Given all that we have discussed previously, the question then arises, “Does it not matter if you are Catholic?”
On the contrary, it matters greatly. We live in a fallen world and are fallen creatures who need every bit of help we can get from the grace of God to become the glorious love-filled creatures God calls us to be. And even with that help, history demonstrates our genius for being schleps and sinners. We are like patients in a hospital requiring intensive care, but with the hope and promise that the full panoply of modern medicine could give us back our life if we cooperate with the Divine Physician and let Him use all the treatments He has tucked away in His little black bag. That little black bag is called “the fullness of Christ’s revelation in the Catholic communion”. It includes the common life, common worship, and common teaching of the Church, including the seven sacraments, the accumulated wisdom of the Tradition both in Scripture and in the life of the Church, the Magisterium (including the Papacy), and the “riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). Other Churches and ecclesial bodies like to use various items out of that black bag (say, the Bible, or Baptism, or the doctrine of the Trinity, or some particular moral teaching like the indissolubility of marriage, or predestination, or free will) in various combinations and to varying degrees and believers do well to avail themselves of as much of God’s treasury in the Church’s Tradition as they can lay hold of.
But if you are mortally ill (and the whole human race is mortally ill with sin), it’s kind of crazy to say “I find that I’m most comfortable when the Doctor prescribes aspirin, and I do like his penicillin now and then, but I don’t want his other prescriptions and treatments and I won’t allow him to send other hospital staff to treat me.” If we were mortally ill, we’d want whatever the Doctor has available to heal us.
Likewise, though the Catholic Church rejoices that real elements of the saving gospel are present and working in other churches and ecclesial bodies, though she even rejoices that the semina verbi or “seeds of the Word” can even be found in the various non-Christian religious and philosophical traditions of the world, she nonetheless points out that the best thing of all is to lay hold of the fullness of His gifts. So the Church, of course, encourages anyone who can do so to become Catholic. It doesn’t presume to judge those who do not, for we mortals cannot know the reasons why others make the choices they do. People may refuse the Church out of ignorance, or woundedness, or some other cause that renders them inculpable for rejecting her. However, it is only sensible to point out that, everything else being equal, if we say we want God, but refuse the fullness of His gifts, then it is worth asking ourselves if we really want God after all or are, in fact, seeking something else.
As an Evangelical who discovered how much truth was in the Catholic faith and how much I agreed with it, I came to the realization that it was not enough for me to say “I share the same goals as Peter, so I am ‘spiritually subject’ to him already and do not need to be sacramentally and ecclesially subject as well.” I realized that the very essence of what Peter proclaims is that the Word became Flesh. Moreover, I came to realize that there was, in fact, nothing in the Church’s deposit of Faith that was either opposed to reason, nor anti-biblical. So I eventually concluded that it was therefore my duty, in obedience to Christ’s prayer for unity in John 17, to enflesh my faith by becoming really, tangibly, physically, sacramentally joined to the visible Church our Lord commended to Peter’s care and feeding. For myself, I could no longer say “I’ll be with you in spirit” to the Pope if I was not also willing to really be with him in body as well.
Catholics do not say, and never have said, that they are the sole possessors of revelation. Indeed, the Church does not “possess” revelation at all. Revelation possesses her and that revelation, who is Christ, has (she teaches) committed Himself fully to her. “God,” said the great Protestant writer George MacDonald, “is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.” On the one hand, God is delighted when the most miserable sinner takes the smallest serious step toward the love of God and neighbor. On the other hand, He will not be completely happy until every last person He came to save is completely perfected in the image of Christ and overflowing with perfect love for God and neighbor. This same pattern is supremely evident in the Catholic Church’s understanding of her relationship with her members, whether in full or very imperfect communion. For the Church is happy to recognize even the smallest commonalities she may share, not only with other Christians, but even with non-Christian religious traditions and the great philosophical traditions of paganism. The Church can even find things to affirm in virtuous atheists. But at the same time, the Church is acutely aware that there is a real difference between imperfect and perfect unity and so she too–easy to please, but hard to satisfy–labors toward that Day when all the members of the Body of Christ will be perfected in faith, hope and love.
Till That Day, we know where the Church is; we do not know where it is not.
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