Catholic Inquiry -- essentially the kindergarten of the Catholicizing process -- has been reasonably futile for me, I'm afraid. It's not as though I haven't found the sessions sporadically appealing, or that I haven't been educated about particulars of the Catholic faith; it's just that the class is taking a more "this is what Catholics believe" methodology than a "this is why Catholics believe what they believe" approach, and this does not help me make a resolved pro or con decision on me ever becoming Catholic. Further, the underlying question of my nonbelief -- essentially, "What right do Juan Pablo and his Spanish friends1 have to dictate the beliefs of Christianity?" -- has never2 been discussed except in the vaguest of terms. (Vaguest of terms = "Well, Peter was the first Pope, and, you know, there's this unbroken line, this line, from Peter of Popes to John Paul, and so...what was the question again?")3
I cite this because when one considers it, there's only one question separating Catholics from Protestants: "Does the Catholic Church have the right to dictate the dogma of Christians without exception4?" Seriously, that's it: Everything else in Catholicism proceeds from that question. Example: Let's say you're a Catholic. (No, no, even better: Let's say you're a Hispanic Catholic.) You have some doubts about the Immaculate Conception of Maria. You go visit Padre Gonzalez, and you say, "Padre, I am not sure I believe in the Immaculate Conception of Maria, which by the way is talking about Maria being born and not Jesus' birth, as you certainly know, being a Padre." And Padre Gonzalez says, "Yes, Hermana, I was aware that the Immaculate Conception was about Maria being born without sin, and also I can tell you why the Catholic Church believes that she was born without sin." And so Padre Gonzalez goes into a speech about how...well, I don't know, because I don't know why the Church believes that. Something about capital-T Tradition, no doubt. Anyway, so you've listened to the extemporized homily, and you say to Padre Gonzalez, "Padre, I still don't believe in the Immaculate Conception of Maria." And then Padre says, "Yes, Hermana, you do." And you go, "Huh?" And Padre says, "Remember? When you became a Catholic, you said that you were accepting the authority of the Church in matters of dogma, and the Church believes in the Immaculate Conception, and so thus so do you, or you are not truly a Catholic."5 And you go, "Oh."
Exactly. If you are a Catholic wannabe, you may have an intellectual curiosity that needs to be satisfied on issues of faith -- you may wish to know why the Catholic Church believes what it believes -- but honestly, as a Catholic wannabe, it doesn't do much good6 to consider the differences between transubstantiation and representation, or the love of Maria, or whatever dogmatic issue that you may disagree with the Catholic Church on, because (a) those beliefs won't bring you one millimeter closer to becoming Catholic if you won't differ to Catholic authority, and corollaryly (b) if you differ to Catholic authority, you won't have to fret about those beliefs. In fact, the only way that one can argue that looking at these "auxiliary issues" is at all valuable is if discovering that the Church is right on these issues brings you closer to admitting that the Church is right on everything, and that's spurious logic; there is a 40-kilometer chasm between believing that the Catholic Church is right about most everything dogmatically and believing that the Catholic Church is right about everything dogmatically.
Thus, that is my new and only Catholicism focus: I need to understand why there is a belief in the infallibility of the Catholic Church regarding issues of faith. There is only that one question.
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1 Hi. I am quite aware the the Pope is Polish, but I think Pope Juan Pablo is a superior identifier. Also, I know that the Vatican is not Spanish. Okay? Okay.
2 Well, until a guest speaker spoke on it last night, which is why I’m writing on this today.
3 That is slightly unfair and cruel; no one at Inquiry has been that incoherent.
4 By without exception, I do not mean that the Catholic Church must dictate all of a Christian's personal dogma; I mean that all the dogma that the Church does dictate must be followed by every Christian.
5 Padre Gonzalez is a bit blunt, but he is speaking the truth, I think.
6 I mean good in the getting-closer-to-deciding-whether-or-not-to-self-Catholicize way, not good in the learning-more-about-the-beliefs-of-the-denomination-that-your-faith-is-born-from way.
i sincerely do not know what you are doing here. are you lost? were you
looking for your delicate calico cat, and did you follow her up two flights of stairs
to this room? she is not here. she was here, yes. we gave her a warm bowl of milk, we talked with her about campaign finance reform for a time, and then she bid us good day. i believe she was
going to the post office two blocks down, but i don't quite recall.
for surely you did
not find your way from prinsiana, the least traveled site on
the internet. if you did, though, perhaps you are looking for humor. perhaps you are looking for profundity. perhaps you are looking for answers.
i'm sorry, but you shall go naught-for-three.
