Why I am a Catholic

New York Times Blog ^ | 10/28/2014 | Ross Douthat

[edwinland]

Of all the columns I imagined writing when I started out at this job, it’s safe to say that Sunday’s piece, in which I suggested that conservative Catholics should “resist” their pope if he seems intent on leading the church off a doctrinal precipice, was not one of them. So it’s worth saying something briefly about my own personal religious perspective on the church to which I belong.

I am a Catholic for various contingent reasons (this is as true of converts as of anyone else), but on a conscious level it’s because I am a mostly-faithful Christian who is mostly convinced that Roman Catholicism is the expression of Christianity that has kept faith most fully with the early church and the words of Jesus of Nazareth... A point that Cardinal George Pell[made] ... — that the search for authority in Christianity began not with pre-emptive submission to an established hierarchy, but with early Christians who “wanted to know whether the teachings of their bishops and priests were in conformity with what Christ taught” — is crucial to my own understanding of the reasons to be Catholic: I believe in papal authority, the value of the papal office, because I think that office has played a demonstrable role in maintaining the faith’s continuity, coherence and fidelity across two thousand years of human history. It’s that role and that record, complicated and checkered as it is, that makes the doctrine of papal infallibility plausible to me ... and indeed if you asked me to write a long defense of “infallibility” as a concept I’m sure I’d end up caveating it ... The language that I think the historical record supports is more like impressive continuity on the most important questions.

One of those important questions is the nature of marriage ...

[edwinland]

Thanks for all the links!!!

[edwinland]

Yashua. All else falls into place.

I think you and I and the author of this article are all in deep agreement on this essential point, as you state it. In fact, I think that's what the author is saying led him to the Catholic Church. A couple of the things that fell in place for him are:

"I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it."

"Whosoever puts away his wife, and marries another, commits adultery: and whosoever marries her that is put away from her husband commits adultery."