Why We're Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love

by Trent Horn

Accept whatever is brought upon you, and in changes that humble you be patient. For gold is tested in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of humiliation. Trust in him [God], and he will help you; make your ways straight, and hope in him (Sir. 2:4-6).

This process of coming to know God and responding to his revelation is the essence of religion.

“The view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet.”35

“There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.”39

“By their very nature only one person can see a given hallucination at a time. They certainly aren’t something which can be seen by a group of people.”

Those authors only wrote what God wanted, but God allowed them to use their own styles and human perspectives in what they wrote. We must take that into account and not read the Bible as if it were an instruction manual God wrote and shipped down from heaven.

They were designed to keep Israel separate from other nations that might tempt them to worship pagan gods who practiced incest, promoted prostitution, and demanded child sacrifice by fire.

The current pastor of the church where Fr. Byles served nearly a century ago has begun the process of seeking a formal recognition of Fr. Byles’s sainthood.100

Some people say that if priests were allowed to marry there would be less sexual abuse in the Church and more men would want to be priests. But many pedophiles are married men, and being single doesn’t cause someone to become attracted to children.

I go because that bread and wine don’t just symbolize Jesus; they actually become his body, blood, soul, and divinity. Jesus is there, not just every Sunday, but every day, ready to be received by the faithful so they can have eternal life. The New

Denying babies God’s grace through baptism so that they can choose it later as an adult would be like denying a baby medicine so that he can choose to take it “for himself” when he gets older. Sin is just too serious to leave in anyone’s body, especially a child’s.

The clergy abuse scandal does not prove there is no God or that Christ did not establish the Catholic Church. If anything, the revulsion we have against child abuse shows that some acts are always wrong—no matter what. Since universal moral laws must come from a universal moral lawgiver, or God, this means the clergy abuse scandal should push someone away from atheism, not toward it.

Mother Teresa summarized her work and her faith in this way: “By blood, I am Albanian. By citizenship, an Indian. By faith, I am a Catholic nun. As to my calling, I belong to the world. As to my heart, I belong entirely to the Heart of Jesus.”135

Destroying a human embryo or fetus doesn’t end the life of a potential person; it ends the life of a person with great potential.

These little persons, who are in a stage of life we all went through, possess the same dignity that exists in every human being from conception to natural death. This dignity deserves to be recognized and respected under the law, which is why the Church fights for the right to life of all human beings, especially the weakest and most vulnerable ones.

Human embryos and fetuses are biological human beings. There are no morally relevant differences between born and unborn humans.

The unborn are not potential persons but persons with great potential who are unjustly killed when they are aborted.

And contrary to what some people think, the Catholic Church does not teach that sex is bad or dirty.

Pope St. John Paul II even taught that men have a moral obligation to help their wives experience orgasms so that the sex between them can be a truly intimate union.

Pornography reduces people to objects that are only meant to satisfy the desires of a consumer. It also trains the user’s brain to be excited by sexual novelty and by power over other people’s bodies. But this attitude is disastrous in marriage, where joy comes from being a gift of self to one, irreplaceable person.

In marriage, man and woman don’t just give their legal consent; they give their whole selves to each other both for their good and the good of any children they may have.

Research has found that children from divorced or unmarried households are more likely to live in poverty and more likely to be abused than children from stable marriages.

children in households with married parents have “in general, better health, greater access to health care, and fewer emotional or behavioral problems than children living in other types of families.”

a child whose parents cohabit but aren’t married is four times more likely to be abused.

A child whose mother has a live-in boyfriend is eleven times more likely to be abused.

Consenting to marriage: If a person is coerced or marrying to please others, then he isn’t free, and the marriage may therefore be invalid. The young man who marries his pregnant girlfriend out of fear of her family (in a “shotgun wedding”) would be one example of lack of freedom. But the presence of a psychological disorder or even being drunk on one’s wedding day could render a marriage invalid, since the person was not truly free to say “I do.”

It always amazes me that the same people who worry about buying organic food at the grocery store usually have no objection to using hormonal contraceptives, which the American Cancer Society has classified as a group-one carcinogen (or something known to cause cancer in humans).183 That’s why I love that NFP is an all-natural, latex-free, hormone-free way for my wife and I (along with millions of other couples) to space our children’s births.

Marriage is not a legal contract between two adults, but a sacred covenant between man and woman that, between baptized Christians, is an indissoluble union.

A married couple always renews their marital vows in sexual intimacy, including the vow to “accept children lovingly from God.”

The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.

“There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word hell.”194 —Pope Benedict XVI

This is why we’re Catholic. Not to follow arbitrary rules or rituals, but to go home. Everyone knows, deep down, that sin has wounded our relationship with God and with one another.