Reconciling the history of the Catholic Church
It is no secret that the Catholic Church has a very long history, which has many blemishes throughout. We have the crusades, the inquisition era, the sex abuse scandal, and many more. How does one choose to become a member of the Church with such a dark past?
We all have our way of reconciling this. I believe in the Catholic Church, not because of the people, but because of the Truth within the Catholic Church, which is the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ (I covered this in this post). For me, I was blessed to quickly realize, the Church is made of people and people are sinners. I was not going to let the sins of others stop me from becoming a member of the One True Church.
I also started to learn that many of the concerns about the history of the Church are baseless and/or incorrect. History does not like Christianity, especially the Catholic Church. Many things are distorted and misconstrued to pit people against the Catholic Church. Why is this? Because the enemy has been working hard to push people away from the aqueduct of God’s grace on earth. When one considers the reality of spiritual warfare, the works of the enemy become apparent.
I have heard vehement feelings towards the Catholic Church, even from my own family as well as myself previously, yet I do not hear anything aside from the typical arguments over and over again. They are quickly debunked. I have some links for videos at the end of this post.
Though many of the arguments against the Church are baseless, there are also many which are a distortion of the reality that happened. The Crusades and Inquisition, which did happen and included many regrettable decisions from the Catholic Church, are not at all the way historians recorded them. Many details were left out and others were embellished to make the Catholic Church appear to be the whore of Babylon. This is not unintentional from the enemy. This does not justify the regrettable actions, but these actions can be explained for what they truly were. Again, I recommend listening to the videos below for more information because Father Chris Alar will deliver it more completely than I could.
While considering various Churches, if one rules out the Catholic Church because of her past, where are we to go? Every Church is made of people and people everywhere are sinners. I have heard about scandals among Protestant type Churches. The Orthodox Church is far from perfect in as well. So then do we simply not go to a Church because we can’t find a perfect Church with an unblemished past? That is what the enemy wants. The enemy wants us to be disloyal to our Church and ultimately disloyal to God by leaving the Church.
If we look at Christ’s lineage, we could find all sorts of concerns. Looking at Abram and Hagar, Jacob and Esau, Judah and Joseph, Tamar and Judah, Rahab, David, Solomon, and many more, we see all sorts of sinners. This doesn’t mean we abandon Christ, instead we see that God can make beautiful things come from even the worst of sin. That is not an excuse to sin in the first place, but it does show God’s love for us while we reconcile our own sins with God.
Instead, we need to recognize that people are not infallible and we all make mistakes. We also need to look at the beautiful richness in Catholic history. The times of regrettable decisions that were blown out of proportion are minute compared to the beautiful rich history of the Catholic Church. The lives of the Saints are rich with Christ-like people. I enjoy reading about the various Saints and the great impact they made on the world. Looking at Saint Dominic and Saint Francis, we can see their amazing impact 800 years later.
If we focus on the sins of people, then we will only see the worldly side of Saint Francis before his conversion, the lustful addiction of Saint Augustine before finding Christ, the promiscuity of Saint Mary Magdalene before following Jesus, or the warmonger of Saint Ignatius of Loyola before he fell in love with Jesus. But if we focus on the beauty of Catholicism, we will see the aspects that made these and many others, the Saints we know them to be.
The Church is our family. I would not abandon my family in time of their bad decisions, nor would I abandon my Church because of someone else’s bad decision. This is a test I have had to undergo in recent days.
We do not leave the Church because of bad people and bad history. Is your family perfect? Your workplace? Your children’s school? Yours and your children’s extracurricular activities? But you won’t quit them. This is not a problem isolated to the Catholic Church, it is a problem with humanity, we live in a broken world with broken people.
People love headlines about the Catholic Church and Catholic priests. Everyone grabs pitchforks and torches when they see something with the Catholic Church but they don’t give the same response with non-Catholic Churches or their own public schools and other institutions.
While I understand the history of the Catholic Church is far from perfect, I am able to not be bothered by people who cite it as a reason for not joining. They are typically incorrect like I once was. I pray for them to open to the truth of Church history so they may be open to growing closer to Jesus Christ through the Catholic Church.
Again, this is simply how I personally dealt with the history of the Catholic Church. This is not an exhaustive dive into every aspect of Church history, though I may cover that in later posts. Hopefully it helps you see my perspective on it all. I included video links below to give more insight into the history of the Catholic Church to help understand the true story that history wrote differently.
To quote Fulton Sheen, “millions of people hate what they think is the Catholic Church, but very few, if any, hate what is actually the Catholic Church”.
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