Catholic is Not Christian?

I was cleaning my cat’s litter box this morning and it occurred to me that I hadn’t cleaned the blog’s spam trap recently. Just like my cat’s litter box, without regular cleaning, it gets pretty nasty and smelly in there. So equipped with surgical mask and asbestos gloves, I opened the lid and starting scooping. There were the usual incendiary comments begging for a click:

To the site admins reanidg [sic] this comment, Yeah figures, my comment must be approved by the site admins before it will appear publicly, sounds like the work of a good communist, controlling the media so any bad comments do not get past the censors to make an opinion heard.

Like any good communist censor, I ash-canned those. The rest of what I found was the usual spambot generated stuff—sometimes the spambots offer a more cogent remark than anything in the actual post, but never mind—today I found this little item from “Maria”:

Catholic is not Christian. Catholicism leads to eternal tornmet [sic] in hell, because catholicism teaches works for salvation, and that is a false gospel of works (Galatians 1:6-9) that is against JESUS’S free gift of salvation! And catholicism will not give anyone a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with Jesus!

And it goes on. Now regardless of whether “Maria” is a spambot or not, I still thought this was worth addressing, because this is something I hear all the time. In fact, I used to say the same thing myself…

First, a little background is in order. My parents are simple, devout, Roman Catholics (hereafter “RC”). Their faith is rock-solid and unshakable. Both are well into their eighth decade of life, but you would be hard-pressed to get an intelligible answer from them as to why their faith is so strong. Nevertheless, they saw to it that my brothers and I received a RC education, and attended Mass regularly.

Now, speaking for myself, I like many cradle RC’s my age, grew up in the netherworld between the momentous Second Vatican Council and it’s often maladroit implementation. In my case, this meant a decline in the number of consecrated religious (brothers, priests, and nuns) as school teachers, lax, often perfunctory classes in the faith, strange deviations in liturgy, and an overall de-emphasis of the sacraments.

Despite my parents’ best efforts, many years attending parochial school and high school, I can say categorically that I was never properly catechized in my faith. I’ve heard much the same complaint from other RC’s my age. It is a widespread phenomenon and a problem from which the Church is still recovering. Because of my poor catechesis, I could never defend myself against the type of claims like those “Maria” makes above. Worse than that, I came to believe them.

When I got to college, I fell away from my faith completely but I refuse to attribute this falling away to my upbringing, education, or lack thereof. I’ve come to realize that it’s not uncommon for young people to experience seasons of disillusionment with the old norms, and embark on an exploration of their new-found freedom which often results in the turning away from the faith of their fathers.

Then, quite out-of-the-blue, during the summer before sophomore year, I attended a service at a little Assembly of God church in Niles, Michigan where I had what I believe was a real “conversion experience.” I heard the gospel preached in the simple, unadulterated style that one typically hears in Evangelical Protestant (hereafter “EP”) churches. To say it changed my life would be an understatement. Returning to college, I immediately became involved with a dynamic Pentecostal campus ministry. For various and sundry reasons, my association with them ended in a bitter fashion upon graduation from college. My experience left me resentful toward God and distrustful of religion in general, but that’s another story. Suffice to say it was a long time before I set foot in a church again. But long before I did, God had begun his reclamation project on the ruins of my faith.

When a man is starving, you don’t feed him steak. You give him gruel. Then maybe a little soup. And so it was for my starving soul. I was fed by a good southern pastor who broadcast his little church’s services on cable TV. He gave his flock just the basics. I never met the man and though he’ll never know this side of the grave, he was the one who encouraged me to go back to church. When I finally did, I ended up with a bunch of good, conservative Presbyterians.

They were the first to give me a little solid meat, well, let’s say, pate. Slowly though, I began to realize that my hunger could only be satisfied by the sacramental life of my true spiritual home, the Roman Catholic Church. When I wrote the elders my formal letter resigning membership in the church, and that I was returning to the Catholic Church, they gave me their gracious blessing and admonished me to keep seeking God. They are dear to me still.

Like the prodigal, I returned to my Father’s house, but it was an uneasy homecoming. I still had some of the old erroneous understandings of Church doctrine lodged deep in my soul. Nevertheless, as I began to investigate the matter with an open mind and honest heart, I saw the great depth of riches contained in the treasury of the Church.

Things began to make sense for the first time in my life. I’ve come to realize that two millennia of apostolic teaching, the thinking of the great fathers of the Church, the canon of the Bible, and most important of all, the spiritual nourishment of the sacraments, give the surest help to stumbling pilgrims as they navigate this life toward their heavenly home. I would encourage the “Maria’s” of this world to pick up a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to learn what the Church really teaches, before holding forth in their ignorance. I’m sure they’ll be surprised by what they read.

In my fifty-one years on this planet I have learned a lot about the life of faith, maybe because as a spiritual traveler I’ve gone places others haven’t, but there is one thing I’ve learned to abhor, and that is when one Christian points at another and says, “You’re no real Christian.” We are all guilty of it, but we would do well to remember that God alone sees our souls. God alone will judges the intentions of our hearts. His is the last Word on who is or isn’t one of His own.

I personally believe that the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches have within them the fullness of God’s revelation. But I can also say with joy that I have met many good Christian brothers and sisters in my travels; from the Apostolic Church of God in Christ on the north side of Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Pentecostal church in Birmingham, Alabama, to the Byzantine Catholic church in Homer Glen, Illinois, the Body of Christ has many members!