Why Are We Catholic?

Why We Believe… in Something

I was sitting in a private booth at a restaurant in San Diego, waiting for the religious equivalent of a blind date. A few weeks earlier, some Catholic friends had asked me to meet with their son when he got back from high school. They wanted me to talk with him, because he had told them he was going to stop going to church with them, since he was an atheist. “Could you help him see that he needs to come back to the parish? Can you help him leave all that atheism stuff behind?” they asked me.

Their son, whom I will call Vincent, came through the door. I waved to him, and he made an effort to give me half a smile.

“How are you?” he asked me.

“Very well. I’m Trent.”

“Yeah, I know.”

I was not very confident that things were going to go well and, to be honest, I understood his lack of enthusiasm about having lunch with me. So I decided to speak to him with complete clarity.

“Do you think I’m here to convince you to become Catholic again?”

“Of course. That’s why my parents insisted that I come talk with you.”

“Look, I don’t think there is anything I can say that will make you change your beliefs. I’m convinced that, if you believe in something, it has to be because it seems true to you, not because it is convenient for you. Do you agree?”

He nodded.

“Do you want to start by telling me why you are an atheist?”

“I know you’ve written a book about atheism, so I’m not going to debate you,” he replied.

“I don’t really feel like debating with this plate of mozzarella sticks in front of me, to be honest,” I answered. “All I want to find out is what you believe.”

And so, for the next twenty minutes, I asked him questions. What does the word “atheist” mean to you? What are the best arguments for God? And against him? What do you think is good and bad about the Catholic Church?

By the time the appetizers arrived, we were already having a fluid conversation. I gently questioned some of his atheist beliefs but, honestly, it was not a debate. We were two acquaintances talking about deep subjects.

As I dipped a quesadilla into salsa, I said to Vincent: “I think I understand fairly well why you are an atheist, and I love talking with people like you. You have thought deeply about the matter and, if I am wrong about atheism, I would like someone like you to explain to me what I have not understood correctly.”

“Thanks,” he said to me.

“But this is a two-way street, Vincent. Be honest. If you were wrong about the Church, would you want someone like me to point out where you are mistaken?”

He took a sip of his soda while weighing his answer, and finally nodded: “Yes, I wouldn’t have a problem with that.”

“Then good; I have spent a good while asking you questions, so now it is your turn. Why don’t you ask me what Catholics think, and I will tell you why we believe what we believe? You can accept my reasons or not, but I think your parents will at least be satisfied that we have talked about this.” Vincent agreed, and we talked for another hour.

When the check came, he said to me, “I appreciate everything you have told me and, of course, I’m going to think about it.”

“I’ll also think about what you have told me,” I answered. “Remember: it is a two-way street.”

A Shared Desire

For me, people who leave the Church or are not Catholic do not become potential “customers.” They are just people, who love some things and hate others. They may be very different from me in many ways, but we almost certainly have one thing in common: they do not want to be ignorant, and they want to be happy. I converted to Catholicism in high school because: 1) I was convinced it was true, and 2) it made me happy to find an answer to my deepest questions about existence and meaning.

It would have been selfish of me to keep to myself the peace and joy I received when I converted, so I share this “good news” with others. My goal with this book is simple: to explain why Catholics believe what we believe. I have not set out all the reasons I could think of, because almost no one is going to pounce on a book so thick it could serve as a footstool. Instead, I have chosen the arguments that most struck me during my process of conversion to the Catholic faith.

If you are already a believer, this book can give you a good starting point for discussions with your non-Catholic friends and family. If you are not, I hope you will at least be willing to hear me out, as Vincent did. Even if what I say does not convince you, it can at least help you have deeper conversations with your Catholic friends and family, because you will better understand their points of view.

Whoever you are, whether you are a believer, a skeptic, or simply someone who is not very sure what you believe, I trust that, at the very least, this book will encourage you to follow this ancient advice: “Test everything and hold fast to what is good.”

Truth and God

1.Why We Believe in Truth

When someone heads toward you with clenched fists, it is normal to get nervous. When I saw a student approaching me that way at a university in Texas, I feared the worst. Fortunately, he only wanted to hit me with his words.

When I finished my talk entitled “Why Be Catholic?” he came up to me and said: “You are one of the most arrogant people I have ever met. You think you are right and everyone else is wrong.” I was surprised by how angry he seemed and, when I began to answer him, a small group of students gathered to see what was happening.

“Do you mean that it is arrogant of me to believe I am right about a religious truth and that everyone who disagrees with me is wrong?” I replied.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” I continued. “I think some of the people here will disagree with you that I am arrogant. Are you right, and are those who disagree wrong?”
The young man was confused for a few seconds before asking me: “Where are you going with this?”

By then, the few students watching us had become a crowd of several dozen. I explained what I meant.

“You are right. It is bad to be arrogant, but it is not bad to be accurate. If we know the truth about something, then those who do not agree with us will be wrong. That does not make us better than they are; it means we have to be willing to listen to one another in order to avoid error and find the truth.”

“But there is no absolute truth!” he shot back. “Everyone decides what is true for himself.”

The nineteenth-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert once said: “There is no truth. There is only perception.”
Was that true, or only Flaubert’s perception?

What Is Truth?

The problem with saying that there is no absolute truth is that that statement is an absolute truth. It claims: “It is true at all times and in all places that no statement is true at all times and in all places,” which is as contradictory as saying: “I cannot speak.” It makes no sense to maintain that it is true that there are no truths.’

But what is truth? When we say that something is true, we mean that it corresponds to reality. We are describing the way the world is. Any statement that describes the world contains either a subjective truth or an objective truth2. A truth is subjective if it is true only for the person who affirms it. If I say that mint chocolate chip ice cream tastes very good, I am stating a subjective truth. When someone does not agree with this kind of truth, he usually responds: “That is true for you, but not for me.” It may be true for Trent Horn that this ice cream is very tasty, but someone allergic to lactose may say that, for him, it is not true. This is not a contradiction, because subjective truths describe above all our feelings toward the world, and not facts about the world.

On the other hand, a truth is objective when it does not merely describe how someone feels, but describes a fact about reality that is true for everyone else. Whether or not we like ice cream, for example, it is an objective truth that it begins to melt if we leave it at room temperature (unless we are in an igloo). Objective truths cannot be true only for some people. They are false or true for everyone, because they describe reality, and reality is something we must all accept, whether we like it or not.

And what does all this have to do with religion, or with being Catholic?

Is It the Truth of Ice Cream or the Truth of Medicine?

There are people who think that choosing a particular religion or church is like choosing a pair of shoes or a flavor of ice cream. As long as it tastes good or you like it, it does not matter which one you choose. They think that religious truths are subjective, and therefore are not true for everyone, which means that, if something seems right to you, then it is as good as any other set of beliefs.

That is why it may seem arrogant for someone to say that his religion is the true one, and that everyone should belong to it. It would be like maintaining that everyone should wear sandals or eat mint chocolate chip ice cream (which, I admit, is a delicious mid-afternoon option). In both cases, one could say: “That may be true for you, but it is not true for me.” However, religious truths describe basic and important aspects of reality, which makes them objective, rather than subjective. Claims about religion are more like the “truth of medicine” than the “truth of ice cream.”

What would happen if we chose medicines the way we choose ice cream? We would say: “Mmm, this pill tastes like strawberry… I’m going to take three,” and, by doing so, we could be harmed or die. You could also remain sick or get worse because you had not taken the right medication. In this case, what matters is not the subjective truth or the taste of the medicine, but the objective truth of what it will do to your body.

Religion, Rajas, and Elephants

Do you know the story of the three blind men and the elephant? The first blind man touches its tail and says it is a rope. The second touches its ears and says it is a fan. The third touches its enormous back and says it is a wall. Then a wise king, a raja, explains to the three of them:

“The elephant is a very large animal. Each of you has a part of the truth, but the three must be joined together in order to discover it completely. The same thing happens with your religions. Each one has a part of the truth, but they must all be joined together in order to find the absolute truth.”

However, combining false and contradictory religions does not add up to a true religion, just as joining a rope, a fan, and a wall does not give us a true description of what an elephant is.

This parable also takes for granted that someone has the whole truth (the raja). How do skeptics, who deny that there is one true religion, know that they are like the raja, and not like one of the blind men? Is it possible that some religions contain more truth than others, and that God has given one in particular the fullness of truth?

The same thing happens with religion. Even if you do not believe, that belief should be based on facts about reality, and not on your feelings toward faith. The key is that we must choose a faith not because of how it makes us feel, but because it is objectively true and good for us.

And wouldn’t it be arrogant of me to claim that I am part of the “true religion,” and that others are wrong? If I had been born in India, would I not have written a book entitled Why We Are Hindu, instead of Why We Are Catholic? Maybe. And if I had been born in ancient China, I might have written Why We Believe the Earth Is Flat. Being born in a place or at a time far from the truth does not prove that the truth does not exist.
When we speak of believing in one religion, or in any other fundamental truth (such as the shape of the earth), we all maintain that we are right, and that those who do not think the same way are wrong. Even those who ignore religion think they are right when they say that beliefs should be disregarded. They are also sure that those who tell them to convert are wrong. This is not a symptom of arrogance; it is a sign of their genuine desire to find the truth.

A person, even a multitude of them, can be kind and good and at the same time be wrong about religion. The attitude born of love does not consist in leaving someone in ignorance, but in helping him find the truth. In fact, someone has to be right about religious truths, because in many cases there is no alternative. For example: either believers are right and God exists, or atheists are right and God does not exist. There is no third option, and both cannot be right, because that would lead us to the contradiction that God existed and did not exist at the same time.

As a Catholic, I do not maintain that all other religions are 100 percent false. Starting with the most basic questions about the world (those that deal with objective truth), I try to find out which religion best answers my questions: Is there a God? Can we know anything about him through reason? Has he revealed himself as a human being? Which religion has the best historical motivation for claiming to be the recipient of God’s revelation? Does that religion still exist?

There is more than one faith capable of answering some of these questions. For example, Christians, Jews, and Muslims would correctly answer the question of whether there is only one God. On whether God has become man, however, only one has the truth. As we answer the questions, we see that, although many belief systems address some of them, there is only one religion that can answer them all correctly and coherently. If we care about truth, shouldn’t we find out which religion is the one that can answer?

Proposing a Truth and Not Imposing It

In a video published on the internet, the atheist and magician Penn Jillette described the way a Christian approached him at the end of one of his shows, giving him a Bible. Instead of being bothered, Penn acknowledged that he was “a good person.” “If Christians believe their faith is the true one,” he went on, “they should share it with everyone.” “How much do you have to hate someone not to evangelize him? How much do you have to hate someone to believe that eternal life exists, and not tell him?”

Why We Believe: Truth

To affirm that it is true that truth does not exist is a contradiction.
An objective truth describes reality, and therefore is true or false for everyone.
Since religion describes reality, its main claims are objective, and can be investigated.

A note that the complete booklet can be purchased on Amazon and/or from Ediciones Palabra (www.palabra.es)

Source: Excerpt from the book by Trent Horn

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Published on ApologeticaCatolica.org with express written permission from Catholic Answers in collaboration with José Rivera-Santander and Alfredo Bayon Landa.

Catholic Answers (Respuestas Católicas) is the largest apologetics organization in North America, made up of lay people putting our full-time efforts into promoting the Catholic religion through books, booklets, recorded tapes, a monthly magazine, parish seminars, radio and television presentations, and other means of dissemination such as YouTube.

Nihil Obstat:
I conclude that this text is free from doctrinal or moral errors.
Bernadeane Carr
Censor Librorum
July 30, 1997

Imprimatur:
According to canon 827 §3 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, permission to publish this work is granted by:
XRobert H. Brom
Bishop of San Diego
August 6, 1997