Radio Replies Volume One: Truth of Christianity

176. Most people who are Christians cannot give a valid reason for their faith. Will you give me a valid reason for your faith?

Historically, it is certain that Christ really lived, really claimed to be God, proved that claim by His supreme command over the laws of nature established by God, taught the Christian religion, and obliged man to accept that religion.

Philosophically, Christianity alone gives an adequate solution and explanation of the origin, condition, and purpose of the human race.

Religiously, it infinitely surpasses all other forms of religion, and alone completely responds to the innate religious tendencies of man.

Theologically, I am a Christian because God has given me the grace to perceive the truth of Christianity, and to embrace it.

Morally, I am obliged in strict justice to accept a religion specified and imposed by Almighty God.

177. Christ did not intend His religion for you. He intended it for the Jews only.

Christ was fully aware of the prophecy of Isaiah II., 2, that all nations would be called to His Church. He did intend that His doctrines should be preached to the Jews first, and only afterwards to the Gentiles, and for this reason He told His disciples not to preach it to the Gentiles during the period reserved to the Jews. But in St. Matt. XVIII., 19, Christ Himself tells the Apostles to "Go, teach all nations."

178. If acceptance of Christianity be necessary for salvation, what of those who lived before Christ?

The merits and grace of Christ were applied by God to men of goodwill in anticipation of His death on the Cross. God, in His eternity, is not conditioned by time, and men could benefit by the death of Christ just as they can make use of an inheritance which is absolutely certain to be given to them in due time. The merits of Christ were applied to Jews of goodwill in virtue of their faith in a Redeemer to come. Those who through no fault of their own did not know of a Redeemer to come were saved if they obeyed the natural dictates of their conscience, and repented of their failings. Every single human being has the moral standard that what is apprehended to be morally good must be done, whilst moral evil must be avoided.

179. If Christianity taught people to be so good, why did the early Christians meet with nothing but persecution?

The more evil a man is, the more he resents the goodness of others. Every good man is a living condemnation of the conduct of evil men. The Jews could not point to a single sin in Christ, yet they crucified Him. And Christ said, "The servant is not above his master. As they have persecuted Me, they will persecute you." The quickest road to unpopularity is to refuse to do evil with the majority. The world has no hatred of its own, but the enemies of worldliness it hates. The early Jews and Romans hated Christianity, for both peoples feared that it would interfere with their comfort. Today the Catholic Church enjoys this inheritance of antagonism as does no other religion.

180. Does not Christianity today differ vastly from the religion Christ preached?

Outside the Catholic Church, yes. But in the Catholic Church the exact religion of Christ has come down to us in virtue of Christ's promise to be with His Church all days till the end of the world. This assertion will be justified in a later section.

181. Have not downright absurdities been tagged on to the teachings of Jesus?

They have—but not by the Catholic Church. And remember that greater absurdities still have been put forward by pretended human reasoning.

182. Early Christianity boasted many miracles; Christianity can boast none today!

God has never ceased to perform miracles in favor of true Christianity, but it is not necessary that so many should occur today. More frequent miracles were necessary in the early Church to secure its rapid propagation. But the Catholic Church is now firmly established. Read a little history, note all the forces employed against the Church during the centuries, and then tell me whether it is not a standing miracle to find that Church still existing with undiminished vitality and able to claim over 400 million adherents. On this subject of miracles, also, consult Nos. 95-103.

Yes. It has benefited in a thousand different ways. Christianity has elevated men's thoughts to a higher level, directed men's wills to a greater good, and has indirectly affected their well-being even in this world in almost every department of life. If the world is less happy today than in years past, it is because, whilst men still profess to be Christian, they are less willing to behave as Christians and to put their principles into practice. Christianity does not force men to be good in spite of themselves. But if men can be really miserable only by forsaking Christian principles, it shows that Christianity practiced is very likely the one true remedy. Let all men live up to Christian principles, and then if the world is not better, you can blame Christianity.

184. Christian Churches are everywhere, yet misery and distress get worse all over the world!

The growth of misery and distress is not due to the multiplication of Churches. Many professing Christian Churches, of course, do not stand firmly for the true principles of Christ. And even the growth of the Catholic Church cannot influence much those who will not submit to her laws. As the Church grows, so does population, and with population, evil practices. Man is endowed with intelligence, and this gives him an uncanny power of inventing new modes of iniquity which animals could not suspect. Thus we have a rotten Press, the propagation of birth-control, Godless education, and what-not. The mystery is, not that we have so many troubles, but that the distress is not greater than it is. We can account for it only by God's mercy, and by the fact that the Church does make some reparation to Him in the name of mankind. If mankind got all it really deserves, you would have something to write about!

Another little matter to remember is that Christianity is not to rid the world of trouble and distress, but to save souls from having to endure these things in the next life. Christianity enables people to bear gladly those sufferings which are permitted by God for their greater sanctification, or as an expiation of their past sins. Also many have been brought to God by suffering who have believed in their self-sufficient health and strength that they could manage quite well without Him. Consider once more the principles given in the replies 13-24.

185. There are millions belonging to other religions. Are we Christians superior to them?

At least, Christianity is the superior religion in historical foundation, reasonableness, and in loftiness of teaching and destiny. 186. They think we are wrong as we think they are. May not Christianity be wrong, and some other religion right?

There is no possibility of that. There is a chance that a man who has not studied the solid evidence for Christianity might become flurried and doubtful in the presence of rival and confident claims. But his doubts would be due to defective information. Again, the fact that a man believes a religion true does not prove it right. It only proves that he thinks it right. He is right who can prove his belief to be solidly grounded. A comparative study of religions proves that Christianity alone has demonstrative evidence of its divine origin. However lofty the doctrines of other religions, they prove to be man-made doctrines, or else they are traced to the influence of primitive or later revelations of God, revelations which legitimately end in the Catholic Church, and not in any other religion.

The more you learn about diverse opinions, the more you will wonder at such diversity. The more you learn about the foundations of Christianity, the more you will wonder that men do not advert to its solidity.

188. Is it not likely that the worship of the sun-gods and earth-gods was replaced by the milder form of the sacrifice of Christ-god, and that Christianity will also yield place to a more ethical system?

It is absurd and quite unhistorical to maintain the derivation of the divinely revealed worship of the true and Infinite God, given precisely to correct the errors of men, from the humanly invented worship of sun-gods and earth-gods. Also human reason will never invent a more ethical system than that prescribed for all men by the Author of all justice. It is a little bit early to talk of a more ethical system when men cannot even live up to the ethics of present Catholicity. The Catholic Church tells her children to avoid sin as a very plague; to be strictly temperate, chaste, and pure; to practice humility, yet to possess the courage of the Saints in resisting all evil inclinations and overcoming obstacles to their sanctification; to be strictly just and truthful in their relations both with God and their fellow men; to be faithful for life in the duties of marriage; to love and worship God because He is God, and not merely because, and as long as they feel like doing it. Catholic ethics perfect all that is noblest in man, and culminates in that supreme charity which thinks no evil and much less utters it. When men have come to this standard, then it will be time to speak of a more ethical system. But when they do attain it, their intelligence will be so unclouded by the influence of lower passions that they will see clearly that they have attained the full truth. To Catholics, of course, all this is clear by the very gift of faith.

Rev. Dr. Leslie Rumble, M.S.C.

"I was brought up as a Protestant, probably with more inherited prejudices than most non-Catholics of these days. My parents were Anglican and taught me the Angelican faith. My 'broad-minded' protestant teachers taught me to dislike the Catholic Church intensely. I later tried Protestantism in various other forms, and it is some thirty years since, in God's providence, I became a Catholic. As for the 'open, free, sincere worship' of a Protestant Church, I tasted it, but for me it proved in the end to be not only open, but empty; it was altogether too free from God's prescriptions."

Eventually, Leslie became a priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

In 1928, Fr. Rumble began a one-hour 'Question Box' program on 2SM Sydney, N.S.W. radio on Sunday evenings that was heard all over Australia and New Zealand. For five years he answered questions on every subject imaginable that had been written to him from all over that part of the globe. His first show began with a classic introduction:

"Good evening, listeners all. For some time I have been promising to give a session dealing with questions of religion and morality, in which the listeners themselves should decide what is of interest to them. Such a session will commence next Sunday evening, and I invite you to send in any questions you wish on these subjects . . . So now I invite you, non-Catholics above all, to send in any questions you wish on religion, or morality, or the Catholic Church, and I shall explain exactly the Catholic position, and give the reasons for it. In fact I almost demand those questions. Many hard things have been said, and are still being said, about the Catholic Church, though no criminal, has been so abused, that she has a right to be heard. I do not ask that you give your name and address. A nom de plume will do. Call yourself Voltaire, Confucius, X.Y.Z., what you like, so long as you give indication enough to recognize your answer."

"By the summer of 1937, the first edition of Radio Replies was already in print in Australia, financed by Rt. Rev. Monsignor James Meany, P.P. - the director of Station 2SM of whom I am greatly indebted."

"I have often been mistaken, as most men at times. And it is precisely to make sure that I will not be mistaken in the supremely important matter of religion that I cling to a Church which cannot be mistaken, but must be right where I might be wrong. God knew that so many sincere men would make mistakes that He deliberately established an infallible Church to preserve them from error where it was most important that they should not go wrong."

Rev. Charles Mortimer Carty

I broadcast my radio program, the Catholic Radio Hour, from St. Paul, Minnesota.

I was also carrying on as a Catholic Campaigner for Christ, the Apostolate to the man in the street through the medium of my trailer and loud-speaking system. In the distribution of pamphlets and books on the Catholic Faith, Radio Replies proved the most talked of book carried in my trailer display of Catholic literature. As many of us street preachers have learned, it is not so much what you say over the microphone in answer to questions from open air listeners, but what you get into their hands to read. The questions Fr. Rumble had to answer on the other side of the planet are same the questions I had to answer before friendly and hostile audiences throughout my summer campaign."

I realized that this priest in Australia was doing exactly the same work I was doing here in St. Paul. Because of the success of his book, plus the delay in getting copies from Sydney and the prohibitive cost of the book on this side of the universe, I got in contact with him to publish a cheap American edition.

It doesn't take long for the imagination to start thinking about how much we could actually do. We began the Radio Replies Press Society Publishing Company, finished the American edition of what was to be the first volume of Radio Replies, recieved the necessary imprimatur, and Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen agreed to write a preface. About a year after the publication of the first edition in Australia, we had the American edition out and in people's hands.

The book turned into a phenomena. Letters began pouring into my office from every corner of the United States; Protestant Publishing Houses are requesting copies for distribution to Protestant Seminaries; a few Catholic Seminaries have adopted it as an official textbook - and I had still never met Dr. Rumble in person.

To keep a long story short, we finally got a chance to meet, published volumes two and three of Radio Replies, printed a set of ten booklets on subjects people most often asked about, and a few other pamphlets on subjects of interest to us.

Fr. Carty died on May 22, 1964 in Connecticut.

"Firstly, since God is the Author of all truth, nothing that is definitely true can every really contradict anything else that is definitely true. Secondly, the Catholic Church is definitely true. It therefore follows that no objection or difficulty, whether drawn from history, Scripture, science, or philosophy, can provide a valid argument against the truth of the Catholic religion."

Biographies compiled from the introductions to Radio Replies, volumes 1, 2 and 3.

Source: www.catholicauthors.com

"From this, it would appear that neither faith in Jesus Christ nor baptism is required for salvation, under certain circumstances, according to Catholic teaching. Is that correct?"

You are correct. But it must be qualified that ALL salvation comes from Christ whether He was personally known or not.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?³³⁵ Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.³³⁶

847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.³³⁷

848 "Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men."³³⁸

335 Cf. Cyprian, Ep. 73.21:PL 3,1169; De unit.:PL 4,509-536.
336 LG 14; cf. Mk 16:16; Jn 3:5.
337 LG 16; cf. DS 3866-3872.
338 AG 7; cf. Heb 11:6; 1 Cor 9:16.

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Truth of Christianity

Rev. Dr. Leslie Rumble, M.S.C.

Rev. Charles Mortimer Carty

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The Radio Replies Series: Volume One

Chapter One: God

Chapter Two: Man

Chapter Three: Religion

Chapter Four: The Religion of the Bible

Chapter Five: The Christian Faith