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

by Trent Horn

Objective truths cannot be true only for some people. They are true or false for everyone because they describe reality, and reality is something everyone has to accept, like it or not.

Imagine if we chose medicine like we chose ice cream. We might say, “Mmmm, this pill tastes like strawberries . . . I’ll have three.” You could get hurt or killed by doing that. You might also stay sick or get worse because you didn’t take the right medicine. In this case, what matters is not the subjective truth of how the medicine tastes, but the objective truth of what it will do to your body.

These evils may help us develop virtues that could not exist if God eliminated every instance of suffering. For example, it’s impossible for God to make someone be courageous if he is not in danger. They might also be necessary for us to live in a predictable world where God doesn’t intervene every five seconds to protect us from pain.

Rape, murder, cancer, and other bad things are evil because they distort the way the world should be. Sex should be an act of love, not an act of violence. Cells should grow into body parts, not tumors. If evil refers to the way things are not supposed to be, then good must refer to the way things are supposed to be. But if things are supposed to be a certain way, then that means there is both a cosmic plan and a cosmic planner—a planner that many people call God.

The fact that what the Nazis did was objectively wrong proves there is a universal standard for morality that comes from a universal source of goodness, or God. Morality can’t just be a survival mechanism that humans developed through the process of evolution, because some people feel compelled to do things that don’t help our survival, like giving their life for a stranger.

So how does this relate to God? Christians do not believe God is one person with infinite attributes. That belief, held for example by Jews and Muslims, is called unitarianism. Christians believe that God is one being who exists as three persons, each of whom fully possess the divine nature. Christians are not unitarians but trinitarians.

The Trinity can’t be grasped if we think of “beings” and “persons” as the same thing. If we recognize that there are beings that are zero persons (such as rocks and trees) and there are beings that are one person (such as humans and angels), then we see there could be a being that is three persons, or God.

For example, since Jesus died on the cross, it is also true that God died on the cross, because Jesus is God. Of course, God did not go out of existence, but that is not what it means to die.

the Son of God is not a “role” God plays. He is a person who God is, or the person of Jesus Christ. God is not one person but one being that is three coequal, coeternal persons.

The laws that forbade Israelites from eating certain foods or wearing certain clothes helped them see that they should not imitate other nations, but remain unique and “pure” in their worship and love of God.

since God gave us our lives, he alone has the authority to end them at any time and in any way. This would include using his chosen people to carry out a judgment against a culture known for its unparalleled wickedness and evil.

The Protestant theologian R.C. Sproul famously suggested that the best we can say is that the canon of Scripture is “a fallible list of infallible books.”71 This means any Christian who feels moved by the Holy Spirit could claim the table of contents in the Bible needs to be revised, or even that some portions of the Bible should be removed.

St. Augustine is reported to have said, “The Church is not a hotel for saints, it is a hospital for sinners.” The issue is not whether the patients are sinners, or even if the staff are sinners. The issue is whether the hospital (or the Church) has the cure for sin that has infected everyone.

Leaving the Church because a priest or layperson committed a serious sin would be like swearing off hospitals because a doctor committed malpractice. What that doctor did was wrong, but that doesn’t change the fact that the hospital is still the best place to go if you’re sick.

The Bible does not teach that simply making an act of faith guarantees heaven for us. Instead, it teaches that salvation is a process of “faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6), made possible through our spiritual adoption into God’s family.

God has given everyone enough grace to come to know him and his offer of salvation. But since God is love, and love never forces itself on the beloved, God will not force people to be saved. Some people will reject God’s offer of salvation, but other people will not resist God’s grace. They will see the ugliness of sin and ask God to help them escape it. They will follow the Bible’s three-step plan for being saved: • Repent (turn away from sin) • Believe (turn toward Christ) • Receive (be united to Christ)

The apostles preached that adult converts (like me) had to repent of sin, believe in Jesus, and then receive Jesus by being baptized. However, the order of these steps can be changed. For someone who hasn’t committed a personal sin yet, like a baby, it would look like this: • Receive (be united to Christ) • Repent (turn away from sin) • Believe (turn toward Christ)

Salvation does not consist of a single moment when we accept Christ. Rather, it is a process through which we live out our faith and obey Christ until death.

Imagine you are caught in a storm at sea with some friends and your boat is sinking. You hear a broadcast on your radio telling you that if you want to be saved you must put on life jackets, report your position, and wait for help to arrive. As the boat pitches up and down and water sprays over the bow, you reply into the radio, “Yes, save us!” You then put on the life jackets and dive into the water. Two days go by and your rescuers are nowhere to be seen. One of your friends says help isn’t coming and decides to swim to shore on his own: he is never seen again. A few days later a rescue boat finds you, pulls you onto the deck, and you breathe a sigh of relief. “Saved!” But when exactly were you saved? Was it when you set foot on the rescue boat? Or was it when you made the initial radio call? The Bible teaches that salvation is a process that begins in the past through faith, continues throughout our lives in the present, and ends with our future eternal glory in heaven.

When the Bible says we are not saved by works, it means we did nothing to earn the first moment of our salvation. But as we will see, works do play a role in the process of our salvation.

There are no specific works that “earn” our salvation. Instead, we merit salvation by cooperating with God’s grace to do the works he prepared for us before we were even born (Eph. 2:10).

C.S. Lewis Describes the Need for Purgatory Would it not break the heart if God said to us, “It is true, my son, that your breath smells and your rags drip with mud and slime, but we are charitable here and no one will upbraid you with these things, nor draw away from you. Enter into the joy”? Should we not reply, “With submission, sir, and if there is no objection, I’d rather be cleaned first.” “It may hurt, you know.” “Even so, sir.”

In 2 Corinthians 5:8 St. Paul actually says, “We would rather [emphasis added] be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” If I say, “I’d rather be away from the office and at home with my family,” that does not mean that once I step foot outside my office I will automatically be at home.

Indulgences are not special “tickets” that help Catholics get into heaven or stay out of hell. Indulgences do not forgive sins and the Church has never sold them.140 Instead, through sincere and specifically prescribed acts of faith and charity (like saying certain prayers or even reading the Bible), the Church applies the merits of Christ and the saints to us, so that we can be purified from the effects of sin before death instead of afterward. These merits can also be applied to souls in purgatory by praying and obtaining indulgences for them, just as we would pray for any Christian who is striving for holiness.

Some people say that praying to saints is not in the Bible so Christians should not do that. But the Bible doesn’t record anyone praying the “sinner’s prayer” (“Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. Please save me.”), but that doesn’t make it wrong to say that prayer.

If the fetus or unborn child is growing, then he or she must be alive. If a fetus has human parents and human DNA, then he or she must be human. The human fetus is also not a body part like skin cells or sperm or an egg. It is a whole human being who just needs time, nutrients, and the right environment in order to develop into a fully grown human being (the same things you and I need to develop into fully grown human beings).

It’s true that we have the right to control our bodies, but that doesn’t give us the right to use our bodies to hurt other innocent human beings.

No matter how hard we try, none of us is “good enough” to get to heaven on our own. That’s why we need the free gift of God’s grace so that we can be transformed not into “good people,” but into “God’s people,” who share his divine life and are prepared in this life to be able to receive his unending love for all eternity.