By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Forty Reasons I Am a Catholic, by Peter Kreeft (144 pages, Sophia Institute Press, Paperback and Kindle).
This book is billed as Forty Reasons I Am a Catholic, but as Peter Kreeft points out, the number of actual reasons are well-nigh infinite, since we are living in a universe created by an infinite God.
His first reason, “Because I believe that Catholicism is true,” is probably the most important reason for any Catholic to take his or her faith seriously. As he says, “It seems obvious to me that to believe that something is true is the first and only honest reason for anybody to believe in anything.”
Kreeft’s next answer is that he believes Catholicism is the best of five choices, including belief in God or nothing, or between belief in one God and many gods, or between the God of the Bible and the gods of other religions, and so on, narrowing down the choice to accepting Christ as divine, and then the choice of accepting Catholicism as the true religion.
The author then progresses through other aspects of Catholic teaching, such as the centrality of belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the fact that Catholicism is not a man-made religion, but rather a divine Revelation which is obviously unique in the truth claims it makes in comparison with every other religion in the world.
Kreeft also points to the fact that the Church has maintained her doctrines and beliefs intact despite unrelenting pressure from the world over the last two thousand years — which given the fickleness of human nature is surely a sign of supernatural assistance.
And we need that dogmatic certainly about God, Christ, and salvation, a certainty which the Church gives us.
And likewise, he points to the fact that if we want to be really sure our sins have been forgiven, then we need to be within the Church which is the only religious body which claims to forgive sins — and indeed does forgive sins — through the Sacrament of Confession.
The fact that the Church has been infallibly right about all she has taught over the last two thousand years, up to and beyond her teaching about divorce and contraception, is also highlighted by the author.
And his tenth reason, “Because only the Catholic Church can save human civilization from spiritual and material destruction,” is an extremely important point. As he says, the Church, like the Jewish people, is the only concrete historical thing which we know will be in existence at the Second Coming of Christ. And he also points out that the “Catholic Church is the greatest repository and synthesis of the wisdom of the past, and the only long-range hope for the future, of humane human civilization.”
Being a Catholic also prevents the believer from falling into the errors of the Reformation, with its overreliance on the Bible, in a way which rejected many aspects of the true faith held by Christians everywhere for the first 1,500 years of the Church’s existence.
But on the other hand, the author argues that the Church, far from rejecting the Bible, gives us the strongest possible reasons for believing in it, since it was the Church which compiled and authorized the canon of the Bible.
As he says, “History shows that we need the Church to interpret the Bible rightly, for every heretic in history has appealed to the Bible to justify his rejection of the Church.”
Purgatory
At the same time, Kreeft strongly believes in the Bible, which assures us that Christ did indeed establish a Church and gave her His authority to teach in His name.
One of these teachings is that of the four marks of the Church, that she is one, holy, catholic (in the sense of universal), and apostolic. As Kreeft says, “Only one Church fits that description.”
As he also says, the Church’s claim to holiness is not that all Catholics are holy people — although the saints are definitely signs of that holiness — but that she is holy in the sense of having been set apart by God, and is therefore, through her sacraments for example, the source of holiness.
When he was thinking of becoming a Catholic, one of the factors Peter Kreeft took into account was the fact that there were and had been so many outstanding authors in the fold of the Church, ranging from St. Justin Martyr to Ronald Knox, and many of these were canonized saints.
And the personal qualities of these saints were a further motive encouraging his conversion — that they were such a cavalcade of marvelous personalities, each different in his own way, but each contributing unmistakably to the building up of the Church.
He also argues that being in the Church also gives us the greatest assurance of salvation, even if we have to go through Purgatory when we die. And Purgatory is another reason for being a Catholic, since the alternatives — Hell, reincarnation, annihilation, and so on — are either terrifying or impossible.
The author quotes the writer Walker Percy, who, on being asked his reason for being a Catholic said, “What else is there?”
His questioner went on to list many of the other possibilities, ranging from left-wing liberalism, through relativism, to narcissism and beyond, to which Percy apparently replied: “I rest my case.”
Kreeft argues that another reason to be a Catholic is because we are then led to treat other people in a Christ-like way, and in fact as if they are Christ — which since they are members of His Body is actually the case. This was what saints like Mother Teresa did, who saw everyone they met as another Christ.
And the fact that the Church is able to combine a hardness and courage in dealing with the world, along with a softness and love in dealing with our sinful fellow human beings, is for Kreeft another reason for being a Catholic.
The author argues that this combination of hard and soft virtues, which was found most perfectly in the saints, is desperately needed now if our culture and civilization is to be saved from self-destruction.
The fact is that there are many enemies of civilization abroad in the world now, including satanists, Cultural Marxists, atheists, and many other individuals and groups, who actively hate the Church and are working towards its destruction.
As Kreeft says, “only the Catholic Church has the full, definitive, big-picture answer to the most destructive revolution of all time, the one we are living through today.”
Kreeft is also a Catholic because of the veneration it gives to our Lady, who is our Spiritual Mother, the perfect mother, who was given to us by Christ as He was dying on the cross. As he says, he doesn’t “want to live in a one-parent supernatural family.” Rather, like Jesus, he wants a divine Father and a “human spiritual mother,” that is, Mary.
This is a not a systematic book of theology, but rather a bite-sized approach to the subject, based on the author’s own experiences and the general teaching of the Church. It is compact and written in an appealing way.
It might be a good book to give to a prospective convert, and will certainly provide food for thought, and encouragement, for anyone who is already a believer.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also written two time-travel/adventure books for young people — details can be found at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk/.)
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