Visitors since 22 JUN 2005

This is a tough question, my friend.  Not because the answer is difficult but that the explanation is.  There are a lot of people out there who are not Catholic but are quite sincere about their beliefs and I can certainly appreciate their sincerity because I've known and worked with many of these good people.  They put many a Catholic to shame.

Why the explanation is so difficult is that we live in a relativistic society and each one of us believes that he has the "truth" for himself.  Your truth is yours and my truth is mine.  Whatever you believe is perfectly acceptable for your salvation and likewise for me.  Ugh!  This oh so widely held belief is also oh so wrong.

Look, I'm not going to insult your intelligence and I'm also going to assume that you are, dear reader, one of those deeply sincere people are referred to above.  I'm sure that you've spent considerable time and energy to determine whatever plan of salvation you subscribe to (Jew, Christian, animist, Hindu, whatever).  What I am going to do, however, is to suggest by way of allegory, that there is a universal plan for the salvation of man that goes beyond, or transcends, both your and my opinions about how we are "saved" or get to heaven.

Math Teacher

I taught mathematics for four years in a very small school that really wasn't much more than a kind of collective home school.  Oh sure, the students all wore uniforms but it was so small that I taught only a single student or a pair of students in each grade.  In fact, it was so small that I taught 4 or 5 grades in the same room at the same time for grades 4 to 12.  I had to be adept at math skills from anywhere from the multiplication tables all the way to doing geometric proofs.  Of course, I couldn't retain all these skills in my head all at the same time but since I had the Teacher's Manuals with me which were written by the authors who were experts, I had an authoritative source that I could turn to for the right answer or the method to obtain the right answer for every question in the book.  This was very comforting to me because I hate to be embarrassed and with the Teacher's Manual to lean on, I didn't have to rely on my own reason to determine what was the true answer or what was the proper technique to obtain that answer.

I recall my days back at the University of Akron studying engineering.  We worked on some incredibly complex, multi-step problems back in those days.  You had to show each and every step, line by line, until you obtained the final answer which you circled.  The problems could go to two pages or more in length.  Thank God I'm not doing that for a living!  You see, when we students would compare answers, I soon learned that, as smart as I thought I was, if my answer differed from someone else's, it was my answer that was wrong and not his.  This finally taught me the lesson that I couldn't trust my own reasoning, that I needed someone outside of myself if I were to ever get the final answer correctly. 

Another point I'd like to bring up as a teacher was that there was always one and only one "right" answer.  Two plus two equals four no matter who you are.  It was concrete.  It was exact.  It was logical.  It was universal.  The answers were always either "RIGHT" or "WRONG".  My feelings didn't enter into the question.  Even when my students sincerely believed from the bottom of their hearts that their answers were correct, they could still be just flat out wrong.  Their conviction about the correctness of their answers didn't mean anything if the answer was still wrong.

Sometimes the student would learn the method incorrectly or bring his own prejudices into how a problem should be attacked.  "That's not how Mr. S. taught me how to do it!" I heard more than once.  Of course, Mr. S. may or may not have taught it that way but that's the way "Little Johnny" remembered it.  There were times when I'd have to pull out the old reliable Teacher's Manual and say, "Here, read it and weep.  It's right there in black and white."  The student's own reasoning was no substitute for his submitting his will and opening up his mind and just being docile to whatever was being taught.

One thing I learned to respect about mathematics was that it build upon itself.  You didn't do algebra until you were good with fractions.  You didn't do fractions until you could do division, which depended upon multiplication, which depended upon - you get the idea.  It was like so many building blocks of mathematical truths or dogmas which all depended upon each other in order to continue to climb in mathematical skill.  If you skipped any of the "bricks", the whole wall of your math ability crumbled.

The other thing that I respected was that it punished the lazy student.  If he took shortcuts or chose to skip this or that step, he invariably ended up with the wrong answer.  I remember one particularly bright student who just flat out would not show his work.  He insisted on doing the work in his head.  He always scored lower than his colleagues, not because he didn't know the methods but because in his haste to get through the problem, he would make a boneheaded error that would result in a wrong answer.  I couldn't give him partial credit when there wasn't anything written down to follow.

THE UNIVERSAL TRUTH

Now, let's tie all this together to finally answer the question, "Why be Catholic?"  If you've been following my story, you'll agree that Mathematics is objective truth.  You cannot depend on your reason to learn it.  There is typically only one right answer.  Your answers are either right or wrong; being sincere doesn't count.  You have to submit your will to the rules; you either follow the rules or you don't get the right answer.  Every new mathematical truth depended on all the previous mathematical truths.  Lastly, you can't take shortcuts and still get the right answer.

One last exercise, my friend, substitute "Catholic" for "Mathematics" and that's why you have to be Catholic. 

Questions?  Contact us at postmaster@blessedmargaret.org with any sincere, charitably worded questions.  [If you've seen the home page  you know that the purpose of the Blessed Margaret Center is NOT about the verbal jousting you get on the message boards.  No one learns if we enter into apologetics with the purpose of "making points".  Instead, pray to the Holy Ghost first for guidance.  Then, and only then, write your email.  I promise that I will give you the Catholic answer, either by my answer or I will link you to another source which will give you your answer.]  God bless!