A Sunday Morning Thought to Start the Week Off
Faith and reason never contradict each other - this is fundamental to our Catholic Faith. You would never know this if you listened to the secular humanist media that never tires of criticizing the Catholic Church. Listening to them, you'd get the impression that we're "unscientific" and irrational. In fact, they're the unreasonable ones.
It's not just the secular types. Many of our Christian brethren in Protestant sects find our rituals strange, our doctrines rigid. While many oppose abortion, hardly anyone but us Catholics opposes contraception. Catholic teaching about sex makes no sense - too "rigid" with our insistence on restricting sex to a man and woman married to each other, who are open to having children. We're deluded. We follow an absolute ruler (the Pope) as if we're living in medieval times. We believe the bread and wine of Communion are the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Terribly irrational people are we.
Of course, it's all ignorant propaganda. And it's why we should make the effort to study our Faith, so that we know with certainty that it's ignorant propaganda and never fall into the trap of questioning the Truth based on falsehoods presented by atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists - even some Christians.
These thoughts all came to me as I was reading G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist, who's President of the American Chesterton Society. The book reminds me to read more Chesterton and to read him more consistently. If you want to steep yourself "Catholic thinking," he's your man. And being steeped in Catholicism makes a huge difference when you walk out the door each morning to engage with the world, whether at work or anywhere else. So I'd put reading Chesterton on the same level as getting in your exercise if you're trying to stay physically fit. There are other good Catholic writers, of course, but few whose words capture and communicate the truths of our Faith as Chesterton does.
He wrote much about Faith and Reason. He saw right through those who thought the Church unreasonable. Here's an example:
It's not just the secular types. Many of our Christian brethren in Protestant sects find our rituals strange, our doctrines rigid. While many oppose abortion, hardly anyone but us Catholics opposes contraception. Catholic teaching about sex makes no sense - too "rigid" with our insistence on restricting sex to a man and woman married to each other, who are open to having children. We're deluded. We follow an absolute ruler (the Pope) as if we're living in medieval times. We believe the bread and wine of Communion are the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ. Terribly irrational people are we.
Of course, it's all ignorant propaganda. And it's why we should make the effort to study our Faith, so that we know with certainty that it's ignorant propaganda and never fall into the trap of questioning the Truth based on falsehoods presented by atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists - even some Christians.
These thoughts all came to me as I was reading G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense by Dale Ahlquist, who's President of the American Chesterton Society. The book reminds me to read more Chesterton and to read him more consistently. If you want to steep yourself "Catholic thinking," he's your man. And being steeped in Catholicism makes a huge difference when you walk out the door each morning to engage with the world, whether at work or anywhere else. So I'd put reading Chesterton on the same level as getting in your exercise if you're trying to stay physically fit. There are other good Catholic writers, of course, but few whose words capture and communicate the truths of our Faith as Chesterton does.
He wrote much about Faith and Reason. He saw right through those who thought the Church unreasonable. Here's an example:
Ours is...the most rational of all religions...We alone are left accepting the action of the reason and the will without any necessary assistance from the emotions. A convinced Catholic is easily the most...logical person walking about the world today.Study your Faith. Make time for God this week each day. It only takes 30 - 45 minutes or so to read some Scripture, some spiritual work, some doctrinal study. If you're pressed for time in the morning getting ready for work, wake up a half hour earlier and you're all set. If you're thinking you can't get up earlier or if you're not convinced it's "worth" getting up earlier, read the last four posts before this one. Maybe you'll change your mind.
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