Confessions of a Traditional Catholic by Matthew Arnold

Author:Matthew Arnold [Arnold, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681497846
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2017-10-16T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

One of the most rewarding things about my years at Saint Joseph Communications was helping folks find their way into the Catholic Church. I recall a lengthy dialogue with a certain Evangelical Protestant. It started with a question about the papacy. I cleared up some misconceptions, shared some Bible verses, and directed him to some solid resources. I encouraged him to keep seeking, assured him of my prayers, and expected that to be that. But over the course of the next several months he continued to call regularly. I kept answering his questions from a biblical and historical perspective and directing him to good resources as his intellectual objections fell like dominoes.

His final hurdle was the hardest for many non-Catholic Christians to overcome: the Church’s teaching on Mary. We went back and forth until he called to say, “Okay, I can accept Mary as Mother of God, her Perpetual Virginity, even her Immaculate Conception—but the Assumption, though, I just don’t know. I can’t really find anything about it in the Fathers until the end of the second century—” and then I snapped.

“Your problem isn’t the Assumption,” I said. “Your problem is you don’t want to be Catholic. In your heart you already know the truth. You’re just looking for excuses not to convert. Don’t bother calling me again until you’re serious.” And I hung up. I instantly regretted what I had done, but I didn’t have his number—or even his last name—so there was no taking it back.

Nearly a year later, I was emceeing a biblical conference with Scott Hahn and Jeff Cavins when a fellow came up and introduced himself as the guy from the phone calls. I apologized for my rudeness when we last spoke, but he said it was just what he needed to hear. He had flown to the conference from another state to tell me in person that since that last phone call he had stopped looking for excuses and been received into the Catholic Church. Then he shared “the rest of the story”.

What I could not have known was that this fellow was not merely an Evangelical Protestant but a pastor with his own church. On top of that, he was part owner of a chain of Christian bookstores for which he was contractually obliged to profess the Reformation principles of sola scriptum and sola fides.1 So, coming into the Catholic Church meant giving up his vocation, his livelihood, and, for the most part, his friends—not to mention what it put his family through. I could relate.

The moral of the story is simple: the spiritual benefits of full communion with the Church come with a price—namely, submission to legitimate authority—and sometimes that means giving up a lot. I was being reminded that I had made such a sacrifice myself. Frankly, it made me feel like a bit of a fraud. In the year it had taken this fellow to come into full communion with the Church, I had chosen to step outside the diocesan structure.

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