stiff-necked nature, they contend to “let a thousand denominations bloom.”
Splitting Christ, His Word, the Holy Ghost, as if they were bread loaves to be consumed. Christ is
the bread of life: One Christ; One Church; One Word…..and it sure ain’t in the stink weeds of the
nefarious blooms of infernal Protestantism!

I am too weak, I guess, to even be a Protestant, who appears to be a man that can stand before
God and say “I will not serve!” I’m too weak, too frightened to challenge the Almighty in such a
way. Plus, I love my Father and would not coherently and consciously challenge His Authority!

I also learn from experience. A third of the angels fell because of such a belief of “non serviam.”
I am at a loss to figure out the audacity and rebelliousness needed for men, Protestants and others
who should know better, who do not learn from salvation history, but continue to make the same
mistakes time and time again, who tumble like the fallen angels into the pit of Gehenna.
George Santayana, the Spanish philosopher and agnostic, said that those who are ignorant of
history are condemned to repeat it. While the fall of angels is unrepeatable the continuous fall of
man is a daily occurrence.

Let me ask you this: If you know you will fall each day, would you prefer a safety net or would
you desire to take your chances with an endless abyss? The Catholic Church is my safety net. The
Protestant has no church and therefore is doomed to fall into the abyss. Like dead leaves blown
about in fall, their days are numbered and their resting place nearly certain.

I am Catholic because I worship God in fear and trembling. I am Catholic because I was born to
fight….for Him, for His Church. I am Catholic because I will serve!

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