Why I Am A Catholic

By G. K. Chesterton

From Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds (1926)

Reprinted in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 3 Ignatius Press 1990

The difficulty of explaining "why I am a Catholic" is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. I could fill all my space with separate sentences each beginning with the words, "It is the only thing that . . ." As, for instance, (1) It is the only thing that really prevents a sin from being a secret. (2) It is the only thing in which the superior cannot be superior; in the sense of supercilious. (3) It is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age. (4) It is the only thing that talks as if it were the truth; as if it were a real messenger refusing to tamper with a real message. (5) It is the only type of Christianity that really contains every type of man; even the respectable man. (6) It is the only large attempt to change the world from the inside; working through wills and not laws; and so on.

Or I might treat the matter personally and describe my own conversion; but I happen to have a strong feeling that this method makes the business look much smaller than it really is. Numbers of much better men have been sincerely converted to much worse religions. I would much prefer to attempt to say here of the Catholic Church precisely the things that cannot be said even of its very

respectable rivals. In short, I would say chiefly of the Catholic Church that it is catholic. I would rather try to suggest that it is not only larger than me, but larger than anything in the world; that it is indeed larger than the world. But since in this short space I can only take a section, I will consider it in its capacity of a guardian of the truth.

The other day a well-known writer, otherwise quite well-informed, said that the Catholic Church is always the enemy of new ideas. It probably did not occur to him that his own remark was not exactly in the nature of a new idea. It is one of the notions that Catholics have to be continually refuting, because it is such a very old idea. Indeed, those who complain that Catholicism cannot say anything new, seldom think it necessary to say anything new about Catholicism. As a matter of fact, a real study of history will show it to be curiously contrary to the fact. In so far as the ideas really are ideas, and in so far as any such ideas can be new, Catholics have continually suffered through supporting them when they were really new; when they were much too new to find any other support. The Catholic was not only first in the field but alone in the field; and there was as yet nobody to understand what he had found there.

Thus, for instance, nearly two hundred years before the Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, in an age devoted to the pride and praise of princes, Cardinal Bellarmine and Suarez the Spaniard laid down lucidly the whole theory of real democracy. But in that age of Divine Right they only produced the impression of being sophistical and sanguinary Jesuits, creeping about with daggers to effect the murder of kings. So, again, the Casuists of the Catholic schools said all that can really be said for the problem plays and problem novels of our own time, two hundred years before they were written. They said that there really are problems of moral conduct; but they had the misfortune to say it two hundred years too soon. In a time of tub-thumping fanaticism and free and easy vituperation, they merely got themselves called liars and shufflers for being psychologists before psychology was the fashion.
 
It would be easy to give any number of other examples down to the present day, and the case of ideas that are still too new to be understood. There are passages in Pope Leo's 'Encyclical on Labor' [Also known as <Rerum Novarum>, released in 1891] which are only now beginning to be used as hints for social movements much newer than socialism. And when Mr. Belloc wrote about the Servile State, he advanced an economic theory so original that hardly anybody has yet realized what it is. A few centuries hence, other people will probably repeat it, and repeat it wrong. And then, if Catholics object, their protest will be easily explained by the well-known fact that Catholics never care for new ideas.

Nevertheless, the man who made that remark about Catholics meant something; and it is only fair to him to understand it rather more clearly than he stated it. What he meant was that, in the modern world, the Catholic Church is in fact the enemy of many influential fashions; most of which still claim to be new, though many of them are beginning to be a little stale. In other words, in so far as he meant that the Church often attacks what the world at any given moment supports, he was perfectly right . The Church does often set herself against the fashion of this world that passes away; and she has experience enough to know how very rapidly it does pass away. But to understand exactly what is involved, it is necessary to take a rather larger view and consider the ultimate nature of the ideas in question, to consider, so to speak, the idea of the idea.

Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves. The truth about the Catholic attitude towards heresy, or as some would say, towards liberty, can best be expressed perhaps by the metaphor of a map. The Catholic Church carries a sort of map of the mind which looks like the map of a maze, but which is in fact a guide to the maze. It has been compiled from knowledge which, even considered as human knowledge, is quite without any human parallel.

There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and especially nearly all errors. The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them.

On this map of the mind the errors are marked as exceptions. The greater part of it consists of playgrounds and happy hunting-fields, where the mind may have as much liberty as it likes; not to mention any number of intellectual battle-fields in which the battle is indefinitely open and undecided. But it does definitely take the responsibility of marking certain roads as leading nowhere or leading to destruction, to a blank wall, or a sheer precipice. By this means, it does prevent men from wasting their time or losing their lives upon paths that have been found futile or disastrous again and again in the past, but which might otherwise entrap travelers again and again in the future. The Church does make herself responsible for warning her people against these; and upon these the real issue of the case depends. She does dogmatically defend humanity from its worst foes, those hoary and horrible and devouring monsters of the old mistakes.

Now all these false issues have a way of looking quite fresh, especially to a fresh generation. Their first statement always sounds harmless and plausible. I will give only two examples. It sounds harmless to say, as most modern people have said: "Actions are only wrong if they are bad for society." Follow it out, and sooner or later you will have the inhumanity of a hive or a heathen city, establishing slavery as the cheapest and most certain means of production, torturing the slaves for evidence because the individual is nothing to the State, declaring that an innocent man must die for the people, as did the murderers of Christ. Then, perhaps, you will go back to Catholic definitions, and find that the Church, while she also says it is our duty to work for society, says other things also which forbid individual injustice.
 
Or again, it sounds quite pious to say, "Our moral conflict should end with a victory of the spiritual over the material." Follow it out, and you may end in the madness of the Manicheans, saying that a suicide is good because it is a sacrifice, that a sexual perversion is good because it produces no life, that the devil made the sun and moon because they are material. Then you may begin to guess why Catholicism insists that there are evil spirits as well as good; and that materials also may be sacred, as in the Incarnation or the Mass, in the sacrament of marriage or the resurrection of the body.

Now there is no other corporate mind in the world that is thus on the watch to prevent minds from going wrong. The policeman comes too late, when he tries to prevent men from going wrong. The doctor comes too late, for he only comes to lock up a madman, not to advise a sane man on how not to go mad. And all other sects and schools are inadequate for the purpose. This is not because each of them may not contain a truth, but precisely because each of them does contain a

truth; and is content to contain a truth. None of the others really pretends to contain the truth. None of the others, that is, really pretends to be looking out in all directions at once.

The Church is not merely armed against the heresies of the past or even of the present, but equally against those of the future, that may be the exact opposite of those of the present. Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists.

Thus, when the world went Puritan in the seventeenth century, the Church was charged with pushing charity to the point of sophistry, with making everything easy with the laxity of the confessional. Now that the world is not going Puritan but Pagan, it is the Church that is everywhere protesting against a Pagan laxity in dress or manners. It is doing what the Puritans wanted done when it is really wanted. In all probability, all that is best in Protestantism will only survive in Catholicism; and in that sense all Catholics will still be Puritans when all Puritans are Pagans.

Thus, for instance, Catholicism, in a sense little understood, stands outside a quarrel like that of Darwinism at Dayton. It stands outside it because it stands all around it, as a house stands all around two incongruous pieces of furniture. It is no sectarian boast to say it is before and after and beyond all these things in all directions. It is impartial in a fight between the Fundamentalist and the theory of the Origin of Species, because it goes back to an origin before that Origin; because it is more fundamental than Fundamentalism. It knows where the Bible came from. It also knows where most of the theories of Evolution go to. It knows there were many other Gospels besides the Four Gospels, and that the others were only eliminated by the authority of the Catholic Church. It knows there are many other evolutionary theories besides the Darwinian theory; and that the latter is quite likely to be eliminated by later science. It does not, in the conventional phrase, accept the conclusions of science, for the simple reason that science has not concluded. To conclude is to shut up; and the man of science is not at all likely to shut up.

It does not, in the conventional phrase, believe what the Bible says, for the simple reason that the Bible does not say anything. You cannot put a book in the witness-box and ask it what it really means. The Fundamentalist controversy itself destroys Fundamentalism. The Bible by itself cannot be a basis of agreement when it is a cause of disagreement; it cannot be the common ground of Christians when some take it allegorically and some literally. The Catholic refers it to something that can say something, to the living, consistent, and continuous mind of which I have spoken; the highest mind of man guided by God.

Every moment increases for us the moral necessity for such an immortal mind. We must have something that will hold the four corners of the world still, while we make our social experiments or build our Utopias. For instance, we must have a final agreement, if only on the truism of human brotherhood, that will resist some reaction of human brutality. Nothing is more likely just now than that the corruption of representative government will lead to the rich breaking loose altogether, and trampling on all the traditions of equality with mere pagan pride. We must have the truisms everywhere recognized as true. We must prevent mere reaction and the dreary repetition of the old mistakes. We must make the intellectual world safe for democracy. But in the conditions of modern mental anarchy, neither that nor any other ideal is safe. 

Just as Protestants appealed from priests to the Bible, and did not realize that the Bible also could be questioned, so republicans appealed from kings to the people, and did not realize that the people also could be defied. There is no end to the dissolution of ideas, the destruction of all tests of truth, that has become possible since men abandoned the attempt to keep a central and civilized Truth, to contain all truths and trace out and refute all errors. Since then, each group has taken one truth at a time and spent the time in turning it into a falsehood. We have had nothing but movements; or in other words, monomanias. But the Church is not a movement but a meeting-place; the trysting-place of all the truths in the world.

Two facts concerning this question, this paper hopes to restate and summarize rather than prove. They are:

First, the certainty and fact, beyond reasonable denial, that for many centuries prior to the American Declaration, the principles enunciated in it are identically the political thought and theory predominant and traditional among representative Catholic churchmen, and not the political thought and inspiration of the politico-religious revolt of the sixteenth century, nor of the later social-contract or compact theories.

In the second place, this paper would re-assert the existence of sufficient reasons to believe that the framers of the Declaration of Independence drew inspiration, encouragement, and political ideals from Catholic sources, particularly from the political principles of the Blessed Cardinal Bellarmine.

The knowledge and spread of these two outstanding facts deserve promotion, partly, in order to give credit where credit in justice belongs; principally, however, in order to dispel that erroneous notion, which haunts many American minds, that approximately one-fifth of the American population, if loyal to its religious affiliation, cannot be loyally and thoroughly American. So long as this erroneous idea prevails, the highest ideals of Americanism, of national unity and solidarity in thought, feeling and action, can never be attained, and the proud claim, that this is the “land of the noble free,” is, at least in part, but an empty boast. It is in the spirit and interest of a larger and more idealistic Americanism, that this paper is offered.

“If the American Declaration is 'an expression of the American mind,' it is to say the least, something remarkable,” says Allred O'Rahilly, “that it should be such an accurate transcript of the Catholic mind.” Elsewhere he states that a laborious investigation on his part revealed that from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century some 139 Catholic philosophers and theologians uphold the democratic principle that government is based on the consent of the governed. (Only seven of doubtful orthodoxy reject the principle.)

Striking parallels

It will suffice for our purpose to consult, in detail, but two Catholic churchmen who stand out as leading lights for all time. The one is representative of medieval learning and thought, the other stood on the threshold of the medieval and modern world. They are St. Thomas Aquinas of the thirteenth century and the Blessed Cardinal Robert Bellarmine of the sixteenth century (1542-1621). The following comparisons, clause for clause, of the American Declaration of Independence and of excerpts from the political principles of these noted ecclesiastics, evidence striking similarity and identity of political principle.

Equality of man

Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Bellarmine: “All men are equal, not in wisdom or grace, but in the essence and nature of mankind” (“De Laicis,” c.7) “There is no reason why among equals one should rule rather than another” (ibid.). “Let rulers remember that they preside over men who are of the same nature as they themselves.” (“De Officus Princ.” c. 22). “Political right is immediately from God and necessarily inherent in the nature of man” (“De Laicis,” c. 6, note 1).

St. Thomas: “Nature made all men equal in liberty, though not in their natural perfections” (II Sent., d. xliv, q. 1, a. 3. ad 1).

The function of government

Declaration of Independence: “To secure these rights governments are instituted among men.”

Bellarmine: “It is impossible for men to live together without someone to care for the common good. Men must be governed by someone lest they be willing to perish” (“De Laicis,” c. 6).

St. Thomas: “To ordain anything for the common good belongs either to the whole people, or to someone who is the viceregent of the whole people” (Summa, la llae, q. 90, a. 3).

The source of power

Declaration of Independence: “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Bellarmine: “It depends upon the consent of the multitude to constitute over itself a king, consul, or other magistrate. This power is, indeed, from God, but vested in a particular ruler by the counsel and election of men” (“De Laicis, c. 6, notes 4 and 5). “The people themselves immediately and directly hold the political power” (“De Clericis,” c. 7).

St. Thomas: “Therefore the making of a law belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care of the whole people” (Summa, la llae, q. 90, a. 3). “The ruler has power and eminence from the subjects, and, in the event of his despising them, he sometimes loses both his power and position” (“De Erudit. Princ.” Bk. I, c. 6).

The right to change the government

Declaration of Independence: “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government...Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient reasons.”

Bellarmine: “For legitimate reasons the people can change the government to an aristocracy or a democracy or vice versa” (“De Laicis,” c. 6). “The people never transfers its powers to a king so completely but that it reserves to itself the right of receiving back this power” (“Recognitio de Laicis,” c. 6).

St. Thomas: “If any society of people have a right of choosing a king, then the king so established can be deposed by them without injustice, or his power can be curbed, when by tyranny he abuses his regal power” (“De Rege et Regno,” Bk. I, c. 6).

Democracy not modern thought

Democracy then is not a discovery of modern political thought. Its sources are to be sought in ancient and medieval theories of government. Christianity injected something into the governments of nations that worked for democracy, that emphasized the natural equality and liberty of men. We can think of real Christianity only as democratic, never as aristocratic or autocratic. The Middle Ages were democratic and the Middle Ages were Catholic. Western civilized Europe was Catholic for a round thousand years. The doctrine of St. Thomas, as just quoted, gives eloquent testimony of the democratic political thought representative of that age.

Reputable historians freely attest the democracy of political theory and practice in the Middle Ages. Otto Goerke states: “An ancient and generally entertained opinion regarded the will of the people as the source of temporal power; political authority by Divine grant and absolute power was wholly foreign to the Middle Ages.” (“Political Theories of the Middle Ages,” pp. 38-39). “Medieval doctrine gave to the monarch a representative character” (ibid. p. 61). Dr. A. J. Carlyle asserts, “The emperor derived his authority, ultimately, no doubt, from God, but immediately from the nation, and this fact [he adds], requires no serious demonstration” (“Hist. Med. Pol. Theory in the West,” Vol. I, p. 292, and Vol III, p. 153). Carlton J. H. Hayes writes “Constitutional limitation was a medieval tradition” (“Pol. And Scc. Hist. Of Med. Europe,” Vol. I, p. 264). Lord Acton says, “Looking back over the space of a thousand years, which we call the Middle Ages, we find that representative government was almost universal. Absolute power was deemed more intolerable and more criminal than slavery.”

The divine right of kings

The question might be asked: Why was it at all necessary for men in the eighteenth century to make such emphatic declarations of democratic rights? The answer is: Because the two preceding centuries had fairly destroyed the ancient rights of the people and the medieval democratic principle of government by popular consent. In its place there was elaborated at that time the new theory of the “Divine Right of Kings” which enthroned royal autocracy and absolute monarchy. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the era of political revolution and the great struggle between democratic representative government and monarchic absolutism. At the close of the sixteenth century the existence and preponderance of monarchy was well recognized, but the question to be solved was: Should royal monarchical power, as the “Divine Right” theorists expounded it, become absolute; should it so decisively prevail that the other two elements of recognized government, viz., aristocracy and democracy, be completely discarded from the political world; or, should a combination of the three, which had hitherto existed, continue? Unbiased historical research reveals that Catholic political thinkers—men like Suarez (1548-1617), Mariana (1536-1624), Mollsa (1535-1600), Robert Persons (1546-1610), Toletus (1535-1600), Banez (1528-1604), Gregory of Valencia (1540-1603), (who lived between the years of 1528-1624), stood prominently on the side of democratic principle and the rights of the people. The ancient Church which is often depicted as retarding modern enlightenment, liberty, and democracy, was the very agency which produced the great protagonists of democracy in the period of its greatest danger and saved out of the democracy of the Middle Ages what might be termed the seed-thought for the resowing and growth of democratic principle and practice among the nations of modern times.

The most prominent and powerful defender in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, of the traditional and medieval democratic principle of popular sovereignty and right, was the illustrious and learned Jesuit Cardinal, the Blessed Robert Bellarmine. “Monarchy will be defended for its own sake,” says Figgis, “when Bellarmine and Suarez have elaborated their theory of popular sovereignty” (“Divine Right of Kings,” p. 92).

Democracy not a "child of the Reformation"

Modern democracy is often asserted to be the child of the Reformation. Nothing is farther from the truth. Robert Filmer, private theologian of James I of England, in his theory of Divine right, proclaimed, “The king can do no wrong. The most sacred order of kings is of Divine right.” John Neville Figgis, who seems little inclined to give Catholicism undue credit, makes the following assertions. “Luther based royal authority upon Divine right with practically no reservation” (“Gerson to Grotius,” p. 61). “That to the Reformation was in some sort due the prevalence of the notion of the Divine Right of Kings is generally admitted.” (“Divine Right of Kings,” p. 15). “The Reformation had left upon the statute book an emphatic assertion of unfettered sovereignty vested in the king” (ibid. p. 91). “Luther denied any limitation of political power either by Pope or people, nor can it be said that he showed any sympathy for representative institutions; he upheld the inalienable and Divine authority of kings in order to hew down the Upas tree of Rome.” “There had been elaborated at this time a theory of unlimited jurisdiction of the crown and of non-resistance upon any pretense” (“Cambridge Modern History,” Vol III, p. 739). “Wycliffe would not allow that the king be subject to positive law” (“Divine Right of Kings,” p. 69). Lord Acton wrote: “Lutheran writers constantly condemn the democratic literature that arose in the second age of the Reformation.”...”Calvin judged that the people were unfit to govern themselves, and declared the popular assembly an abuse” (“History of Freedom,” p. 42).

A closer study of the Declaration of Independence discloses its dissimilarity with the social-contract or compact theories as explained with slight variations, by Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, Puffendorf, Althusius, Grotius, Hooker, Kant, or Fichte. The American Declaration, like the political doctrine of Cardinal Bellarmine, declared political power as coming, in the first instance, from God, but as vested in a particular ruler by consent of the multitude or the people as a political body. The social-contract or compact theories sought the source of political power in an assumed social contract or compact by which individual rights contributed or yielded their individual rights to create a public right. Contracts of individuals can create individual rights only, not public or political rights. According to the American Declaration and Cardinal Bellarmine, government implies powers which never belonged to the individual and which, consequently, he could never have conferred upon society. The individual surrenders no authority. Sovereignty receives nothing from him. Government maintains its full dignity, it is of Divine origin, but vested in one or several individuals by popular consent.

The names of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and James Berg are often mentioned as possibly having influenced the spirit and contents of our American Declaration. The “Spirit of Laws” by Montesquieu, though read in America, did not present that theory of government which was sought by the Fathers of our Country. Rousseau's writings were less widely known than Montesquieu's. George Mason, not knowing French, in all probability never read the “Contract social” nor had Rousseau's writings obtained currency in Virginia in 1776. The book of James Berg appeared in 1775, rather too late to have rendered service in May of 1776, even if it had discussed such general principles as are laid down in these two American Declarations.

Did Jefferson know of Bellarmine?

The second part of this paper would reassert the existence of sufficient reasons to believe that the framers of the Declaration of Independence drew inspiration and political ideals of democracy from the political doctrines of Cardinal Bellarmine, whose writings were well known and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic.

Prof. David S. Schaff, now lecturer of American church history in Union Theological Seminary, New York, does not only question the probability that the framers of our American Declaration might have derived some of their ideas and fundamentals of popular sovereignty from Catholic sources, and from the political writings of Cardinal Bellarmine in particular, but he even goes so far as to misstate completely the Cardinal's political utterances. The New York Times in its issue of December 28, 1926, summarizing the contents of Professor Schaff's address at the twentieth annual conference of the American Society of Church History, quotes him as “assailing the theory which associates the work of the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine with Jefferson and through him with the Declaration of Independence.” “The refutation of this legend,” Professor Schaff is quoted as saying, “lay first in the fact that, as far as we know, Jefferson never had access to any book of Bellarmine.” The writer of this paper sent to the Editor of the New York Times the following letter which received no publication, however, as far as could be learned. The letter in substance was the following:

With the hope of contributing a bit of information on this subject, permit the undersigned to state that the Congressional Library still possesses a copy of “Patriarcha” a book which once stood on the library shelf of Thomas Jefferson. “Patriarcha,” was written by Robert Filmer, the private theologian of James I of England in defense of the Divine Right of Kings and principally in refutation of the Jesuit Cardinal Bellarmine's political principles of popular sovereignty. If Jefferson ever opened this book, which he possessed, he read the following on the title page:

Patiarcha, or the natural power of kings
by the learned Sir Robert Filmer
London, 1680
The Contents
Chapter I

1. The tenet of the Natural liberty of the people. New, plausible and dangerous.
   
2. The question stated out of Bellarmine and some contradictions of his noted.
   
3. Bellarmine's argument answered out of Bellarmine himself.

Chapter II
It is unnatural for the people to govern
or choose governors

1. Aristotle examined abut the freedom of the people.
   
2. Suarez disputes against the regality of Adam.
   
3. Suarez contradicting Bellarmine.

Chapter III
Positive laws do not infringe the fatherly power
of kings, etc....

Four times Bellarmine's name is mentioned in bold print on this contents page of “Patriarcha.” The first chapter of “Patriarcha” is again prefaced with its table of contents and Bellarmine's name appears on it three times. Then, if Jefferson read the first lines of the chapter he read this:

“Since the time that school divinity began to flourish there hath been a common opinion maintained, as well by divines, as by diverse other learned men which affirms `Mankind is naturally endowed and born with Freedom, and at liberty to choose what form of Government it please: And that the Power which any one Man hath over others, was at first bestowed according to the discretion of the Multitude.'

“This tenet was first hatched in the schools and hath been fostered by all succeeding papists for good divinity.”

If Jefferson ever read as many as four pages of this book, he read on the fourth page, the following:

To make evident the Grounds of this Question, about the Natural Liberty of Mankind, I will lay down some passages of CARDINAL BELLARMINE, that may best unfold the State of this controversie. Secular or Civil Power (saith he) is instituted by man; It is in the people, unless they bestow it on a Prince. This Power is immediately in the whole Multitude, as in the subject of it; for this Power is in Divine Law, but the Divine Law hath given this Power to no particular man. If the Positive Law be taken away, there is left no Reason why amongst a Multitude (who are Equal) one rather than another should bear Rule over the Rest. It depends upon the Consent of the Multitude to ordain over themselves a King, Counsel or other Magistrates; and if there be a lawful cause the multitude may change the Kingdom into an Aristocracy or Democracy. Thus far BELLARMINE; in which passages are comprised the strength of all that I have read or heard produced for the Natural Liberty of the Subject.

Would not Jefferson, who was seeking a formulation of “the natural liberties of the subject,” be attracted to read and re-read this quotation from Bellarmine which “comprised the strength of all that had ever been produced for the natural liberty of the subject”? And does not the American Declaration reflect strikingly this very passage of Bellarmine quoted by Filmer and lying open before the eyes of Jefferson?

Referred to by Sidney

Jefferson also had in his library a handsome folio of 497 pages of the discourses of Algernon Sidney. Sidney was very popular and much read in the Immediate years preceding 1776. If Jefferson read the opening sentence of Sidney, he read again about Filmer's denunciation of the democratic theories of Bellarmine and the Schoolmen. The opening sentence of Sidney's discourse ran:

Having lately seen a book entitled “Patriarcha,” written by Sir Robert Filmer, concerning the universal and undistinguished right of all kings, I thought a time of leisure might well be employed in examining his doctrine and the questions arising from it; which seems so far to concern all mankind.

Commenting on the quotation in “Patriarcha” from Cardinal Bellarmine, Sidney remarked of Filmer:

He absurdly imputes to the School Divines that which was taken up by them as a common notion, written in the heart of every man, denied by none, but such as were degenerated into beasts. The school men could not lay more approved foundations than that man is naturally free; that he cannot justly be deprived of that liberty without cause; that only those governments can be called Just which are established by the consent of nations.

Another treatise on government as widely read but not so popular was John Locke's “Two Treatises on Government.” Like Sidney, Locke wrote in reply to Filmer. Locke himself states on the title page that in his two treatises “the false principles and foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown.” Giving his own views Locke wrote, “Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.” Lord Acton in his “History of Freedom” (p. 82), remarks, “The greater part of the political ideas of Milton, Locke, and Rousseau, may be found in the ponderous Latin of Jesuits.”

Jefferson read works quoting Bellarmine

Whether Jefferson ever read any of the original works of Cardinal Bellarmine would be difficult to assert or to deny. In the Library of Princeton University there was, however, a copy of Cardinal Bellarmine's works in the days of Jefferson. James Madison, a member of the committee which drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights was a graduate of Princeton in 1771, and certainly had access to Bellarmine's works. This copy, David Schaff states, was destroyed by fire in 1802. It is not so certain, then, that Jefferson and Madison had no possible access to the original writings of Bellarmine, and it is quite possible that in their studies of philosophy, law, and government, they may have investigated the original writings of Bellarmine, of whom they read in Filmer's “Patriarcha,” in Sidney's “Noble Book,” and Locke's “Two Treatises on Government.” Bellarmine's “disputations,” in words of William A. Dunning (“Hist. Of Pol. Theories,” p. 128), “covered systematically all the prominent issues of the time, theological, ecclesiastical, political, and constituted a formidable arsenal of arguments.” Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, the framers and builders of our American Constitution, could not have been ignorant of Sidney, Locke, Filmer, and Bellarmine. “Locke and Sidney,” says Dr. Figgis (trans. Royal Hist. Soc., XI, 1897, 94), “if they did not take their political faith bodily from Suarez or Bellarmine, managed in a remarkable degree to conceal the difference between the two.”

Did Professor Schaff read Bellarmine?

Dr. Schaff is further quoted as stating that “the Churchmen's [Bellarmine's] idea of government was quite unlike Jefferson's because the former believed in one chiefly of monarchy” and that “the theory of popular authority and its origin was entirely apart from Cardinal Bellarmine and his writings, it being developed in Geneva and spreading through the Huguenots,” etc.

In his “De Romani Pontificis Ecclesiastica Monarchia,” Bk. I, c. 1, the Cardinal writes, “Monarchy theoretically and in the abstract, monarchy in the hands of God who combines in Himself all the qualifications of an ideal ruler, is indeed a perfect system of government; in the hands of imperfect man, however, it is exposed to many defects and abuses. A government tempered, therefore, by all three basic forms (i.e., monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy), a mixed government, is, on account of the corruption of human nature more useful than simple monarchy.” Bellarmine in his “De Officio Principis,” c. 22, points out the dangers and defects of absolute monarchy, and after describing how God refused to grant the Israelites a king (I Kings, viii, 7-19), concludes, “All these incidents clearly indicate that God did not desire his people to have absolute kings as the Gentiles had them, because He foresaw that they would abuse such power.” That Bellarmine was not on the side of monarchy should need no proof. John Neville Figgis (“Divine Right of Kings,” p. 92) incidentally states, “Monarchy will be defended for its own sake when Bellarmine and Suarez have elaborated their theory of popular sovereignty.”

The theory of popular authority and its origin was entirely apart from Cardinal Bellarmine and his writings,” is a statement that could be made only by one who had never read a line of Cardinal Bellarmine's political writings. If there is anything for which the Cardinal is noted in the field of political philosophy, it is for his theory and defense of popular sovereignty.

In view of the arbitrary and despotic rule established by Calvin in Geneva over the consciences and natural liberties of men, it is difficult to associate the origins of civil and religious liberty and of popular sovereignty with Geneva and to regard it as a cradle of democracy. Lord Acton (“History of Freedom,” p. 42) wrote, “Calvin judged that the people are unfit to govern themselves and declared the popular assembly an abuse.” The principles of democracy antedate by many centuries the Geneva of the sixteenth century. John Neville Figgis in his “Political Thought of the Sixteenth Century” (Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III, p. 761), wrote, “The Huguenot movement (which proceeded from Geneva) was not democratic.”

Not a mere legend

In the opening paragraph of the full reprint of Professor Schaff's paper entitled “The Bellarmine-Jefferson Legend and the Declaration of Independence,” he assumes that the whole claim, which identifies American principles of government with prior political thought and theory of Catholic political thinkers, had its origin in the article of Gaillard Hunt, printed in the Catholic Historical Review of October, 1917, and he gratuitously calls it a legend. Mr. Hunt's argument does not purport to be a conclusive and only argument; it is rather an additional than a first argument, a strong bit of circumstantial evidence corroborative of the fact and contention that Catholic and medieval principles of democratic government have played themselves very strikingly into the American democracy and are actually there embodied.

In this paper Professor Schaff further states, “If we compare the positions laid down by the Cardinal and the American principles of government, it will be found that they are in essential matters disparate.” The above comparisons, clause for clause, and the many quotations from Cardinal Bellarmine, sufficiently demonstrate the complete erroneousness of such a statement.

The power of the people

Professor Schaff again makes the statement, “The Cardinal took the position that the power which rests originally in the people remains in the people only until the people have chosen or accepted a ruler. Once the ruler is established, the power of the people stops. The ruler is absolute, and is not amenable to the people.” The very opposite is again true. In several places the Cardinal insists that “a people never so completely transfers its power to a king but that it reserves to itself the right to withdraw it.” Populis nunquam itu transferi potestatem suam in regem quin dom sibi in habitu retineat. (Apologia,” c. 13). In his “Recognitio De Laicis” he adds, Ut in certis casibus etiam sciu recipere possit. “So that in certain cases the people can actually receive back this power.” In several other passages the Cardinal, as quoted, defends the right of a people, for legitimate reasons, to depose a ruler or to change the entire form of government.

Professor Schaff states that the “general position taken by Bellarmine, that it is for the people to choose their form of government, was not original with the Cardinal.” I know of no one who has ever claimed that the theory of popular sovereignty was original with the Cardinal, or even with St. Thomas Aquinas 300 years earlier. The claim made is that he was an ardent advocate and defender of the principle of popular government against the Divine-Right theorists of his time, and that he analyzed, defined, and elucidated most clearly and strikingly that ancient and medieval principle of sovereignty by consent of the people, when it was in its greatest danger.

Another statement of Professor Schaff is, “In passing it is to be noted that Bellarmine says nothing whatever abut Parliaments.” In “De Conciliis et Ecclesia,” c. 3, Bellarmine says, “When a controversy arises in a republic the princes and magistrates of the realm come together and determine what action should be taken. Again in ”De Romani Pontificis Ecclesiastica Monarchia,” c. 3, we read: “Since one man cannot attend to all matters of state, he must distribute these powers. While it is evident that monarchy contains necessary features of government, yet all love that form of government best in which they can participate. Of the utility of such a government, we need scarcely speak.” In the tenth chapter of “De Laicis” he states: “Laws are generally the combined judgment and experience of several wise men; the king's command is the judgment of one man and it may be rash. Legislators are less exposed to favoritism or bias. A ruler may be influenced by friends, relatives, bribes, or fear.” Bellarmine could not have been ignorant of parliamentary law. Stubbs in his “Constitutional History of England,” Vol. III, p. 388, states: “The rules and forms or parliamentary procedure had before the close of the Middle Ages begun to acquire that permanency and fixedness of character which in the eyes of later generations had risen to the sanctity of law.” (Cardinal Bellarmine was born in 1542 and died in 1621.)

Again he quotes the Cardinal as terming democracy the worst form of government. The Cardinal did make such a statement concerning simple and absolute democracy, which, he says, would lead to mob violence and the worst form of tyranny. Concerning it he quotes Plato as saying, “Who can be happy living under the arbitrary will of the crowd?” The democracy of today is far from being pure and absolute democracy. It embodies much of the monarchic and aristocratic forms of government. The type of government which the Cardinal does advocate is really a mixed government which he calls “the more useful form of government”—an adoption and combination of what is best in each of the three basic forms and a discarding of what is worst. From the monarchic element he would adopt and embody into this mixed form of government enough to insure order, peace, strength, endurance, and efficiency. From the aristocratic type of government he would borrow such features as would supply for many of the natural limitations of a one-man rule. “With the assistance of the best men of the land,” he says, “the ruler may procure wise counsel.” From the element of democracy he insists stringently upon the fundamental political principle, underlying all governments which can in any way be called democratic, the principle of sovereignty by the consent and election of the people. So much of democracy does he fuse into this “more useful” form of government that his political philosophy resents all the fundamental features of modern democratic government.

Summary

In final summary, then, the American Declaration, which was so admirable and dignified an expression of the American mind is at the same time an accurate expression of the Catholic mind, medieval and modern. This statement does not wish to infer that the American Declaration is not an expression as well of the non-Catholic American mind.

In the second place the formulator of the American Declaration of Independence, did actually possess such books on theories of government as were universally known and read, especially by political students, which book prominently mentioned the name of a Catholic, Cardinal Bellarmine, and discussed and quoted his and the Catholic Schoolmen's political theories. “Patriarcha” concerns itself principally with the refutation of Cardinal's political doctrines. If Jefferson never read a line of the Cardinal's original writings, there is every reason to believe that ample opportunity forced itself upon him to read quotations at least, from this very noted Cardinal's political utterances, , quotations that were direct, succinct, summarizing, and comprising,” as Filmer wrote, “the strength of all that was ever produced for the natural liberty of the subject.”

With this identity of American and Catholic political principle established, and with plausible evidence of most probable contact of the formulator of our American Declaration with prominent Catholic sources of democratic theory, why should it be taken from the Catholic American citizen proudly to claim identity and uniformity of political thought with that of his fellow-citizen, and why should he not rejoice in the belief that his co-religionist forebears have taken actual part in the laying of that political foundation upon which rests, today, the greatest, happiest and most prosperous nation in the world?

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/politics/pg0003.html

"Nothing less than a complete apostasy from the Christian religion would warrant the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." (Documentary History of the Church, Introduction, xl)

"I was answered that I must join none of them (Christian Churches), for they were all wrong...that all their creeds were an abomination in His sight" (Joseph Smith History 1:19).

"...orthodox Christian views of God are Pagan rather than Christian." (Mormon Doctrine of Deity by B.H. Roberts, p.116)

"...the God whom the 'Christians' worship is a being of their own creation..." (Apostle Charles W. Penrose, JD 23:243)

"Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the Church of the Lamb of God and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore whoso belongeth not to the church of the lamb of God belongeth to that great church; which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth." (The Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 14:10)

"The Christian world, so called, are heathens as to their knowledge of the salvation of God." (Brigham Young, JD 8:171)

"We may very properly say that the sectarian world do not know anything correctly, so far as pertains to salvation. Ask them where heaven is?- where they are going to when they die?-where Paradise is! -and there is not a priest in the world that can answer your questions. Ask them what kind of a being our Heavenly Father is, and they cannot tell you so much as Balaam's donkey told him. They are more ignorant than children." (Brigham Young, JD 5:229).

"The Christian world, I discovered, was like the captain and crew of a vessel on the ocean without a compass, and tossed to and fro whithersoever the wind listed to blow them. When the light came to me, I saw that all the so-called Christian world was grovelling in darkness." (Brigham Young, JD 5:73).

"What! Are Christians ignorant? Yes, as ignorant of the things of God as the brute best." (John Taylor, JD 13:225)

"What does the Christian world know about God? Nothing...Why so far as the things of God are concerned, they are the veriest fools; they know neither God nor the things of God." (John Taylor, JI) 13:225)

"Believers in the doctrines of modern Christendom will reap damnation to their souls (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.177)

"I have learned for myself that Presbyterianism is not true." (Joseph Smith, DHC 1:6)

"I spoke of the impropriety of turning away from the truth, and going after a people so destitute of righteousness as the Methodists." (Joseph Smith, DHC 2:319)

"...brother Joseph B. Nobles once told a Methodist priest, after hearing him describe his god, that the god they worshiped was the "Mormon's" Devil-a being without a body, whereas our God has a body, parts and passions." (Brigham Young, JD 5:331)

"...brother Heber C. Kimball was beset by a number of Baptist priests who had been attending a conference. He read them all down out of the New Testament....With regard to true theology, a more ignorant people never lived than the present so-called Christian world." (Brigham Young, JD 8:199).

"The Roman Catholic, Greek, and Protestant church, is the great corrupt, ecclesiastical power, represented by great Babylon...." (Orson Pratt, Orson Pratt, Writings of an Apostle, "Divine Authenticity," no.6, p.84).

"...all the priests who adhere to the sectarian religions of the day with all their followers, without one exception, receive their portion with the devil and his angels." (The Elders Journal, Joseph Smith Jr., editor, vol.1, no.4, p.60)

"And any person who shall be so wicked as to receive a holy ordinance of the gospel from the ministers of any of these apostate churches will be sent down to hell with them, unless they repent of the unholy and impious act." (Orson Pratt, OP-WA, "The Kingdom of God," no.2, p.6)

"...all other churches are entirely destitute of all authority from God; and any person who recieves baptism or the Lord's supper from their hands will highly offend God, for he looks upon them as the most corrupt people." (Orson Pratt, The Seer, pg. 255)

"...the great apostate church as the anti-christ...This great antichrist...is the church of the devil." (Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine p.40)

"Both Catholics and Protestants are nothing less than the "whore of Babylon" whom the lord denounces by the mouth of John the Revelator as having corrupted all the earth by their fornications and wickedness." (Pratt, The Seer, p.255)

"Brother Taylor has just said that the religions of the day were hatched in hell. The eggs were laid in hell, hatched on its borders, and then kicked on to the earth." (Brigham Young, JD 6:176)

"Evil spirits control much of the so-called religious worship in the world; for instance, the great creeds of Christendom were formulated so as to conform to their whispered promptings." (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, p.246

"After the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, there were only two churches upon the earth. They were known respectively as the Church of the Lamb of God and Babylon. The various organizations which are called churches throughout Christiandom, though differing in their creeds and organizations, have one common orgin. They belong to Babylon." (George Q. Cannon, Gospel Truth, p.324)

Finally, note the views of Mormon Prophet Brigham Young regarding the Christian view of Jesus Christ:

"You may hear the divines of the day extol the character of the Saviour, undertake to exhibit his true character before the people, and give an account of his origin...I have frequently thought of mules, which you know are half horse and half donkey, when reflecting upon the representations made by those divines. I have heard sectarian priests undertake to tell the character of the Son of God, and they make him half of one species and half of another, and I could not avoid thinking at once of the mule, which is the most hateful creature that ever was made, I believe. You will excuse me, but I have thus thought many a time" (Journal of Discourses 4:217).

http://www.aomin.org/Quotations.html

Affirming All Things

By Dwight Longenecker

American Gothic

Taking dramatic steps of faith runs in the family. In the eighteenth century my ancestors left Switzerland for the new colony of Pennsylvania to find religious freedom. The two Longenecker brothers were Mennonites—members of an Anabaptist sect so strict that they were persecuted by Calvin.

Seven generations later my part of the family had left the Mennonites, and I was brought up in a Bible Christian church. Like many churches in the sixties, our independent Bible church was a strongly evangelical and conservative group of Christians who were disenchanted with the liberal drift of the main Protestant denominations in the post-war period and set off to do their own thing.

That same independent movement included the foundation of a fundamentalist college in the deep South by the Methodist evangelist Bob Jones. So after the war my parents and aunts and uncles went to study there and it was natural for my parents to send my siblings and me there in the 1970s. In the heart of the so-called Bible belt, Bob Jones University incongruously mixes hollerin’ hell-fire fundamentalism with grand opera and a famous gallery of fine religious art. BJU are the folks who gave Northern Irish firebrand Ian Paisley his honorary doctorate and who brand even Billy Graham as a liberal.

The religion in our own home was simple, Bible-based and balanced. Like our Mennonite forebears there was a quiet simplicity and tolerance at the heart of our faith. We believed Catholics were in error, but we didn’t nurture hatred towards them. At BJU the tone was different. There the Catholic Church was clearly the ‘whore of Babylon’ and the Pope was the Anti-Christ.

Anglican Orthodoxy
Ironically it was at BJU that I discovered the Anglican Church. We were allowed to go to a little Episcopalian schism church named ‘Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church.’ The church was founded by a ‘bishop’ whose orders—an Anglican bishop later told me—were ‘valid, but irregular’. He had been ordained by a renegade Old Catholic as well as a breakaway Orthodox bishop.

Along with some other disenchanted Baptists and Bible Christians I went to the little stone church and discovered the glories of the Book of Common Prayer, lighting candles and kneeling to pray. I was taken with the experience, and after searching for God’s calling in my life, decided to be an Anglican priest. I had studied English literature and visited England a few times and thought it would be perfect to minister in a pretty English village in a medieval church.

I wrote to the evangelical Anglican J.I.Packer and he suggested a few English seminaries. Oxford was the Mecca for devotees of C.S.Lewis, so when the opportunity to study at Oxford came my way I jumped at the chance and came to England for good. After theological studies I was ordained and a life of ministry in the Anglican Church opened up.

The Affirmative Way
This whole period was a time of great growth and learning. Often it is the little bit of wisdom that makes the most impression; I will never forget a little quotation from the great Anglican social commentator F.D.Maurice I came across while I was studying theology. He wrote, "A man is most often right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies." After the negative attitude of American fundamentalism and the cynical religious doubt which prevailed at Oxford, Maurice’s statement was like a breath of fresh air.

It was sometimes tempting to feel guilty about leaving the religion of my family and upbringing, but with Maurice’s viewpoint I increasingly felt the Anglican riches I was discovering were not so much a denial of my family faith, but an addition to it. So I took Maurice’s dictum as my motto, and whenever I came across something new, I asked myself if I was denying or affirming. If I wasn’t able to affirm the new doctrine or religious practice I wouldn’t deny it—I would simply let it be.

So when a Catholic friend in the USA suggested I visit a Benedictine Abbey, I took her advice and made arrangements to go to the closest one to Oxford—Douai Abbey. There I found a world as alien to evangelical Anglicanism as Oxford was to Bob Jones University. The monks impressed me with their sense of solemn self-mockery, and there was a sense of touching a Christianity far greater and wider than I had yet experienced.

St. Benedict the Balanced
My link with the Benedictines continued after I was ordained and went to serve as an Anglican curate. I made my annual retreat at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight—just off the South coast of England, read about the history of monasticism and felt drawn to the Benedictine Way. There seemed to be a balance, a simplicity and a profound spirituality which echoed back to the simple sincerity of my Mennonite ancestors.

Just as I was about to visit Quarr Abbey for my annual retreat a friend brought me a rosary from Walsingham. I had never touched such a Catholic artifact, but F.D. Maurice’s wisdom touched me and I thought, "If so many Christians pray this way, who am I to deny it?" So I bought a book about the Rosary and learned how to pray the it. Any ideas of accepting the Marian dogmas were out of the question. I substituted different glorious mysteries which were more Christ-centered. My five Biblical glorious mysteries were: Transfiguration, Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost and Second Coming. Despite my individualism another window was opened and something new affirmed for I found that the Rosary grew in importance and I started to receive great graces through the prayers of Our Lady.

When my curacy was finished I had three months free and decided to hitchhike to Jerusalem. So with backpack and a pair of sturdy shoes I headed across France and Italy staying in various religious houses along the route. I found my journey went best when I fit in with the monastic routine. So I would begin a day’s journey with Mass and morning offices in one monastery, say my Anglican office whilst travelling, then arrive at the next monastery in time for Vespers, the evening meal and Compline.

The pilgrimage to the Holy Lands also took me further into Christian history. Part of the appeal of being ordained into the Church of England had been to leave the modern subjective church of Protestant USA and find deeper routes in the history and faith of Europe. Suddenly travelling through France, Italy and Greece to Israel I was immersed in a religion obviously older and deeper still than Anglicanism.

The Benedictine houses put me in touch with roots of faith which were deeper and more concrete than I imagined could exist. Although I realized my views were becoming ‘more Catholic’ I didn’t fight it. I wanted to ‘be right in what I affirmed."

The Apostolic Ministry
I had been ordained for about six years when my dream came true and I went to be vicar of two beautiful old churches on the Isle of Wight. By this time I was not an Anglo-Catholic, but I did regard my ministry in a very Catholic way. I knew we were separated from Rome, but I considered my ministry to be part of the whole Catholic Church. Despite the formal separation, I thought of Anglicanism as a branch of the Catholic Church, and prayed for the time of our eventual re-union.

My pilgrimage to the Catholic Church had—for the most part—been intuitive. I simply adopted the Catholic practices that seemed suitable, and when it came time to question certain doctrines I looked at them and made every effort to affirm and not deny. This mindset brought me almost unconsciously to the very doorstep of the Catholic Church. What I said to some friends who were considering conversion was true of me as well–I was more Catholic than I myself realized.

It was the Church of England’s decision to ordain women as presbyters that helped clear my vision. Suddenly things became crystal clear. Women priests were not the problem. Instead it was what the General Synod’s decision-making process revealed about the true nature of the Church of England. The key question was—"Is the Anglican Church a Catholic Church or a Protestant church? If she wishes to be considered Catholic then she does not have the authority to ordain women as priests. But if Protestant—like all Protestant groups—she may indeed take the decision to ordain women ministers. So when the General Synod took the decision, I was in a quandary. Everything within me said a Catholic church could not make such a decision on its own. Yet I hated taking a negative position about anything. According to my motto I was denying women priests and I was wrong to do so.

Then Fr. Leo Avery, the late Abbot of Quarr, gently pointed out that greater affirmations often include smaller denials. In other words you can’t have everything. Choices need to be made. Denying women priests was merely the negative side of affirming something greater—the apostolic ministry; and affirming Catholicism had to include the denial of those things contrary to Catholicism.

Affirming All Things
The next few years were a terrible time of indecision. By now I was married and we had two young children. I hadn’t trained for any other career and if we left the Anglican Church there seemed nothing but an uncertain future. One Sunday evening I went to Quarr Abbey for Vespers and Benediction. As the monks chanted I agonized over the decision to leave the Church of England.

"But I only wanted to serve you in the ancient church in England!" I cried out to the Lord.

As the incense wafted heavenward and the monstrance was lifted, the still small voice replied, "But THIS is the ancient church in England." Then the struggles ended. My mind was made up, and in the Autumn of 1994 my wife and I began our course of instruction with Fr. Joe McNerny at Quarr.

There was grief at losing our home and church, but at the same time we received a tremendous welcome from our new Catholic friends. It was during this time that Keith Jarrett—the secretary of the St. Barnabas Society—offered friendship, help and encouragement as he has done for so many who have taken the same step. Once we were received the St. Barnabas Society continued to be there with practical advice and financial assistance.

As we went through our instruction I not only read the documents of Vatican II, but did further reading in the Apostolic Fathers. Day by day I discovered that all the things I had come to affirm intuitively were part of the great unity of the Catholic Faith. When I became an Anglican I felt my Bible Christian background was being completed, and as we prepared to be received into the Catholic Church I realized that I could still affirm everything my non-Catholic friends and family affirmed, I simply could no longer deny what they denied. F.D. Maurice’s little snippet of wisdom had brought me across the Tiber, and in becoming a Catholic I was affirming all things and denying nothing that was true.

Our reception took place in a quiet service one February evening in the crpyt of Quarr Abbey church. That night all was harvest. There, as the monks sang their ancient and moving plainsong and we were finally received into full communion, the simple faith of my Mennonite forebears, the Bible Christians’ love for the Scriptures and the ancient beauties of Anglicanism were all gathered together and fulfilled in a new and dynamic way.

Dwight Longenecker works as Southwest District Organizer for the St. Barnabas Society—the Coming Home Network’s English counterpart. He is also active as a Catholic writer and broadcaster. Dwight and Alison have four children—Benedict, Madeleine, Theodore and Elias.

http://www.chnetwork.org/journals/eucharist/eucharist_3.htm

FROM SOUTHERN BAPTIST TO AGNOSTIC, TO ATHEIST, TO CATHOLIC

by Jay Damien

It was summer vacation, and I was again at my Grandmother's house, in her
bedroom, staring at black beads in a green glass dish. Those mysterious
beads! I was drawn to them but didn't dare touch them. Every night Grandma
took those beads from their resting place. Her eyes closed and her lips
whispered as the circle of beads slowly moved through her fingers to the
swish-swish rhythm of her rocking chair. What did it mean? What was she
doing? I watched, transfixed. I was sure she was doing something
"Catholic."

I always knew that Grandma was Catholic and my family was Baptist, but she
never said a word to me about the Catholic Church. Except once, when I
blurted out, "Why are you Catholic?" she replied, "The Catholic Church was
the first church, why isn't it the right church?" I would forever remember
those thirteen words, spoken when I was seven or eight years old.

I grew up in Arizona, and my Catholic Grandmother lived eleven hundred miles
away in the mid-west. I rarely thought of her and was unaware of the
influence she and her beads would have on my life until many years later.

My paternal grandparents were Southern Baptist. Only five miles separated
them from my Catholic grandparents, but religious differences created a
chasm between them the depth of the Grand Canyon. The undercurrents of
religious conflict ran strong beneath the surface of our family
relationships; there was a constant tug-of-war going on. The Catholic side
prayed silently, but the Baptist side tried to inoculate me against what
they regarded as the plague of Catholicism by making sure I read such
literature as, "Why I'm a Preacher and Not a Priest." As I grew older, I
realized that my once-Catholic Mother was at the center of this vortex.

But distance put this conflict out of mind, and I grew up as a member of the
Calvary Baptist Church, Southern, serenely confident that I was "saved," and
that I possessed the "truth." Secure in the knowledge that I belonged to
the invisible church of true believers, I was grateful that my mother had
become aware of the errors of the "Whore of Babylon," as the Catholic Church
was called, and had escaped its evil influence. That meant that I, too, was
safe. The shocking "truths" about the Catholic Church were taught from the
pulpit and in Sunday School, and I believed them all.

I grew up thinking that the world was divided into Baptists, who were right,
and Catholics, who were wrong. But as I became older, it disturbed my
spiritual peace to realize that my friends were Presbyterian,
Congregationalist, Lutheran, Methodist, or even some other denomination of
Baptist, and our beliefs were different. "Don't you believe the Bible?" I
asked. The answer was always, "Yes."
This finally became such a burning question that, as a teen-ager, I took it
to my pastor: "Why are there so many different churches, all based on the
same Bible? How can I be sure which one has the *truth*?" He assured me
that if I asked the Holy Spirit for guidance, with a sincere heart, that the
Spirit would lead me to the correct interpretation of the Scriptures. "But
if the Holy Spirit is leading everyone, why do people reach different
conclusions? We are all sincerely seeking the truth." His answer was to
suggest that I be baptized again. So I went under the waters a second time.

But the question continued to haunt me. I studied the doctrines of various
Protestant churches in comparison to the Scriptures. I began to see that
words on a page are open to many interpretations and to believe that God had
played a cruel joke on humanity. He gave us a Book as our sole rule of
faith and practice -- then expected us to figure out for ourselves what we
should believe and how we should conduct our lives. He had left us desolate,
after all (Jn 14:18 RSV). With young adulthood came the awareness that
Christian truth, if it existed at all, could not be known with certainty.

Christianity is a revealed religion. What, then, had God revealed? I grew
into the realization that this was a multiple choice question, and that all
answers were correct. I had my *opinion* about what the Bible said, which
conflicted with the *opinions* sincerely held by other Bible-believing
Christians. After many troubled years, I jumped off the Southern Baptist
ship. It was the only logical thing to do. Since every denomination is
based on the same Bible, but no two of them agree; and since there is no way
anyone can know with certainty which of them is "true," then "truth" has no
objective meaning in religion. Relative truth didn't interest me; I wasn't
willing to stake my life on it. I reasoned that if we couldn't know with
certainty what God had revealed, how could we be sure that there is a God at
all? And what difference would it make if He did exist, since I could not
*know* with certainty what He wanted me to believe? So I became an agnostic
and eventually drifted into atheism.

I had such an aversion to the Catholic Church, I had never even considered
looking into it. And then, Father Emmett McLoughlin left the Catholic
Church and the news was splashed across the front page of my hometown
newspaper. He began speaking about the evils of Catholicism at local
Baptist churches and introduced his book, *People's Padre,* at the public
library. I was enthralled by his words and reminded of how grateful I had
been all my life that my mother had left the Catholic Church before I was
born. I purchased the book as a "thank you" gift for her.

And, of course, I read it. Something about the book troubled me, but I
couldn't identify what it was. This prompted me to go back to the religion
section of the library many times. There, on the library shelves, I found a
different form of Christianity than I had known as a Protestant. I found
the history of a visible, teaching Church founded by Christ, a Church which
predated the New Testament, wrote it, and was its rightful interpreter.

At first, my reading was the result of intellectual interest, as I had once
been interested in knowing about Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and all the
religions of the world. But when I began to disagree with such
anti-Catholic writers as Paul Blanshard, whose books occupied the same
library shelf, I realized that I was on dangerous ground. I had stepped
into the magnetic field of Catholic Truth, and was being drawn toward the
Church. My reaction was an emphatic, "No!" I was a professed atheist, and
being Catholic was out of the question. But I continued reading,
supplementing the library's books with others found in a Catholic book
store. I assured myself that it was just intellectual curiosity. But this
was a Christian Church that didn't leave it up to the individual to decide
what he would believe. This Church was an authoritative teacher who claimed
to be the repository of authentic Christian Revelation -- of "the faith
which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3) -- and had the
pedigree to prove it!

The first jolt was my discovery of Bible history. It had never occurred to
me as a Protestant to ask how we got the Bible! To learn that the early
Church had existed for centuries before the New Testament canon was defined
was a shock. All those Christian martyrs of the first four Christian
centuries had gone to their deaths without knowing the NT as I knew it. If
the Bible was the sole rule of faith, how could they have known what to
believe?

I learned that many writings about Jesus were circulated among the local
churches in the early centuries, hand carried by travelers, and that no
church possessed a complete "Bible" all at once, as it is known today -- in
fact, one didn't exist. No one knew which of these many, many writings were
"Scripture," and which were not, until the canon was set by Catholic Church
at the Councils of Hippo (A.D. 393) and Carthage (A.D. 397). And there are
no originals of the Scriptures. The Bible has come down to us through
copies, and copies of copies -- no one knows how many generations of copies
-- all made by Catholic hands. I felt betrayed. I thought my "Bible only"
teachers either knew this or should have known it, and should have told me.
I began to wonder whether I would have become an agnostic/atheist if I had
known these basic historical facts. It was the first crack in my atheist
shell.

As I continued to read, I discovered early Christian literature. The
*Didache,* for example, is a first-century document that is older than some
of the New Testament writings. Its full title is *The Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles,* and it was used to instruct adult pagan converts. The
*Didache* says, "On the Lord's own day, assemble in common to break bread
and offer thanks [Eucharist]; but first confess your sins, so that your
sacrifice may be pure . . . your sacrifice must not be defiled." Sacrifice?
No Protestant church offers sacrifice! This had to refer to the Sacrifice
of the Mass! And the Baptist position on 'immersion only' crumbled when I
read: "Baptize as follows . . . pour water on the head three times in the
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." Both immersion
and infusion (pouring) were taught by the Apostles! I read the other Church
Fathers and discovered that the early Church was distinctively Catholic. It
was all there, from Confession to the Sign of the Cross. When St. Ignatius
of Antioch (d. 110 A.D.), student of St. John the Evangelist, referred to
the Eucharist as the "...Flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ" I knew it wasn't
just a symbol, and that the sixth chapter of John meant exactly what it
said.

I met John Henry Cardinal Newman through his *Apologia Pro Vita Sua* and
*Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.* Newman said, "To be deep
in history is to cease to be Protestant." How right he was! Not only was I
shucking Protestant prejudices from my past, but God was revealing Himself
through history. One day I did not believe God existed, and the next day I
was absolutely sure He did and that He could be found in the Church He had
established for my salvation and that of the whole world -- the Catholic
Church! I read Gibbons' *Faith of Our Fathers,* and knew in my bones that it
was true. Karl Adam's, *The Spirit of Catholicism* remains to this day my
favorite book.

In l983, David Barrett's study (*The Oxford World Christian Encyclopedia*)
identified 20,800 Christian denominations, "with a projected 22,190 by l985.
. . The present net increase is 270 denominations each year, or 5 new ones a
week." The United Nations released a figure of 23,000 Protestant "competing
and often contradictory denominations" (*World Census of Religious
Activities,* U.N. Information Center, NY, 1989). If Barrett's projection
rate has continued since l985 (and the rate has held for several years),
this would amount to over 26,000 Protestant denominations in the world
today, all based on the same Bible. So I have no doubt that if I had not
read that anti-Catholic book written by an apostate priest, I would still be
convinced that the truth could not be known through the Bible only -- Sola
Scriptura -- and I would never have found my way home.

Fr. McLoughlin eventually came back to the Catholic Church, without fanfare;
no book or newspaper documented his return. I was privileged to be present
when a venerable, old Franciscan priest, Fr. Albert Braun, told a group one
night that he had heard Fr. Emmett's Confession before he died.

I had long since identified what had troubled me about Fr. Emmett's book.
He had either been in seminary or in active service as a priest for about 25
years. Why had it taken him a quarter of a century to discover the evils of
the Catholic Church? He could have left and written his exposé at any time.
Instead, his criticism of the Church and rejection of its doctrines
*followed* his refusal to obey transfer orders from his superior. He was a
popular priest, well known and very influential in the community, and he
didn't want to leave. He justified breaking his vow of obedience by
launching an attack upon the Church. But, like the good Mother that she is,
the Church forgave him and quietly welcomed her prodigal son home.

And what does my Grandmother have to do with this? God has given me the
grace to know that it was through Granny's Rosary, tens of thousands of
prayers offered for her daughter -- my mother and her family -- for years
and years, that my unbelieving heart was changed. Those prayers converted
me, my anti-Catholic father and mother, my sister-in-law and brother -- in
Grandma's words -- "to the first Church, the right Church." Never
underestimate the power of the Rosary! And please say a prayer for my
brother and his family who are not Catholic (yet).

Jay Damien

Bail Conversion Story

By Jeffrey W. Bail

Born Again, Salvation, and Converting to Christ

In my senior year in 1973, Copley High School had a drug assembly and invited a group called THE NEW MEN to make a musical presentation to our student body. The assembly consisted of their describing a life of drugs, music, and ultimately a life-changing event that occurred. This resulted in a major change of direction and purpose of life. They stated that they would be singing in area churches over the next week and invited any of the students to come hear more of their story. I was intrigued and went back to the UCC Associate Pastor and wanted to bring our youth group to hear them on that Sunday evening. I was mostly interested in the music as I was a guitar player and vocalist. About ten of us from the youth group went and heard the New Men’s story. The spoke of being born-again in Christ and at the conclusion of their performance invited anyone that was interested to pray the “sinner’s prayer” for salvation. Three of us (self-included) prayed that prayer. For me it was phenomenal, I felt so freed. Even though I was a “good” kid, the peace that accompanied this prayer was amazing. They told us that we had been “converted” to Christ. The next day while playing basketball with one of my best friends, I was going on and on about being “converted”. He asked what that meant and I said I didn’t really know except that I felt wonderfully close to God. The next week I met with my Associate Pastor and we talked at length about my conversion. He was very excited as I described a heartfelt interest in going into some type of ministry in the future. We became closer over the next year as he began to disciple me in the things of Christ.

Trying to be a Witness

One Sunday a year the UCC Church had “Youth Sunday” in which the Youth basically conducted the entire service. I had previously been involved in the music portion but this year the Associate Pastor ask me to “bring the sermon.” When we discussed a topic, he suggested I relay my “conversion” experience. I did, and the response wasn’t necessarily one I’d expected. Like most ministers I stood at the exit door of the church and shook the hands of the attendees at the conclusion of the service. I was encouraged, congratulated, and in some cases cautioned by the exiters. One seminary student, home for the holiday, told me to not be so naïve and literal in my beliefs toward the Bible. Looking back, I’m sure I received a lot of sympathetic nods and understanding because of my young zealous beliefs. I was surprised that others didn’t flock to the message and desire to receive Christ as I had. Later, my Associate Pastor said that he got some flack because of my “narrow minded” sermon. The Senior Pastor just tried to stand somewhere in the middle. So I met “opposition” for the first time and it left me a little hurt. By now I was a senior in high school and working at a local grocery store. The store offered double time pay on Sunday’s to work and I soon found myself substituting work for church. It was easy to not attend church, given my “narrow-mindedness.” Satan was very quick to offer a very profitable substitute. After all I was starting college in the fall and could use the money.

College Days

I started Akron University in the fall of 1973 studying accounting. Due to my musical background I joined the Men’s Glee Club at the University. At the end of my first year my singer friend from my high school ask it I would be interested in playing rhythm guitar for a gospel quartet. I was interested and began practicing with the group. My first weekend performance was at E.J. Thomas Hall, the performance hall on the campus of the University of Akron. It was a wonderful experience and I felt those “feelings” again that I felt in the Christian environment. I was excited about the future of singing for God. I eventually became the lead singer of this group called the CrossRoads. During my college year we toured about 30,000 miles per year on weekends. We owned a bus and over the course of the next 5 years we made 6 albums and toured most of the eastern US. Two of us graduated from the University of Akron in 1977 and we went
“Full-time” into this singing ministry.

During the years while still in college and while touring with The CrossRoads I moved my church membership to the Akron Baptist Temple, home of the World’s largest Sunday school in the previous decade. I found that the Baptists believed in something and everything was about the bible. Our church was independent (no hierarchy), fundamental, Pre-millennial (relates to end time prophecy), and avid King James Bible fanatics. We believed salvation by faith alone, the Bible as the only authority, and that we were the front line of God’s army. We traced our lineage all the way back to the time of Christ outside of any church denomination. The book The Trail of Blood, was a must-read for our denomination. We stood against liberalism, charisma tics, ritualism, and the social gospel. We didn’t even acknowledge Catholics as part of the Christian family. We didn’t smoke, drink, dance, go to movies, and some of us didn’t even own a TV. We went to church Wednesday night for Bible study, Sunday morning for Sunday school and then the Preaching service, and Sunday night for another preaching service. The “really Christian” among us also attended a visitation night weekly to knock on doors and evangelize those in our community. These were wonderful times. I wasn’t around the Akron Baptist Temple on the weekends due to our singing schedule but regular attended Wednesday night bible study and Tuesday night visitation.

The Local Church

After about a year of “full-time” in the ministry of the CrossRoads, I sensed a real burden to be involved with the local church (Akron Baptist Temple,ABT). So in the winter of 1978 I resigned from the CrossRoads. We were singing at a church in Valley City, Ohio the night we made the announcement that I would be leaving the group in May (as lead singer, it took awhile to work someone into that role). At the conclusion of the singing another Pastor of a church in Brunswick (where we sang on several occasions) was in the congregation. He asked me if I would consider coming to Brunswick and work part-time as his youth and music pastor. I told him I’d pray about it. I really wasn’t interested. May came and I left the group and got my first “real” job in my trained profession of accounting. I got very involved in my local church (ABT) and was truly content. A couple of times during the summer the Pastor of Grace
Baptist Church (GBC) called and asked if I was considering his proposition. I told him I’d make a decision in September. I still wasn’t that interested but with my delay, I bought some time. My girlfriend, Miriam, had just finished up her schooling at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, TN. We made this decision a matter of prayer and finally felt led to go to Brunswick and serve in the Grace Baptist Church. The church in that time averaged about 175 on Sunday and was an exciting place to be serving God. We thoroughly enjoyed the youth and the music department was certainly a challenge. Miriam taught Sunday school and sang in the choir. We drove 4 times a week for a year from Akron to Brunswick during this time and finally Miriam and I were married in the summer of 1979. We moved to Brunswick and I still worked my full time job in accounting and “we” did part-time ministry for the church. I say “we” because while I got paid for the work, the church got a package deal in the both of us. Unfortunately this is the case in most fundamental churches and is the cause of much burnout. In 1981 the church asked me to go fulltime and become Associate Pastor due to the rapid growth and building programs. We were now averaging about 500-600 on Sunday.

Success

We were on the move. The Grace Baptist Church was making its mark on the city of Brunswick.

Over the next few years Miriam & I developed a youth department of 150 teens in three departments: junior high, senior high, & career college. We trained a youth staff consisting of 2-3 couples in each department. We had 11 youth in Christian college and we developed the youth ministry to function with or without our involvement.

The music department now consisted of a 70 voice adult choir, 25-piece orchestra, a ladies ensemble, 3 children’s choirs, a special music department consisting of 20 soloists. We produced a weekly cable show and did some live Radio. Personally I began to compose music and work on musical projects.

The church was now at it’s peak. On Sundays our attendance was well over 1000 and we had seen a high attendance of 1200. We had arrived. We were now the largest protestant congregation in our county.

Going through the Motions

Every January 1st I would feel a little empty and sought out a new “project” for the new year in hopes to chase the emptiness away. The first few years it was easy, developing the “youth staff” and administration or adding a new musical group. One year I began to disciple men one on one. Over a period of several years I discipled about 15 men, some I met once a week for 2 years straight. During these years one of my disciples and I joined the local Rotary Club and claimed these me as ours for God. We prayed weekly for their souls. While discipling was a great ministry for me, I found that the men were growing in emptiness with me. How could this be, we were reading our bible, memorizing scripture, and witnessing. But growing in emptiness. Jan 1, 1998 I decided my new year project would be to write and produce a full-length Christmas musical. It kept me busy all year. Every Friday I devoted to the creative piece of the work. “TIS THE REASON” was performed that Christmas by three churches and was quite successful. It was an emotional high and achievement that I didn’t think I could surpass. Jan 1 1999 proved to be rough time. I couldn’t come up with any new project to pacify my emptiness. How could I be empty after such success, being the largest church in the county, and leading so many people? I begged the Lord to remove the emptiness with something, but to no avail.

I was beginning to question whether we were the church Jesus promised to preserve in Matthew 16:18. If Grace Baptist was this church and the success was real, why was I so empty? Not only was I having trouble coping with my emptiness but also I was beginning to wrestle with some personal issues with the Pastor of Grace Baptist. We had been close friends now for many years but I saw some things that I didn’t like and all of a sudden I was struggling internally with his and my relationship. I was feeling like we were not doing ministry the way that Jesus would have it done. I began to go through the motions of ministry. We had this ministry down to a system, we could do this ministry and not really have to be in the right place with God. Nobody would ever see. Finally I began to share this my wife only to find, like most wives, she arrived here long before I did. Trying to ignore my plight, emptiness began to swallow me.

The Weird Guy at the Christian Bookstore

I never read much during my ministry days but one afternoon I stopped into our local Christian bookstore. I thought surely some Christian pastor must have experienced an emptiness due to success and written a book about it. I just had to find it. Dave was the manager on duty. Dave was “way to spiritual” for me. One day I heard him talk to a customer about “eating truth.” I just didn’t get that kind of talk. So I usually avoided Dave. This day Dave came and asked me what I was looking for and I told him something to read. He walked over to a rack, pulled down a book called “A Tale of Three Kings” and said, “this is a book about somebody who has trouble with the authority figure in their life.” I sensed the voice of God in his voice and my ear and took the book. I stayed up that night and finished it. It was the first food for my soul in a long time. The next day I was there looking for a new book suggestion by Dave. That year I read 67 books, I guess I was making up for lost time. Some days I would go in just to talk to Dave about what he and I were reading. I found out that Dave had a Masters degree from Baptist seminary and he was on a personal journey also. We became good friends and journeyed together certainly clueless as to our destination.

Father Fred

I was still discipling the men of the church and we were beginning to read some of the life changing books from my list. At last, hope for our emptiness. My friend and I were still praying for our Rotary Club men and I had become the unofficial pastor of the club, that is until Father Fred showed up. Father Fred, a priest from our local Catholic church, was this round man with a contagious personality that the men flocked around. He tried to be friendly to me but he was Catholic and I wasn’t going to call him “Father”. Weeks went by and Father Fred became the center of attention. I had to admit, there was something about him. One Thursday after a meeting I was back in my office praying for “my men” and the words “help me be like Father Fred” came out of my mouth. Wow, my spirit knew he had something in him that I wanted and needed. From that day forward I made internal peace with Father Fred and our relationship developed. One of the books in my list of 67 (#7) was Joshua, written by Father Girzone. I had to hide that book in my office, as I didn’t want my Pastor to see it. I was already suspect for being in Rotary and I mentioning Father Fred on occasion. I didn’t want to push the envelope. One morning I was feeling exceptionally open and began sharing with my Pastor my surprise prayer request about desiring a life that resembled Father Fred. He exploded and said that Father Fred wasn’t even a Christian because he believed in transubstantiation and that made him a cannibal. I immediately replied with Eph.2: 8,9 and said if we can’t do anything to get saved, we can’t do anything to unsave us. I have to admit I was surprised by his response and mostly by the anger. God was changing me and it was becoming clearer that I didn’t fit in like I used to.

What would Jesus Do?

The books were serving to change my thinking and in some cases I was radically changing my thoughts toward the church. I was convinced that Grace Baptist Church was not the church of the New Testament. I realized that we were so steeped in rules that we had become legalistic and according to the scriptures even “a little leaven” was not a healthy thing. If I could find a church that totally believed, preached, and taught the GRACE of God without a set of rules… that would surely be THE church. By this point in my life I was consumed with finding the church and wasn’t sleeping at night and had very little peace. I was praying that God would open the door and move me to another church or ministry.

One of the last of the 67 books was In His Steps by Charles Shelton. The book is about a Pastor and congregation who decide they won’t do anything in their lives until they first answer the question, “What would Jesus Do?” Long story short, the Pastor of the church has to resign, because the ministry of his church is keeping him from doing the ministry. There it was: the answer. In June of 2000, I walked into my pastor’s office and gave him a 1-month notice of resignation. We announced it to our congregation on that Sunday evening. It really was a bit awkward since I didn’t have a “why” we were leaving and there was no “where” I was going. We lived in a church parsonage and drove a church car. Our three children attended the local Baptist Christian school. Our whole life was church. Now our whole life was to change.

I give UP

Within 6 weeks of my last Sunday at Grace Baptist I was working full time as CFO(accounting) for The Salvation Army in Cleveland and part-time ministry at Church of The Open Door in Elyria, Ohio as the assistant worship leader, a church that was 4000 in size. This church was Baptist without the title or the legalism, at least it appeared that way. During my two years at Open Door and due to my involvement in the music ministry, the church was trying to get me to be full time staff. I couldn’t do this. I needed some room to work and have a ministry and for those two things to be separate. Part of my baggage I took from Grace Baptist was the idea that “I would never submit myself to another Pastor.” I loved the ministry but no man was going to control what I thought that was to be! Soon I found Open Door to be “the same” just a little less legalistic. I still didn’t find it to be the Church Christ promised in the New Testament. Facing too much pressure to be “full-time” I had an opportunity to get involved in another interim ministry and I took it! It too proved to be another of the same. I came back to Brunswick at the part time worship leader of The Brunswick Reform Church. This position I took because it was a job I could do. By this time in my Christian walk I was very independent and really didn’t have respect for any denomination and the authority of any pastor. Finally in 1997 I resigned my last paid position on a church staff. For the first time in our married life we had a choice of where to worship. I looked at my wife and ask her “where do you want to go to church?” We were impressed with a church that had taken over the “lead” in the largest church in the county race with Grace Baptist. The church was a four square church with a real charismatic emphasis. The pastor was probably the best Bible teacher I sat under and I had the utmost respect for him even though I nor my wife were not charisma tics. We knew we would never be. I led the choir for the Easter musical and did a few other things but the empty feeling still loomed in my spirit. That led us to try another church closer to our belief system. Having dinner with this pastor one evening I found that this church was the forth reform movement within the denomination. That blew the wind out of my sails. We stopped going there too. During these times we tried worship with some house churches and found that soon somebody was arguing over who had authority and who didn’t. Finally in 1998 we stopped going to church all together. We loved the Lord but couldn’t find the church God promised. I went from a busy ministry to big church to small house church to “I can worship God anywhere.”

A Strange Leading

During these 9 years after I left the full time ministry I stayed in contact with Dave who was struggling equally. One time he asked me “what if we don’t have peace because we are part of the rebellion?” I said I didn’t understand. He said, “you know, the reformation.” Well that would mean the Catholic Church was right and after all, they were not even Christian. I didn’t want to think of that, but it was a question that I would come back to me on several occasions over the years. After a year of going nowhere to church and reading to try and find direction, I hit the bottom of emptiness. By this time Dave was looking at the Catholic Church and I wasn’t ready for that. One day I was watching TV and saw a news story on an apparition site in our area. I had seen this before for several years and watched busses of people go to this place. One of my 67 books was The Final Hour by Michael Brown of which I thoroughly enjoyed. I loved biblical prophecy and this was a great book. I was curious as to why Mary would come to these Catholics but I had come to the conclusion that she had to come because they wouldn’t recognize Jesus. And after all God loved them enough to send them someone they would believe. Anyhow, this year I was intrigued by the TV story and I called the ministry and ask if they were a church (they said no) and if they had a simple prayer service during the week. I just wanted a simple service to pray without preaching and without a pastor. They said Monday night was a good service for that. I called my buddy Dave and we went only to find that it was a Rosary service. What did I know about the rosary? What was I doing there? I had felt lead to be there, it was a long drive, and besides nobody knew me. I figured I could make it through the service. This ministry was an ecumenical confraternity of the Catholic Church. Too many bad words in that description: ecumenical and Catholic. Nevertheless, I stayed and to my surprise decided to come back the next Monday. We went every week for one year on Monday nights and one night Mary whispered in my spirit “ it’s time to look at my church.” I said “OK.” So much for my “I’ll never” speech. She asked and I folded. She broke me with her gentle way. So I began to attend with Dave at his parish and later on I met a wonderful priest who ask to sponsored me into the church (knowing full well that I wasn’t going to join his parish). He and I met weekly for 2 hours for six months. I ask and discussed all those issues important to Protestants. I came into the church at the Easter vigil in 2001.

Home at Last

Today I’m a member of The Sacred Heart of Jesus parish in Wadsworth Ohio. I’m involved with the RCIA program, active in Legion of Mary, and a Eucharistic minister. I meet monthly with a group in Cleveland called The Emmaus Roundtable, a lay group of Christian apologists. I’ve just returned from an international conference overseas called “Path to Rome.” This was a wonderful conference filled with convert testimonies who have come to the Catholic faith. It was very encouraging to me. My buddy Dave and I had to opportunity to go together and we were asked to give our testimonies at the conference. What an honor it was.

Well I’ve finally found the church that Jesus promised and in the most unlikely place. Becoming a Catholic is a good way to lose protestant friends. My kids, now at Christian college, had to defend my actions to their Christian friends. They’d come home and ask why I believed the distinctive differences that most Protestants know. It’s been rough sometimes but it’s so good to be home! My prayer is that my protestant brothers and sisters find their “path to Rome” as well.

I was 45 years old and had never received a single Sacrament. At the Easter Vigil this year I received four! I was baptized and confirmed, then my wife and I had our marriage blessed, and together we received communion. After waiting for so long, sitting longingly for years and weekly watching the faithful partake, this Easter I received the body and blood of my Lord.

This story is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis of Jehovah's Witnesses or their beliefs. It is simply my journey of faith over a twenty-five-year period, compressed into a few pages.

Early religious training

My first memories of religion are pleasant ones, taking me back to my grandmother's weathered old house nestled snugly in the mountains of rural east Tennessee. On warm, pleasant summer evenings we would sit on her porch swing and slowly rock back and forth in the gentle evening breeze. I can still smell the magnolia trees, and see the last glimmers of sunlight fade over the mountains. As we listened to the whippoorwills and bobwhites serenade us, she would tell me stories of Daniel, Ezekiel, Moses, and of course, Jesus.

I would sit entranced for hours and be totally captivated with Daniel's courage, facing the lions rather than compromise his faith. We retraced Moses steps to the top of Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, and I listened in horror as the plagues befell Egypt. She recited Jesus' words with a compassion and conviction that made him real in my mind's eye. To my grandmother, faith was simple, and God was revealed through the pages of His Holy Word, which was cherished and awed.

She taught me how to pray, from the heart, with honesty and penitence. And I learned that even though your prayer may not be answered to your satisfaction, you must learn to live according to God's will. When you empty your heart in prayer you can gain peace of mind by knowing you have laid your burden in the hands of a kind, merciful, caring Master (Philippians 4:6&7).

She also taught me to have a deep respect, a reverence, for the Holy Scriptures. God's Word was the final authority on every issue.

I vividly remember standing by the pulpit of the old wooden sided whitewashed Southern Baptist Church, and leading the congregation in song. I knelt and prayed with Brother "Billy" accepting Jesus as my personal savior. But somewhere along the line, I began to ask questions. Could a person really be "once saved always saved" by a single act of emotion, without changing their lives? (See Ephesians 4:23&24) How could a person be 'saved' if they went right back to their previous conduct? It seemed to me that the Baptist view of salvation mocked the tremendous sacrifice our Lord had made.

Conversion to Jehovah's Witness

Due to our family's financial situation we left East Tennessee, and I left the spiritual warmth and nurturing influence of my Southern Baptist grandmother. Yet I also knew in my heart that God did more than just exist, that He cared about mankind, and that as our loving Creator He had fashioned a wonderful plan for our salvation. I read my Bible searching for answers, and attended a variety of Protestant Churches.

Later, when I was in college, I came across a little blue book. It was entitled The Truth that leads to Eternal Life, published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. I had never even heard of Jehovah's Witnesses up until that point in my life but in one day I read it from cover to cover. It was refreshing; it had the ring of honesty and truth! God had a name (Psalms 83:18)! God had a plan for mankind. It explained that everlasting Life came from "knowing God" (John17:3). Every statement in the book appeared to be supported by Scripture. And most importantly, it emphasized works as a part of salvation.

Little did I know that I was spiritually breaking into jail!

With only a few simple questions, and with the simple faith with which I had received my grandmother's lessons, I accepted the "Truth." The book had been written by Jehovah's Witnesses (Isaiah 43:10) and I began a Bible study with them.

I studied through two additional books with my teacher, a Jehovah's Witness' elder, who was a kind and compassionate man. My attraction to the Witnesses was as much predicated on he and his wife's genuine love and concern for me as it was my learning "scriptural truths." Eventually I came to the point of being told that if I wanted to continue to learn the 'Truth' and be baptized, I would have to modify my life. Instead of getting a college education, I should become a full-time preacher of the good news. I heartily accepted this challenge.

On December 23rd 1973, I was baptized as a Jehovah's Witness in Crownsville MD. Based on Jehovah's Witnesses interpretation of Matthew Chapter 24, as well as their eschatology, I was convinced we were living within months of the Battle of Armageddon. I had totally changed my life to conform to their rules, and my only desire now was to preach their message door to door full-time.

That presented many obstacles, the first of which were my parents. I had been getting virtually straight 'A's as an engineering major at College, and my parents were terribly hurt to hear I had quit. Also, my mom and dad were totally opposed to Jehovah's Witnesses, both doctrinally and morally. My mom was more tolerant than my dad was, but I had been forewarned that "mother would turn against daughter, and father against son" (Luke 12:53, see also Mark 13:12). So I had expected it and was prepared to fight. This was a large mistake on my part. I moved back home in an attempt to share this 'good news' with my family, but instead we were at blows. And rather than being loving, patient and understanding, I was confrontational, combative and uncompromising.

My conversion to Jehovah's Witnesses was certainly more intellectual than spiritual. In my heart I had always maintained a close personal relationship with my Creator, and thoroughly enjoyed apologetics. Certainly being a Witness and going door-to-door gave me ample opportunity to polish my Bible skills. For the next few years I worked part-time odd jobs, and spent the bulk of my time engrossed in proselytizing.

Life as a Witness

Life as a Witness is one of rigor. There are five congregation meetings per week, and each requires about one to two hours of study in preparation. A normal Witness is expected to spend two to three hours per week going door to door attempting to place Watchtower literature. Those of us that were pioneers, the Watchtower counterpart to a missionary, spent 25 hours per week in the field service, as it was called. On top of this one is expected to socialize only with other Witnesses. You celebrate no holidays, or birthdays, except for wedding anniversaries, and if you are a student in school you participate in no sports or extracurricular activities. Witnesses are not allowed to vote, or say the pledge of allegiance or participate in any political, trade union or other secular activity (Acts 5:29). For example, a Jehovah's Witness would be disfellowshipped for joining a local YMCA to swim or exercise.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is not God, but that He is Michael the Archangel. They believe that God's Holy Spirit is impersonal and therefore not alive, but that it is simply God's active force. They believe the soul to be mortal (Ezekiel 18:4) and hell to be the grave. They believe that a select group, numbering 144,000, will go to heaven (Rev. 14:1) and the rest, called a 'great crowd' of 'other sheep' (Rev. 7:9, John 10:16) will live forever here on earth. Of those with the heavenly calling, there is a 'faithful and discreet slave' class (Matt. 24:45) that interpret the Bible and 'feed' the other sheep.

Jehovah's Witnesses have no organized clergy. Members of the congregation are appointed as elders, and rotate speaking assignments. Those of us that were proficient speakers were often requested to travel to neighboring congregations to give Sunday sermons. These talks usually lasted about one hour.

This arrangement of not having a full-time paid clergy helped keep congregation expenses down, important since a typical Witness congregation has only about 100 members. Every week you have a different speaker (elder) giving a sermon. Unfortunately, the Witness elders have no training in family or personal counseling and do extremely poorly there.

They are content to open their Bible and point to a reference, but offer no real assistance in solving family problems. When a husband and wife are having serious family difficulties, it does no good to say, "The Bible commands that you accept your husband's headship." Witness elders are not taught anything of therapeutic value. Despite the organization's claims of happy families, I know of many Witness families that are broken down, or dysfunctional. Mental illness and suicide rates are higher amongst Witnesses than the population in general.

However, becoming an elder is not easy. It takes many years of training and scrutiny. One elder, a kindly old man, once concluded a service with prayer one evening by muttering, "Lord, forgive us for our falling shorts."

Of course, Jehovah's Witnesses are prolific proselytizers (Matt. 28:19). And while people think they are out to sell books, in reality most are passionate about their message. They truly believe that we are living in the last days and that the world is about to end. But they have inaccurately predicted Armageddon as coming in 1874, 1914, 1925, 1942, and 1975. Obviously their chronology is flawed, and they make poor prophets (Deuteronomy 18:21&22) but that has never prevented them from setting new dates, 'new light,' (Proverbs 4:18) they call it.
Witnesses are fanatics about the nearness of Armageddon. They believe that Jesus actually returned in 1914, invisibly, "with the clouds" (Rev. 1:7). The year 1914 marked the beginning of the last days for this world. Soon the Nations will proclaim "Peace and Security" (1 Thessalonians 5:3) and Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, will fall (Rev. 18:2). (It should be noted that Jehovah's Witnesses believe that ALL religions except theirs comprise Babylon the Great. They outspokenly call the Catholic Church, "The Great Whore!") Then, after the fall of false religion, the Nations will attempt to destroy Jehovah's Witnesses but God will intervene with the battle of Armageddon (Rev. 16:16). This war will be followed by a thousand years of peace and the restoration of the earth to a paradise (Rev. 20:3 and Rev. 21: 3&4).

They measure performance of individual Witnesses, or publishers, based on how many hours of service they spend each month preaching door to door. For a publisher, the norm is about ten hours a month, but as a pioneer I had to do much more, averaging 100 hours per month. Every month you must fill out a field service record, noting how many hours, magazine and book placements, return visits to interested householders and Bible studies you have accomplished. These are collected, tabulated and sent on to the Watchtower Headquarters in Brooklyn NY.

Field service, as it was called, was at times exhilarating and at other times extremely boring. I once inquired of a lady if she knew God's name, to which she replied after a thoughtful interlude, "Harold! (Apparently her understanding of Hallowed!) be thy name."

Another time, while working in a small town in the central Midwest, during a short stint to serve 'where the need was greater,' four of us that were pioneering were trying to finish up a couple of farm houses before a thunderstorm hit. I was talking to a fundamentalist lady that was giving me a real hard time. As the thunderstorm bore down on us, she pounded her Bible and announced in a very loud, harsh, derogatory voice, " So what does your Jehovah think about that?" I looked at her and opened my Bible saying: "I'll show you what he thinks." The very second the words left my mouth a lightening bolt struck a tree just a few feet from her porch and sent it crashing down on her roof.

I enjoyed talking to the fundamentalist the most. They were bible bangers, and it was fun dueling with them with the scriptures. Catholics were too easy of a target, most had minimal Bible knowledge, and how do you establish a common ground with someone who openly relies on 'man's' traditions? We had been trained on some "tidbits" of history, such as the inquisitions, and of course, idol worship and the worship of Mary. Many Jehovah's Witnesses are former Catholics.

But I struggled inside with certain Jehovah's Witness' doctrines. One of which was their steadfast stance on no blood transfusions (Acts 15:28,29). My mom's life had been saved by a blood transfusion as a teenager and although I held the party line on this issue, it never harmonized with my understanding of the Bible or sense of logic (Compare Matt 12:11).

I became very close to a Circuit Overseer, a high-ranking individual in the Jehovah's Witnesses organizational hierarchy, and told him of my questions. He replied, "There are many scriptures I disagree with the [Watchtower] Society about, but it is best if we just keep them to ourselves. Never say anything to anyone on this issue, and pray that Jehovah will help you in your understanding."

The reason for this counsel was that if you challenge their teaching on any verse, no matter how small or trivial, you are questioning their authority. If they believe you are challenging any of the sect's beliefs, no matter how minute, they will disfellowship (excommunicate) you. This means you are totally shunned. They will instruct family members, friends and even business associates to act as if you are dead. This shunning practice has broken up many families, and even led to suicides.

During my entire tenure as a Witness, I never totally reconciled myself on several issues, for example, the idea that Armageddon would destroy all those who were not Witnesses, regardless of their heart condition. (I couldn't reconcile this destruction of all non-Witnesses with Romans 2:14-16.) And the teaching didn't make rational sense either. Why would God destroy all of the wicked at Armageddon just to resurrect the wicked that had died previously. But I kept my thoughts to myself, tried to accept these theories on faith, and waited for 'new light,' or changes in doctrine.

In my desire to embrace these issues and my zeal to learn the 'truth', I became mired in legalism, and forgot the simple lessons of my grandmother, that God loves you, cares about you, and will listen to you. Faith, hope and charity were replaced by an intellectual pursuit of understanding Bible prophecy and regulations. Compassion took a back seat to conviction of Jehovah's Witnesses' ideologies.

Trouble begins

The year 1975, the date set by Jehovah's Witnesses for the battle of Armageddon, was an exciting time. We all believed that we were right on the brink of the end of the world, and we were preaching door to door like mad. People were literally flocking into the organization and all of us had our sights set on the upcoming battle of Armageddon. We felt that shortly God would destroy the wicked and return the earth to a paradise like the Garden of Eden. We would be restored to perfect bodies and 'inherit the earth' forever (Ps. 37:29).

Many Witnesses sold their homes and possessions because they wouldn't need them in the "New System." All of us expected something profound to happen, and when it didn't, many left. In the few years following 1975, Jehovah's Witnesses saw their first decline in membership since the failure of their '1914' prophecy. However, Jesus' words: "He that has endured to the end, is the one that will be saved" (Matt. 24:13) echoed in my mind, and to me, those that left were like the seed sowed on the roadside. They sprung up quickly, but withered in the sunlight (Matt. 13:4-6). Those that questioned either the 1914 or 1975 dates were branded apostates and disfellowshipped. In extreme cases, almost entire congregations left. Paranoia swept across the entire organization, as the search for apostates resembled a medieval lynching. The Watchtower, rather than accepting responsibility for their prophetic failure, instead chastised common Jehovah's Witnesses for their unrealistic expectations!

Years later, another casualty of Jehovah's Witnesses lack of compassion was my wife. She left me for another witness and became the subject of a vicious tribunal. I could not condone her actions and was deeply hurt by them, but I was more devastated by experiencing the horror of the inquisition my ex-wife endured during her disfellowshipping. She was treated coldly, and it was obvious that the judicial committee was much more concerned with the public appearance of the congregation than the gaining of a lost sheep (Matt. 12:11&12). Her own mother could not speak to her.

The Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses assumes Papal Authority in maintaining exclusivity as to doctrinal interpretation, and the organization prioritizes dogma, doctrine and legalism above love, faith, hope and mercy. This attitude permeates entire congregations and pollutes their effectiveness in executing any Scriptural mandates. I observed politics, gossip, and treachery rampant in many congregations. This comment is not meant as an attack. Despite all of my troubles I still have affection for many Witnesses and truly care about several individuals in particular.

Seeds of Doubt

I became somewhat disgusted by the behavior of the witnesses, but remained convinced of the soundness of their doctrine. Since they hold that all of Christendom teaches falsely, they teach individual witnesses to never study outside of the Bible aids provided by the Watchtower. I knew that much of the apostasy that had occurred happened due to honest hearted witnesses attempting to independently study the doctrine behind their date setting so I avoided leaving the security of "Jehovah's organization."

Whereas most Witnesses pursued studies in eschatology, I became engrossed with the nature of Christ, so I set out to conclusively prove that Christ was not God. So convinced was I of the soundness of Jehovah's Witnesses beliefs, that when I set out to exhaustively prove the Arian doctrine of Christ being a created being, it never occurred to me that the early church fathers would do no less than confirm my belief. As a full-time servant, I had successfully argued against the trinity with many ministers and priests, some even having Doctorates in Theology, so I was confident that my research would do nothing less than support my view.

I remember, as I embarked on my journey, that I prayed for Jehovah, Almighty God, to lead me down his narrow path of truth, that I might help others to worship Him in "spirit and in truth" (John 4:23,24). Then I delved into the earliest church fathers. What I found amazed and confused me:

St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, was consecrated during the tenure of the Apostles. During his trek to Rome and martyrdom he wrote to the church at Ephesus and said, "by the will of the Father and of Jesus Christ our God." To the Romans he wrote, "For our God, Jesus Christ, being in the Father, is the more plainly visible." And to those at the church in Smyrna, "I give glory to Jesus Christ our God who bestowed such wisdom upon you." This same Saint was thrown to the lions in AD 110, because of his faith.

Mathetes, a student of St. Paul, described Jesus coming "As a king sends his son, who is also a king, He sent Him. As God he sent him…as Savior He sent him… as a calling He sent him."

St. Polycarp, a disciple of under St. John the evangelist, and consecrated by St. John as Bishop of Smyrna. He wrote in the early second century, "The Son of God we worship, we cannot worship any other." St. Polycarp also went to his death as a martyr, rather than deny his King.

And in regards to the trinity, the Martyr Justin wrote, "and both Him [the Father], the Son, and the prophetic Spirit we worship and adore." And in the same epistle he says, "…the Father of the universe has a Son, who also, being the first begotten Son of God, is even God."

Origen, a third century writer, and one whom the Watchtower frequently quotes from, commented on John 1:1:

"For before all time and the remotest age the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God. Thus to find out what is meant by the phrase, "The Word was with God," we have adduced the words used about the prophets, how He came to Hosea, to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, and we have noticed the difference, by no means accidental, between "became" and "was." We have to add that in His coming to the prophets He illuminates the prophets with the light of knowledge, causing them to see things which had been before them, but which they had not understood till then. With God, however, He is God, just because He is with Him."

St. Clement, St. Irenaeus, St. Eusebius and virtually all of the early church fathers were in agreement: Jesus was God. And unlike the revisionist history of Jehovah's Witnesses, the divinity of Christ was the Orthodox position in the pre-Nicene church.

I began studying my Bible with renewed vigor, ignoring the caution about using only Watchtower sources. Under the weight of scriptural and historical proof, the Jehovah's Witness Arian theology house of cards began to crumble. For example, the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible translates John 1:1 as "…The Word was a god." Their basis for this is that the Greek language omits the definite article 'ho' or 'the' before God in that sentence. Therefore, the Word is a god, not the God. Upon investigation, however, I discovered that this translation was not only inconsistent and unscholarly, it was outright deceptive. In fact, further investigation revealed that not a single member of the New World Translation committee was qualified to read the kione Greek that the New Testament was written in.

Researching other Bibles and their scholarship revealed many flaws in the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible. For example, in every case where the Greek word for worship, proskuneo, applies to the Father, they render it "worship" such as in John 4:24, but when it is applied to Jesus, it is rendered "obeisance" (John 9:38). Also, their Bible replaces "Lord" with "Jehovah" over 200 times in the Greek Scriptures, relying on a belief that somehow the early Christians heretics were responsible for removing the name. In reality, this substitution carefully disguises the fact that the Apostles took references from the Old Testament to Jehovah and applied them in the New Testament to Jesus. And my previous studies had revealed that the early church fathers were precious caretakers of the faith, not the evil heretics portrayed by the Watchtower.

Additionally, Jeremiah 10:10-13 explains that a god did not make the earth, but that it was God. And Is. 45:18 says that Jehovah alone is the creator of the heavens, and in Is. 44:24 he says he did it by himself. There is no room in the scriptures for "a god" to share in the glory of creation.

In Is. 9:6, the messianic prophecy there refers to Jesus as "Mighty God." Jehovah's witnesses will argue that this indicates he is a lessor god, since it doesn't call him "Almighty God." But just a few lines over, in IS. 10:21, Jehovah is referred to as "Mighty God." Is Jesus a different Mighty God, or the same?

All of the other scripture "proofs" such as Col. 1:15, Rev. 3:14, Proverbs 8:22, 1 Tim. 2:5, 1 Corinthians 8:5,6 and John 14:28 all fell apart upon deeper scrutiny. For many years I had read John 20:28 and imagined Thomas peering at Jesus, then looking heavenward as he said, "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28). Suddenly my mental vision changed, and Thomas peered into the wounds on the hands of our Lord, then placed his hand into his side and cried out as he looked at Jesus, "My Lord and My God!"

It wasn't until later that I remembered my prayer, to help others to worship in "spirit and truth." Little did I know that first I must be taught, "to worship Him in spirit and in Truth."

Christ's Identity

I started to desire to worship Jesus as the second part of the Almighty Triune God. I fought this urge, and continued to try to rationalize it away, but my heart was burning. Why must all of Jehovah's Witnesses' explanations be so complicated? Why are their beliefs so clouded with symbolism, and understanding that was so vague, so shrouded in atypical explanations? And if the Bible was really the basis of all belief, how could it be interpreted so differently. Was this really what the Bible writer's meant? Was this the way the early church fathers understood it?

Why must they jump all over the Scriptures and rip single verses from Bible books written thousands of years apart, then weave them together in a strange lacework leading to some preconceived conclusion? What had happened to my grandmother's simple faith? What had happened to me?

I remembered how, when I was little, that I used to talk to Jesus. I had been taught as a Jehovah's Witness to pray only to Jehovah, so I hadn't talked to Jesus in years. I remember closing my eyes and saying, "Jehovah, if I'm wrong please forgive me, but I want to talk a few minutes to your Son."

But my investigation into the teaching of the early church fathers did more than clarify my belief in the trinity; I didn't even realize it yet, but it had started me down the path to Rome. As I read the early father's writings, the picture that had been painted for me was clear in my mind. The early church in no way resembled Jehovah's Witnesses.

I faced a true crisis, should I stay and live a lie, or leave and be shunned. I walked away, and never looked back.

Adrift

I had heeded the Watchtower's own advice; "Get out of her, my people, if you do not want to share in her sins (Rev. 18:4)." I left with no fanfare. I finally just walked out of the Kingdom Hall and never went back. Of course, the Watchtower's reaction to this is shunning. To leave you must give up your friends, relatives that are witnesses, and in many cases, your business and life.

Today, I look back at my tenure as a Jehovah's Witness with much regret. It separated me from my family, ruined my marriage, and misdirected my worship. The Jehovah's Witnesses have put together a very attractive package to present to potential converts, but it is up to people like me, with Jesus help, to expose them.

Jehovah's Witnesses' supposed truth is based on a man's self-serving interpretation of God's Word, with the only authority being self-bestowed. But true worship is so much deeper, coming from your heart and your soul. It permeates your conscience, your faith, your hope, your mercy and most of all, your love. True worship is your willingness to apply, without reservation, Jesus word's, "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27).

Upon leaving the Watchtower, for a period I was disgusted with all religion. I went to a variety of Protestant churches, but I simply sat in the back and mentally dissected their beliefs. They had no basis for their interpretation of the scriptures. I became content to read and study my Bible on my own.

Life after the Watchtower

Instead I dove into secular pursuits. I finished college, receiving my BS in Electrical Engineering, with honors. I also got an MS in Management. I am presently a General Manager, over technology, for a Fortune 500 Company, and am the President of one of their subsidiaries, a company with over $200 million in annual sales.

I fulfilled my life long ambition to become an airplane pilot. I took up the martial arts, and was awarded a black belt. I also spent several seasons racing yachts.

But more importantly, a few years ago I remarried. The Lord blessed us with wonderful daughters and we became foster parents through an agency that specializes in kids that have been abused, or neglected, and we enjoy helping these youths very much. My wife has so much love for the needy and disadvantaged. The energy she puts into our family and helping others amazes me to this day me. And I get much more satisfaction out of working with neglected or abused children than I ever got in Jehovah's Witnesses field service. With her help, I have experienced the true Christian spirit.

Embraced by Truth

For many years after leaving the Watchtower, I worshipped, studied and prayed alone. My wife was a "cradle" Catholic, but inactive, and we were married in a Methodist Church. But after my beautiful baby Brianna was born, my wife began to seriously contemplate baptism. I told her infant baptism was not necessary, it was simply a gimmick the Catholic Church used to get your money. But she patiently persisted. She also began attending mass regularly. I refused to go with her.

I had a friend at work who was Catholic, a deacon in the local parish, and he volunteered to baptize our daughter. He also knew of my distaste for all organized religion and was compassionate and understanding. The only thing I knew about Catholicism was what I read in Jehovah's Witness literature and I spoke my mind. He just smiled and told me that I was a good man, and that God cared for me very much. I reluctantly agreed to the infant baptism since I felt it could do no harm, and allowing it would appease my wife's conscience.

I remember going to meet with the local Parish Priest, and how confident I was that as soon as I walked through the doors of Nativity of our Savior Church, a lightening bolt was sure to strike me. I knew the Watchtower was wrong, but the Catholic Church still was Babylon the Great, the harlot of Revelation, whose hands were stained by the blood of the martyrs.

I prayed as we walked into the church, "Father, if you get me out of here alive, I promise I will never come back." Surprisingly, however, I got along very well with Father Kevin, and agreed to go to church with my wife that Sunday. So my prayer was one promise to God that I'm glad I have broken, and I hardly think He has held it against me!

As I sat in Mass the next Sunday, it surprised me how much Scripture was read. Catholics don't read the Bible, I thought. And the order of service: the Bible readings, the sermon, and communion followed almost exactly the order of the early church that I had read about from Justin Martyr. There was something surprisingly spiritual about the Eucharist. I found myself silently singing the Psalms, and saying over and over in my mind, "This is the Lamb of God."

As the Priest raised the bread in the air and proclaimed, "This is my body," shivers ran down my spine. This was the body of Jesus Christ. This was His blood.

Soon after that we moved to South Bend, IN and I continued to attend Mass with my family. However, I still was very leery of Catholicism. I would sit and peer at Mary, Joseph and the crucifix over the altar. Graven images, I thought to myself.

Finally I was invited to meet with Father Bill, a Jesuit, and the Pastor at St. Monica Church, and we began a dialogue on my theological differences with the church. He ended every discussion with an appeal for me to let the Holy Spirit do its work. Slowly I began to realize that this church, this Catholic Church, was the church established by Jesus when he told Peter: "You are Kepha (Aramaic) and upon this Kepha I will build my church, and the gates of death will not overcome it (Matt 16:18)." Peter died, but the church persisted. Christ promised to be with his people until the end of time (Matt. 28: 20). The Church is still here, by the grace of God and has been guided by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages (John 14:26).

At one meeting with Father Bill, he especially implored me to rely on the Holy Spirit, not my own intellect. I was offended. I lay in bed late that night struggling with my interior self. My wife suddenly turned toward me and said: "You have no faith." Tears rolled down my cheeks as her words echoed in mind: "You have no faith." "You must rely on the Holy Spirit." I emptied myself to God in prayer, sorrowful for even my existence.

How could I join a church that such a horrid history: filled with indulgences, inquisitions and bloody crusades? I purchased a few books, by Karl Keating, Patrick Madrid and Scott Hahn. They put the history of the church into perspective, and I read the works of John Henry Newman, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine.

The church did have a history that included corruption and bloodshed, but it also humbly admitted its mistakes and begged God's forgiveness. I also came to the realization that the history of the church was also the history of its individuals, and the vast majority of those individuals were pious, God fearing Christians.

I was reminded of the history of the Jews. They repeatedly left God, even worshipping idols, but our Creator never forsook them. He was loyal despite their conduct. (Ps 78:37&38; see also Hosea 3:1) Would he not be the same toward the church his Son founded?

Another thing that finally made sense to me was that Sacred Scripture was understood in the light of Sacred Tradition (2nd Thessalonians 2:15) and God's Holy Spirit acted through the wonderful Magisterium to guide the Church (Matt. 28:19). This appreciation is what I had longed for as a Jehovah's Witness. Scripture could not explain itself, but God had given us a marvelous mechanism to understand it (Acts 8:31).

My final obstacle was the veneration of Mary (Luke 1:48). Intellectually I understood her role, but emotionally I could not bring myself to ask her intercession. I repeatedly prayed for God to help me understand and appreciate our Virgin Mother.

One day, I was sitting at my desk in my office, and I couldn't get my mind off of our Holy Mother. I got up, went to my car, and drove down to our parish. I stepped inside the empty church and slowly worked my way up to her altar. I looked up at the icon of the Blessed Virgin, and, sweating with emotion, asked that she please pray for me, and for my wife. I noted that my love of God, a loving wife, and God's Holy Spirit had brought me so far, but now I was ashamed to tell her how hard it was emotionally for me to acknowledge her. I asked her simply to pray for my wife, the mother of our children.

Suddenly a feeling of warmth came over me as if I was a child embraced by its mother. I returned to work with a giddy feeling, only to learn that it was going to be necessary for me to attend an annual meeting of my companies Board of Directors to be held at a beautiful beach-front resort hotel in California. And our wives were to attend with us! Our daughter, Brianna, was five years old and we had not had a night alone together since her birth.

"Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee (Luke 1:28)."

After years of study, prayer, discussion and contemplation I finally decided to yield to the Holy Spirit and commit myself to Catholicism. Funny, how I could be so reluctant for so long then suddenly become so eager. Yet once my decision was made, an unexpected roadblock stood in my way, an annulment of my previous marriage. I began the process but it was moving very slowly, at one point I was told that my application would be put on hold, due to the lack of witnesses. Time after time we sent inquiries to my ex-wife and her family, who were still Jehovah's Witnesses. They never once responded, to them I was dead. Every week at mass I would sit with my family and watch my brethren take communion, longing for the day when I, too, could partake of my Lord's body and blood.

I persisted in prayer, (1 Thessalonians 5:17) asking the intercession of all of the Saints, (James 5:16&17) but particularly St. Augustine, St. Polycarp, St. Clement and St. Ignatius of Antioch, those early church fathers whose writings the Holy Spirit had used to steer me toward the church. I especially implored St. Athanasius, that steadfast defender of Christ's Deity against Arius. I also ran across a book written by Ken Guindon, a former Jehovah's Witness now working for WEWN, a Catholic station in Birmingham Alabama.

I E-mailed him and was answered that the Nuns would be praying for me, twenty-four hours a day, in front of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament. They would do that for thirty days. Shortly after that E-mail, and the intercessions of the nuns and saints, the Jehovah's Witness elder that had originally performed my marriage ceremony contacted me. He had also left their organization and would be happy to be a witness before the marriage tribunal. Based on his testimony, it was decided that I could receive an annulment based on the Pauline Privilege of Faith, granted only days before the Easter Vigil.

And during the Easter Vigil this year, this wonderful Jubilee year, I was baptized and confirmed. Then my wife and I renewed our marriage vows inviting Jesus into our bond, and together we received communion.

My journey of faith has taken me over mountains and through valleys. I have ventured from the path our Lord laid out for me, but He always has steered me back. It has been joyous, tearful, fulfilling, and at times, fearful. I have been bewildered, and also been awed. I have cried tears of sadness, pain, sorrow and exultation. Recently I realized that I was at fault for most of the twists and turns that my pilgrimage had followed. I had attempted an intellectual approach to God, a rationalization of his Word. Yet our Lord was always with me.

Indeed, from now on, I will go where the Holy Spirit leads me, even as the Psalmist said:

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me… Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever" (Ps.23, portions).

Searching For Authority

By Christopher Dixon

For nine years I served the Lord Jesus Christ as a United Methodist pastor in New Jersey; for five of those years I had no thought of being anything else. I had a growing church, I was happy in my denomination and pleased with my prospects, and I was satisfied.

I believed that denominations were not only inevitable but good. Since Christians would always disagree about their beliefs and practices, having different denominations kept them from fighting. I didn’t believe that visible unity was necessary for the Church, nor doctrinal unity. At the same time I insisted strongly on my own beliefs, which were defined largely by Wesleyan orthodoxy, and believed strongly that churches needed to teach doctrinal truth (which I still believe). The Christian faith was what it was, and the big things were not up for grabs.

I had been a lifelong Protestant, but I didn’t grow up with a strongly defined religious identity. Until I was seven my parents were active Methodists, but when we moved to Schenectady, New York, my mother (a nurse) worked every weekend and my father was never again involved with any church. I think the infighting common to Protestant congregations gave him a distaste for church life. But my brothers and I were sent to Sunday School at the nearest church, Calvary Orthodox Presbyterian, where I received an excellent grounding in the bible and a Christian faith that I never lost (although my practice of it was inconsistent until I met my wife, Pat, in college).

From my days at Princeton Theological Seminary I had believed in the authority of the early church to speak definitively on the content of the Christian faith. I had no doubt that the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon, for instance, spoke with the authority of the Holy Spirit. What I had not thought about much was what happened to that authority in the centuries since. I suppose I had the idea that it stayed in the Catholic Church (having nowhere else to go) until the Reformation and then made a lateral move to the Protestants. Nor was I concerned that the bishops at Nicea who insisted on the divinity of Christ also insisted on His bodily presence in the Eucharist. The apostolic faith is all of a piece, but I did not know that yet.

Another important experience at seminary was reading John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua, his story of how he converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism by searching for the "Catholic tradition" in the Church of England. I had never thought much about tradition and authority before; I took it for granted that different churches have different beliefs and that it was just a matter of preference which church one belonged to. Newman, however, described a church that commanded assent, whose beliefs and visible form were both grounded in the teaching of the apostles. I longed for such a church, I was transfixed, and as Newman discovered that the Catholic tradition was found in the Catholic Church, I couldn’t find any flaws in his argument. I wondered whether I ought to become Catholic.

Pat’s response to this was, "I don’t want to hear that! You came here to become a Protestant minister, I want to have children, and I don’t want any more changes!" At that point I wasn’t prepared to pursue the issue myself, either, and the matter dropped, not resolved but put aside, though I brought a rather High Church approach to Methodism.

After my graduation and into my pastorate I began to have questions about the basis of my denomination. John Wesley intended Methodism to be a spiritual renewal movement within the Church of England, not a separate church. He had an Anglican view of the Church, sacraments, and ordination (though he was not always consistent), but his successors did not, and though they kept many of the externals there was nothing with which to replace Wesley’s view. The result was a church with a somewhat sacramental appearance but little sacramental theology, with strong central authority and no doctrinal authority, with an ecumenical emphasis (at least with other liberal Protestant denominations) but suspicion of any attempt to define what Christians must believe.

For years Pat had felt something missing in her relationships with the Churches we’d been part of without knowing what she wanted. She thought it came from wanting children, and then the isolation of a new mother and my being gone so much as a pastor. This came to a head in 1992 and 1993, when tensions with some of the congregation left her feeling totally cut off from the Church and wishing desperately that she could belong to some other church. I didn’t want to consider that—"You can’t do that! I’m the minister!"—not a helpful response, but then it’s hard to cope with the fact that the minister’s job is tied to his wife’s spiritual community.

I was right in believing we ought to be one religiously, but I asked myself: just what was it that we needed to be one in? Was there any reason for Pat to be Methodist except that I was the minister? If there wasn’t, why was it so important to me? What is the Church, anyway? What holds it together? What reason could I give anyone for belonging to my church? I realized that I couldn’t give any reason except preference. There was no relationship between our church and our Faith.

Practically speaking we didn’t define the Church theologically; people belonged to a church because their family went there, or they liked the worship service, or each other, or the pastor. That was not enough. We both realized that we wanted (actually Pat had wanted for a long time) a church that had a claim on us even if it didn’t make us happy, whether we liked it or not, where the Church was more than a preference. We wanted a church with authority, a church that was necessary. Part of the historic faith of the Church was that the Church didn’t create itself, and that it’s authority came from God, not men.

No denomination can claim that, because none can claim to be more than an association of like-minded Christians. Wherever the lines are drawn, it’s a purely human creation; a group of people get together and say, "We are the Church." If a denomination has a strong theological foundation (for example the Orthodox Presbyterian Church where I attended Sunday School as a boy), it at least has a reason for being separate: teaching the truth according to its beliefs. But where there is no strong theological foundation the denomination becomes nothing more than an administrative body and the congregation becomes an ingrained social habit.

My convictions about the Church crystallized more than they ever had. The Church was meant to have unity in structure and Faith, and both were necessary. Unless it was united in Faith there was no reason to be united in structure. If the Church couldn’t claim to tell me what is true, why should I give it my loyalty? If I had to figure it all out for myself, why would I need the Church? (Which, indeed, is the situation of many Protestant denominations; since they don’t claim to be necessary, people don’t believe they’re necessary.) I realized that the nature of the Church went along with its beliefs. If the Church was to teach with authority, it had to have authority in its being. That couldn’t be given by a denomination. Either it existed in the whole Body of Christ together, with visible unity giving shape to spiritual unity, or else it couldn’t be found at all.

It struck me quickly that only two options avoided drawing arbitrary lines: congregationalism (in which each gathering of Christians could decide its own beliefs) or Catholicism, which claimed a principle of unity that brought everyone in. Congregationalism, however, seemed both unscriptural and unhistorical. Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them," but that didn’t define the whole nature of the Church. If it did there would have been no great disputes, no councils, and no commonly held faith. The Council of Nicea meant more than the National Council of Churches.

Only the Catholic Church truly represented visible and doctrinal unity. The alternative to Catholicism was doctrinal chaos and no unity. The Reformers had decided according to their own judgement which parts of the Catholic faith to keep and which to reject; their followers continued the process of revising, and then the results were codified as revealed truth. The authority of the Catholic Church was simply replaced by the authority of Luther or Calvin. In the liberal denominations the fall was even worse; the principle of revealed truth was replaced by theological pluralism, the absolute belief that there are no absolute truths. Yet in both, the Church’s authority was replaced by the individual’s, and the visible church became nothing more than a collection of individuals.

The result was worse than each church believing something different; it was a milieu in which it didn’t matter what a church believed, in which no teaching needed to be definitive, and in which the idea of necessary belief seemed offensive.

Some Catholic friends who knew what was going on with us came back from a conference at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, and gave us a tape of Scott Hahn’s conversion story. Its effect on us was electric: he addressed the issues we were wrestling with rationally and biblically. Our beliefs were rapidly becoming more Catholic. We read Humanae Vitae, found it thoroughly convincing, and began Natural Family Planning. We were attracted by the Catholic Church’s pro-life stand; our denomination was incapable of taking any strong position on this basic moral issue. We considered marriage indissoluble. We recognized the Pope as the earthly head of the Church; indeed we soon found events in the Catholic Church more relevant than events in Methodism. We now had no doubt that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, but I knew it wasn’t the same thing in Protestantism (indeed for a period I found it difficult presiding at Communion in my church; I felt I was pretending).

To Pat and me it now seemed essential that we belong to a church that was really founded on religious belief, and wasn’t afraid to teach it. When the Catechism of the Catholic Church appeared in 1993, we thought, "Wouldn’t it be great to belong to a church that can teach the truth like that!"

It would take a while, however, for near the beginning of this time of change, more change happened. I was sent to another Methodist church in July of 1993 and we were expecting our third child. I had to support my family and in any event I knew I needed clearer convictions than I had at that point. But I also knew that I would never find the solidity or consistency of belief in Methodism that I wanted.

There were also doctrinal issues that needed to be resolved: the Virgin Mary was the most difficult, but there were others. At the heart of them all was the infallibility of the Church, for if the Catholic Church was really what it believed itself to be, then its teachings had to be true. I had to learn to subordinate the sovereignty of my judgement to the voice of Christ in the Church.

I investigated all these things but as long as I was in the ministry I didn’t feel that I could do more. Pat had more freedom and with my encouragement (for spiritually she was left high and dry, and I would have urged any parishioner to go where her faith led her) she went to a wise and sympathetic priest, Fr. Joseph, for instruction. For Pat, it was like water in a thirsty land. Within months she had no doubts at all. I was delighted; she would be there to welcome me into the Catholic fold herself. In December of 1995 she became a Catholic. Our daughter Lisa received her First Communion the next fall.

I knew I couldn’t stay in the Methodist church forever; my beliefs wouldn’t allow it. I was feeling the strain of not being able to act on my beliefs. By now I had found others in the same path. Jeff, another Methodist minister whom I hadn’t seen in years, heard of my interest in Catholicism from a Presbyterian pastor we both knew. "I hear you’re thinking of swimming the Tiber," he said when he called, and we began meeting for lunch. Jeff was even closer to conversion than I was, and became Catholic in the summer of 1995. I found encouragement in meeting others who had converted, and in cradle Catholics. Brian, the local Baptist minister and his wife Phylis, had become good friends of ours. Phylis became Catholic shortly before Pat. Then Brian did. People in town were getting suspicious.

In March of 1996 I attended a Catholic men’s retreat at Arnold Hall in Massachusetts, where I realized that nothing further needed to happen before I could convert. I fully believed the Catholic faith already. I didn’t need any clearer light than I had—indeed, it couldn’t be clearer.

With another baby due in July, a conversion, career change (to what, I didn’t know), and relocation were not an option that summer; but I knew I couldn’t delay much longer. In the meantime Fr. Joseph introduced me to his friend Monsignor James McGovern, who was seeking someone to work in adult education, Confirmation training, visitation, and various other responsibilities at the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Moorestown, New Jersey. Pat and I discussed this possibility and reached an agreement: in June of 1997 I delivered the last sermon from my pulpit.

A month later, when Bishop John M. Smith of Trenton, a successor of the apostles, received me into the Catholic Church, I became fully united to the only church that I believed could teach with complete authority. To this day, ten months later, in the voice of the Church I (still) hear the voice of Her Lord.

http://www.chnetwork.org/journals/authority/authority_1.htm

Many Protestants (particularly evangelicals) date the downfall of the early Church at 313, with the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine and the subsequent "paganization" of institutional Christianity. Others will place this alleged calamitous event around 440, with the beginning of the papal reign of Pope St. Leo the Great, who - in the eyes of many Protestant historians - was the first pope in the full-blown jurisdictional sense (however that is defined by these same historians). Still another school of thought believes that the derailing of the young Christian Church occurred soon after the last Apostle's death and the cessation of the writing of New Testament books, around the year 100, or else sometime during the course of the second century A.D. at the latest.

This whole endeavor to date the "apostasy" of institutional, historic Christianity strongly reminds me of arbitrary attempts to maintain that human life or personhood in the womb begins at a time other than conception, which is clearly the determinative biological event. It simply can't be done with any logical or historiographical rigor. The Church, like a human soul and body in the womb, organically develops from the beginning in a gradual, consistent fashion, and it is altogether futile to try and assign a date to its supposed demise. Like the preborn child, the essence is there from the first.

Intuitively sensing this, I myself took a more complex, nuanced view that the ostensible "Church" was truly Christian all through this period, down through the early Middle Ages, up to the period of the Inquisition and Crusades (roughly 1100-1500), at which time it did, however, lose much of its integrity and moral authority, if not the title and claim "Christian" altogether. I was reluctant to go the whole way and deny that Catholicism was Christian, because I knew too much about what it had always taught on the "central doctrines" of Christianity, such as the Trinity and all the Christological doctrines, and its indispensable role in preserving both medieval culture and the Bible itself. To deny Christian status to Catholicism at any point of its development would be to cut off the limb on which Protestantism sits: in effect, this would logically reduce to a very curious and self-defeating standpoint that Christianity is not an historical religion by its very nature.

Rather, I believed that the Catholic Church had "passed the baton," so to speak, to the Protestants in the sixteenth century, who succeeded in reforming the Church universal. In other words, I held to an "organic" conception of Church history, somewhat like the Protestant Church historian Philip Schaff, and many Reformed, Anglican and Lutheran theologians and historians, whereby Protestantism was a legitimate development of, heir to, and legatee of, historic Catholicism. Henceforth, in my thinking, Protestantism became the superior and more "biblical" form of Christianity, since the Catholic Church had "obviously" compromised itself both morally and theologically with its reactionary and extremely harsh, "un-ecumenical" Council of Trent in the sixteenth century.

This was the background of my ecclesiological thinking when, in early 1990, I began to moderate an ecumenical discussion group in my home. A friend of mine, John McAlpine, whom I had met in the pro-life movement, and with whom I enjoyed conversing, stunned me one night when he claimed that the Catholic Church had never contradicted itself in any of its dogmas. This, to me, was self-evidently incredible and a priori implausible, and so I embarked immediately on a research project designed to debunk once and for all this far-fetched notion that any Christian body could even claim infallibility, let alone actually possess it.

During the course of this study, I gleefully discovered many of the standard "anti-infallibility" works, which are cited again and again: the Anglican George Salmon's The Infallibility of the Church (originally 1890), Johann von Dollinger's Letters of Janus and Letters of Quirinus (1869-1870) and Hans Kung's Infallible?: An Inquiry (1971). Salmon's work has been refuted decisively twice, by B.C. Butler, in his The Church and Infallibility: A Reply to the Abridged "Salmon", and also in a series of articles in The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, in 1901 and 1902 (1)

Yet Protestant polemicists Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie still claimed in 1995, in a major critique of Catholicism, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, (2) that Salmon's book has "never really been answered by the Catholic Church." I was amused recently by the accusation of a prominent professional anti-Catholic, that I must have never been familiar with the best Protestant arguments against infallibility and Catholicism in general - hence my eventual conversion on flimsy grounds! The truth was quite otherwise: the above works are the cream of the crop of this particular line of thought, as evidenced by Geisler and MacKenzie's citation of both Salmon and Kung as "witnesses" for their case (3). And the Church historian Dollinger's heretical opinions are also often utilized by Eastern Orthodox polemicists as arguments against papal infallibility. I know this well as a result of my own ongoing dialogues with Orthodox Christians over the Internet.

George Salmon revealed in his book his profoundly biased ignorance not only concerning papal infallibility, but also with regard to even the basics of the development of doctrine:

Romish advocates . . . are now content to exchange tradition, which their predecessors had made the basis of their system, for this new foundation of development . . . The theory of development is, in short, an attempt to enable men, beaten off the platform of history, to hang on to it by the eyelids . . . The old theory was that the teaching of the Church had never varied. (4)

Here Salmon is quixotically fighting a straw man of his own making and seeking to sophistically force his readers into the acceptance of a false and altogether logically unnecessary dichotomy: that development of doctrine implies change in the essence or substance of a doctrine and therefore is utterly contrary to the claims of the Church to be the Guardian and Custodian of an authoritative tradition of never-changing dogma. But this is emphatically not the Catholic notion, nor that of Newman, to whom Salmon was largely responding. Nor is it true that development was a "new" theory introduced by Cardinal Newman into Catholicism, while the "old theory" was otherwise. This is unanswerably proven by the writing of St. Vincent of Lerins, one of the Church Fathers, who died around 450 A.D., in his classic patristic exposition of development, The Notebooks:

Will there, then, be no progress of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly there is, and the greatest . . . But it is truly progress and not a change of faith. What is meant by progress is that something is brought to an advancement within itself; by change, something is transformed from one thing into another. It is necessary, therefore, that understanding, knowledge and wisdom grow and advance strongly and mightily . . . and this must take place precisely within its own kind, that is, in the same teaching, in the same meaning, and in the same opinion. The progress of religion in souls is like the growth of bodies, which, in the course of years, evolve and develop, but still remain what they were . . . Although in the course of time something evolved from those first seeds and has now expanded under careful cultivation, nothing of the characteristics of the seeds is changed. Granted that appearance, beauty and distinction has been added, still, the same nature of each kind remains. (5)

St. Augustine (354-430), the greatest of the Church Fathers, whom Protestants also greatly revere, expressed similar sentiments in his City of God (16,2,1), and On the 54th Psalm (number 22), so this concept predated Newman by at least fourteen centuries, Salmon's claims notwithstanding. George Salmon thus loses much credibility as any sort of expert on Christian history, papal infallibility, or development, for this and many other reasons, as demonstrated by his Catholic critics. Yet Geisler and MacKenzie, while presenting a fairly accurate picture of Newman's (and Catholic) development themselves, state that Salmon's book is "a penetrating critique of Newman's theory." (6)

It is beyond our purview here to examine the faulty and jaundiced reasoning employed by the above-cited "anti-infallibility" works, and my own ambitious and zealous adoption of them, in my effort to refute the Catholic Church on historical grounds. Suffice it to say that it is largely a matter of misunderstanding or misapplying the true doctrine of infallibility, as defined dogmatically by the First Vatican Council in 1870, or else a conveniently selective and dishonest presentation of historical facts and patristic citations. These practices run rampant throughout the current anti-Catholic literature, and always have. And I, too, was guilty of it. Bias has a way of blinding one to even basic logical errors.

The First Vatican Council of 1870 defined papal infallibility as follows:

We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when, in discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, is, by the divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals; and that, therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, irreformable.

Thus, the conciliar definition was careful to limit absolute infallibility to very specific and strict parameters, and it is these which anti-Catholic polemicists almost always overlook or distort when bringing to the table such famous examples of supposed papal fallibility as Honorius, Vigilius and Liberius. None of them succeed when subjected to the proper historical and logical scrutiny. They only "work" when presented in isolation without the Catholic counter-replies which reveal their utter inadequacy.

Furthermore, the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) did not change this teaching in the slightest, despite the claims of heterodox self-proclaimed "Catholics" and misinformed non-Catholics and nominal, undereducated Catholics. Referring to the decree on the Pope from Vatican I, the Council declared:

This teaching concerning the institution, the permanence, the nature and import of the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and his infallible teaching office, the sacred synod proposes anew to be firmly believed by all the faithful . . .

The college or body of bishops has for all that no authority unless united with the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, as its head, whose primatial authority, let it be added, over all, whether pastors or faithful, remains in its integrity. For the Roman Pontiff, by reason of his office as Vicar of Christ, namely, and as pastor of the entire Church, has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered. The order of bishops is the successor to the college of the apostles in their role as teachers and pastors, and in it the apostolic college is perpetuated. Together with their head, the Supreme Pontiff, and never apart from him, they have supreme and full authority over the Universal Church; but this power cannot be exercised without the agreement of the Roman Pontiff. The Lord made Peter alone the rock-foundation and the holder of the keys of the Church (cf. Mt. 16:18-19) . . . (7)

Returning to my own intellectual and spiritual journey; to give one example as an illustration of faulty "anti-Catholic" reasoning: I quickly realized that the early Christians held a very "high," literal view of the Eucharist (the Real Presence), as does the Catholic Church today. The historical and patristic evidence supporting this fact is so overwhelming that even the most vehement opponents of the Catholic Church rarely seek to deny it. But, undaunted, I stooped to the level of special pleading, in claiming that St. Augustine, the greatest of the Fathers, adopted a symbolic view of the Eucharist. I based this on his oft-stated notion of the sacrament as "symbol" or "sign." I failed to realize, however, that I was arbitrarily creating a false, logically unnecessary dichotomy between the sign and the reality of the Eucharist, for St. Augustine - when all his remarks on the subject are taken into account - clearly accepted the Real Presence. The Eucharist - for Augustine, and objectively speaking - is both sign and reality. There simply is no contradiction.

A cursory glance at Scripture confirms this general principle. For instance, Jesus refers to the sign of Jonah, comparing the prophet Jonah's three days and nights in the belly of the fish to His own burial in the earth (Matthew 12:38-40). In this case, both events, although described as signs, were quite real indeed. Jesus also uses the terminology of sign in connection with His Second Coming (Matthew 24:30-31), which is believed by all Christians who adhere to the Nicene Creed, and who have not denied biblical authority or the possibility of miracles, to be a literal event, and not symbolic only.

Protestants tend to use the same flawed analysis when they find the abundant patristic citations extolling the greatness and centrality of Holy Scripture, and thus assume that these Fathers believed in the Protestant formal principle of Scripture Alone (sola Scriptura), when in fact, further objective study reveals that they accepted Tradition and Scripture as part of a unified whole. The historical centrality of Scripture in the contention against heretics, for example, did not mean that Tradition was divorced from Scripture, since the Church Fathers routinely appealed to apostolic Tradition in order to decisively counter heretical claims. In actuality, that was the bottom line for the Fathers, the coup de grace. And this appeal was an historical, rather than a biblical argument, based on apostolic Church authority, as opposed to the methodological approach of Scripture Alone.

Examples in the Fathers are legion. For instance, St. Augustine makes many remarks which show that he regarded the authority of the Church as supreme, all the while accepting the primacy of Scriptures. In other words, they were two sides of the same coin for him and the early Church, not opposed in terms of ultimate authority, as in Protestantism:

The authority of our Scriptures, strengthened by the consent of so many nations, and confirmed by the succession of the Apostles, bishops and councils, is against you. (8)

No sensible person will go contrary to reason, no Christian will contradict the Scriptures, no lover of peace will go against the Church. (9)

Wherever this tradition comes from, we must believe that the Church has not believed in vain, even though the express authority of the canonical Scriptures is not brought forward for it. (10)

To be sure, although on this matter, we cannot quote a clear example taken from the canonical Scriptures, at any rate, on this question, we are following the true thought of Scriptures when we observe what has appeared good to the universal Church which the authority of these same Scriptures recommends to you. (11)

Not knowing facts such as the above, or else refusing to acknowledge them, I proceeded with my hostile research, cavalierly assuming beforehand that the early Church was much more Protestant than Catholic, and that the Catholic Church had become corrupt over time (even while technically remaining Christian by the minimalist, Protestant criterion of "central doctrines"). Such is the standard view of Protestants, especially those most in line with "Reformation thought." They assume, usually almost without any direct analysis, that the Catholic Church has added to the Christian faith, that faith which was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).

My Catholic friend John, confronted with the mass of jaded, highly selective historical evidence I had compiled, and my relentless polemics, was understandably frustrated. He kept urging me to read John Henry Cardinal Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. What little familiarity I had with Newman had shown me that he was a very impressive figure. I knew that he was a brilliant Church historian, and highly respected by all, regardless of theological affiliation.

So I started reading the Essay in October 1990, after having been somewhat "softened" in the previous months by my reading of Catholic books by the cultural historian Christopher Dawson, pro-life heroine Joan Andrews, the famous Trappist monk and convert Thomas Merton, and the marvelous, unparallelled summary The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam, which has been described by Lutheran historian Jaroslav Pelikan as the best single volume written for the purpose of explicating and defending Catholicism. The timing - in God's Providence, and in retrospect - was perfect. A few months before, I had also concluded, as a result of intense discussions in my ecumenical group, that the Catholic Church possessed the highest and most sublime moral theology of any Christian group. Furthermore, I had been convinced (around July 1990) of the wrongness of contraception, after involved arguments and the dumbfounded realization that all Christians of all types had opposed it until 1930, when the Anglicans adopted it at their Lambeth conference for "hard cases" only. This was my first overt change of opinion, but little did I suspect what was yet to come.

Charles Harrold, the editor of an anthology of Newman's writings, described the Essay as follows:

It was composed in 1845, when Newman was halting midway between two forms of Christianity . . . Its aim was to explain and justify what Protestants regarded as corruptions and additions to the primitive Christian creed, and to show these to be legitimate developments . . . In a series of eloquent and erudite analogies, he seeks to show that the present highly complex doctrines of the Church lay in germ in the original depositum of faith, which has evolved or developed through progressive unfolding and explication. (12)

One can see, given the above description of my views and methodology in 1990, that the Essay was probably the most appropriate and relevant work I could have read at that time, regardless of whether I was going to be convinced by it or not. It provided the "best shot" that the Catholic Church was likely to give, in defense of its doctrines which showed marked "growth" (a neutral term) throughout history, to the dismay of Protestants.

Finally, I was now reading some sort of response to the research I had been doing for months, under the influence of thoroughly Protestant presuppositions. Newman wrote, near the beginning:

However beautiful and promising that Religion is in theory, its history, we are told, is its best refutation . . .

In reply to this specious objection, it is maintained in this Essay that, granting that some large variations of teaching in its long course of 1800 years exist, nevertheless, these, on examination, will be found to arise from the nature of the case, and to proceed on a law, and with a harmony and a definite drift, and with an analogy to Scripture revelations, which, instead of telling to their disadvantage, actually constitute an argument in their favour, as witnessing to a superintending Providence and a great Design in the mode and in the circumstances of their occurrence. (13)

I was already quite intrigued and looking forward (intellectually) to what Newman was going to say. The very premise of his approach was so novel and curious to me that it guaranteed my continued avid interest. He went on to assert, shortly after this statement:

And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this. And Protestantism . . . as a whole, feels it, and has felt it. This is shown in the determination . . . of dispensing with historical Christianity altogether, and of forming a Christianity from the Bible alone: men never would have put it aside, unless they had despaired of it . . . To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant . . . I have elsewhere observed:

"So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge . . . Let him take which of his doctrines he will, his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, . . . his notion of faith, . . . his denial of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the ministerial commission, or of the visible Church . . . the Scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teachings and let him consider how far Antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it" (14) . . .

That Protestantism, then, is not the Christianity of history, it is easy to determine. (15)

This was clearly now a frontal attack on the entire edifice of my Protestant ecclesiology: a turning of my argument on its head, with the forceful assertion that it was Catholicism, not Protestantism, which had the historical record on its side. And I respected history enough to shudder at this prospect. I also knew full well that Newman would bring to bear an enormous weight of historical evidence to support his case, as the book before me was 445 pages long!

After summary statements such as the above, Newman proceeded to make brilliant specific analogies in order to bring home his point. The first had to do with the doctrine of purgatory, vis-a-vis the doctrine of original sin, which is, of course, accepted by Protestants as well:

Some notion of suffering, or disadvantage, or punishment after this life, in the case of the faithful departed, or other vague forms of the doctrine of Purgatory, has in its favour almost a consensus of the first four ages of the Church. (16)

Newman then recounts no less than sixteen Fathers who hold the view in some form. But in comparing this consensus to the doctrine of original sin, we find a disjunction:

No one will say that there is a testimony of the Fathers, equally strong, for the doctrine of Original Sin. (17)

In spite of the forcible teaching of St. Paul on the subject, the doctrine of Original Sin appears neither in the Apostles' nor the Nicene Creed. (18)

This is a crucial distinction. It is a serious problem for Protestantism that it by and large inconsistently rejects doctrines which have a consensus in the early Church, such as purgatory, the (still developing) papacy, bishops, the Real Presence, regenerative infant baptism, apostolic succession, and intercession of the saints, while accepting others with far less explicit early sanction, such as original sin. Even many of their own foundational and distinctive doctrines, such as the notion of Faith Alone (sola fide), or imputed, extrinsic, forensic justification, are well-nigh nonexistent all through Church history until Luther's arrival on the scene, as, for example, prominent Protestant apologist Norman Geisler recently freely admitted:

. . . these valuable insights into the doctrine of justification had been largely lost throughout much of Christian history, and it was the Reformers who recovered this biblical truth . . .

During the patristic, and especially the later medieval periods, forensic justification was largely lost . . . Still, the theological formulations of such figures as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas did not preclude a rediscovery of this judicial element in the Pauline doctrine of justification . . .

. . . one can be saved without believing that imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) is an essential part of the true gospel. Otherwise, few people were saved between the time of the apostle Paul and the Reformation, since scarcely anyone taught imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) during that period! (19)

On the other hand, Protestants clearly accept developing doctrine on several fronts: the Canon of the New Testament is a clear example of such a (technically "non-biblical") doctrine It wasn't finalized until 397 A.D. The divinity of Christ was dogmatically proclaimed only at the "late" date of 325, the fully worked-out doctrine of the Holy Trinity in 381, and the Two Natures of Christ (God and Man) in 451, all in Ecumenical Councils which are accepted by most Protestants. So development is an unavoidable fact for both Protestants and Catholics.

The trick for Protestants (granting Church history an important and legitimate role, whether it is considered normative and authoritative or not), is to determine a non-arbitrary rationale for accepting some doctrines while rejecting others. It will not do to simply say that certain doctrines are "unbiblical" and thus unworthy of Protestant allegiance, since it must immediately be explained why the majority of early Christians believed in them, and why beliefs such as the Canon of the New Testament and Scripture Alone are adopted despite the absence of biblical rationale, or why (chances are) many other strands of Protestantism disagree with the one making the claim, when Scripture is allegedly so "clear" and able to be interpreted in the main without difficulty by the layman.

Newman writes, regarding the New Testament Canon:

As regards the New Testament, Catholics and Protestants receive the same books as canonical and inspired; yet . . . the degrees of evidence are very various for one book and another . . . For instance, as to the Epistle of St. James . . . Origen, in the third century, is the first writer who distinctly mentions it among the Greeks and it is not quoted by name by any Latin till the fourth . . . Again: The Epistle to the Hebrews, though received in the East, was not received in the Latin Churches till St. Jerome's time . . . Again, St. Jerome tells us, that in his day, towards A.D. 400, the Greek Church rejected the Apocalypse, but the Latin received it. Again: The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books . . . Of these, fourteen are not mentioned at all till from eighty to one hundred years after St. John's death, in which number are the Acts, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, and James. Of the other thirteen, five, viz. St. John's Gospel, Philippians, 1st Timothy, Hebrews, and 1st John, are quoted but by one writer during the same period. On what ground, then, do we receive the Canon as it comes to us, but on the authority of the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries? . . . The fifth century acts as a comment on the obscure text of the centuries before it. (20)

Newman makes another brilliant analogy between the "lateness" of the development of the papacy and the Marian doctrines, and the Creed and the Canon:

Ecclesiastical recognition of the place which St. Mary holds in the Economy of grace . . . was reserved for the fifth century, as the definition of our Lord's proper Divinity had been the work of the fourth . . . In order to do honour to Christ, . . . to defend the true doctrine of the Incarnation . . . to secure a right faith in the manhood of the Eternal Son, the Council of Ephesus determined the Blessed Virgin to be the Mother of God . . . The title 'Theotokos,' or Mother of God, was familiar to Christians from primitive times, and had been used, among other writers, by Origen, Eusebius, . . . St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Gregory Nyssen. (21)

If the Imperial power checked the development of Councils, it availed also for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined . . . All began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church. (22)

The venerable Cardinal then defines seven characteristics of all true developments:

It becomes necessary . . . to assign certain characteristics of faithful developments . . . the presence of which serves as a test to discriminate between them and corruptions . . . I venture to set down Seven Notes . . . as follows: - There is no corruption if it retains one and the same type, the same principles, the same organization; if its beginnings anticipate its subsequent phases, and its later phenomena protect and subserve its earlier; if it has a power of assimilation and revival, and a vigorous action from first to last. (23)

A corruption is a development in that very stage in which it ceases to illustrate, and begins to disturb, the acquisitions gained in its previous history . . . A true development . . . is an addition which illustrates . . . the body of thought from which it proceeds . . . it is of a tendency conservative of what has gone before it. (24)

After consideration, especially, of Newman's analogies between Protestant developments and distinctively Catholic ones, and his "Seven Notes," it became clear to me that Protestantism represented a massive corruption of historical Christianity, rather than a consistent development, as I formerly believed, and my thinking underwent a paradigm shift of massive proportions. For Protestantism undeniably introduced radically new doctrines such as sola fide, sola Scriptura, sectarianism, private judgment, the notion of an invisible, non-hierarchical church, and symbolic baptism and Eucharist, which were sheer novelties, rather than reforms, supposedly hearkening back to the alleged state of affairs in the early Church. But they simply cannot be found in the early Church.

Newman builds his case to its climax, with the following lucid comment:

If it be true that the principles of the later Church are the same as those of the earlier, then . . . the later in reality agrees more than it differs with the earlier, for principles are responsible for doctrines. Hence they who assert that the modern Roman system is the corruption of primitive theology are forced to discover some difference of principle . . . for instance, that the right of private judgment was secured to the early Church and has been lost to the later, or again, that the later Church rationalizes and the earlier went by faith.

Moreover . . . the various heresies . . . have in one respect or other . . . violated those principles with which she rose into existence, and which she still retains. Thus Arian (25) and Nestorian (26) schools denied the allegorical rule of Scripture interpretation; the Gnostics (27) and Eunomians (28) for Faith professed to substitute knowledge; and the Manichees (29) also . . . The dogmatic Rule . . . was thrown aside by all those sects which, as Tertullian tells us, claimed to judge for themselves from Scripture; and the Sacramental principle was violated, ipso facto, by all who separated from the Church . . . In like manner the contempt of mystery, of reverence, of devoutness, of sanctity, are other notes of the heretical spirit. As to Protestantism it is plain in how many ways it has reversed the principles of Catholic theology. (30)

In other words, the early heretics were the ones who usually operated on the basis of the so-called perspicuity, or clearness of Scripture, without authoritative interpretation by authoritative ecclesiastical bodies. Protestants look back today with the benefit of hindsight and speak of the "early Church" or simply, "the Church," yet fail to recognize that this "Church" which they tacitly assume was one and unified, is none other than the organically-connected ancestor of the present-day Catholic Church, which operates on the same principles (apostolic succession, a certain understanding of the organic relationship of Church, Bible, and Tradition, sacramentalism, sacerdotalism, papacy, conciliarism, episcopacy, the communion of saints, etc.).

One need not posit an absolute break of continuity in order to equate the present Catholic Church with the "Church" of the early centuries. One need only understand the true nature of development, whereby doctrines can grow in the sense that they are more clearly understood, and more deeply and thoroughly explicated, while not undergoing any essential transformation. But Protestantism requires a radical change of principle, and hence, fails the test of what constitutes a true development, in Newman's analysis. Besides, corruption can just as easily consist of subtraction as addition. Corruption entails a departure from normalcy and precedent.

Furthermore, it is instructive to realize that what we now consider orthodox in early Christianity, is simply the position of the Roman apostolic see, which was proven right again and again on this score, far beyond coincidence, given the multiplicity of heretical sects in the early centuries, and the thousands of competing Christian denominations today.

This fact and the others recounted above in Newman's Essay and my own commentary upon it, are what basically compelled me to become a Catholic (along with the profundity and beauty of unchanging Catholic moral teaching). I had too much respect for logic, historical theology, and Church history to resist what I felt to be an utterly unanswerable argument. I discovered, with the inestimable assistance of Cardinal Newman, that the Catholic Church had far and away the most cogent, consistent claim to ecclesiological and apostolic preeminence, and this, coupled with my simultaneous intensive study of what happened in the sixteenth century (especially the stated reasons for the Protestant Revolution, and the motivations of its leading proponents) and the theological and moral views of the major Protestant Founders (such as: sola fide, sola Scriptura, libertine views of clerical vows and divorce, lying, filthy language, disrespect for authority and precedent, plundering and violence, iconoclasm, anti-intellectualism, etc.) made any further resistance to Catholicism on my part equivalent to rearranging chairs on the deck of the sinking Titanic.

Thus it was fitting that a little more than a month after completing the Essay, while reading Cardinal Newman's meditation on "Hope in God the Creator," I quietly gave up what little remaining emotional resistance I had to conversion, and realized that I had already entered the gates of Rome (and therefore, historic Christendom) for good. And, thus far, I've never had the slightest desire or inclination to look back.

FOOTNOTES

1. Butler: New York, Sheed & Ward, 1954, 230 pages. A friend was recently able to obtain the articles from the Irish Ecclesiastical Record in the library of a well-known evangelical seminary in the Chicago area.
2. Geisler, Norman L. and Ralph E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995, p.206, which calls it the "classic refutation of papal infallibility." See also p.459.
3. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., pp.206-207.
4. Salmon, George, The Infallibility of the Church, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House (originally 1888), pp.31-33 (cf. also pp.35, 39).
5. 23:28-30, cited from Jurgens, William A., The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1979), vol. 3, p.265.
6. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., p.459.
7. Vatican II: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, chapter III: "The Church is Hierarchical," sections 18, 22. From edition / translation by Austin Flannery (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1988 revised ed., pp.370,375).
8. C. Faustus, 8,5.
9. The Trinity, 4,6,10.
10. Letter 164 to Evodius of Uzalis.
11. C. Cresconius, 1,33.
12. Harrold, Charles F., A Newman Treasury, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1943, pp.83-84.
13. All quotes from the Essay are taken from the edition published by the University of Notre Dame Press, 1989, with a foreword by Ian Ker, from the 1878 edition of the original work of 1845; pp.vii-viii.
14. Newman, John Henry, Historical Sketches, vol.1: The Church of the Fathers, London: 1872, p.418.
15. Newman, Essay, ibid., pp.7-9.
16. Ibid., p.21
17. Ibid., p.21.
18. Ibid., p.23.
19. Geisler and MacKenzie, ibid., pp.247-248,503.
20. Newman, Essay, pp.123-126.
21. Ibid., p.145.
22. Ibid., p.151.
23. Ibid., pp.170-171.
24. Ibid., pp.199-200,203.
25. Arianism: a heresy holding that Jesus Christ was a mere created being and not co-equal with the Father.
26. Nestorianism: a heresy which denied that Christ had a Divine Nature.
27. Gnosticism: a heresy which claimed a secret knowledge ("gnosis") which went beyond revelation, faith, and reason.
28. Eunomianism: akin to Arianism, it held that Jesus was inferior in essence to the Father, and that the Holy Spirit was created by Jesus.
29. Manichaeanism: a form of Gnosticism; it held to a sub-personal cosmic dualism between good and evil and was severely ascetic.
30. Newman, Essay, pp.353-354

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