Tonight I’d like to write about what used to be my religion: Catholicism. Why should you care, dear reader? Maybe you’ve never been in the Church, or any Church, and would like to get some insider information. Maybe you’ve only been told bad things about the Catholic Church and are wondering how a billion people can be so stupid as to still be part of it. Is there anything good about the Catholic Church? Does anyone intelligent and not delusional believe in that **** in 2012?

I claim to be intelligent, not delusional, to have a deep understanding of Catholic faith, and I suppose my now agnostic and materialistic views will improve my credibility in the eyes of the agnostic and materialistic majority that seems to compose these boards and today’s intelligentsia, for the most part. I also have the rather rare position of deeply admiring the Catholic Church while not believing in most of what it teaches. I will try to stay as factual as possible, but this post is voluntarily biased towards praising the Catholic Church: I think the Church gets enough bad press without my contribution in that regard.

Let’s start with some facts, taken straight from universal web authority (lol) Wikipedia. The Catholic Church:

• is the world’s largest Christian church
  
• has over a billion members
  
• is among the oldest institutions in the world
  
• has played a prominent role in the history of Western civilization
  
• claims to be founded by Jesus-Christ, who is widely considered the most influential person ever to have lived

In other words, nothing man-made approaches the Catholic Church in both spatial-temporal size and historical importance. In nerd lingo, something that epic must be made out of win.

The Catholic Church also teaches a bunch of concepts that you may be familiar with:

• That individual human life is sacred
  
• All humans are equal in rights and dignity regardless of sex, nationality, social status, etc.
  
• That church and state are distinct and complementary (i.e. separation of church and state)

We take them for granted today, but these ideas were completely alien to most people 2000 years ago, and still are today in many countries, predominantly where Christianity has never spread. As a cursory study of both History and Theology reveals, what we call inalienable rights today is essentially the development of Christian ideas such as:

• God made man in His image (ergo individual human life is sacred)
  
• Everyone is a child of God and a brother of Christ in Baptism, (ergo all are equal)
  
• “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (ergo separation of church and state)

That is not to say that these ideas do not find echoes in other religions and ideologies – but this is their origin in Western civilization and this is why they still represent such strong convictions today, even as Christianity loses part of its social relevance in modern society.

The Church also has done a whole lot of awesome that basically makes our world what it is today, such as

• Preserving remnants of Greek and Roman Civilization (traditions, artistic and scientific writings) throughout the Dark and Middle Ages, allowing the Renaissance to happen.
  
• Uniting Europe under common fundamental beliefs and a central authority, allowing it to stand as a whole versus other world powers (i.e. Islam in the Middle Ages).
  
• Creating the first schools and universities.
  
• Inventing the modern notation of music and inspiring most early musical works.
  
• Stimulating Western visual arts and architecture through the construction of Cathedrals, Monasteries, etc.
  
• Setting up and maintaining schools, hospitals, orphanages, spiritual guidance and much of societies’ basic organization systematically throughout History.

That is to say, the Catholic Church is largely responsible for positively building and defining Western civilization as we know it. A good modern treatment of the subject is given, I’m told, in “How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization” by Thomas E. Woods, if you’re interested in learning more.

A common misconception is that the Catholic Church crippled scientific progress through heavy censorship, the archetypal example being Galileo’s theory of heliocentrism. While this event undeniably occurred and is a regrettable mistake (one that the Church did apologize for), it represents, overall, a slight blemish on a two-millennia history of sustained teaching through its monks, nuns and priests, essentially enabling science to rise as it has. In regards to astronomy in particular, historian John Lewis Heilbron notes: “The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.” (Heilbron, J. L. (1999). The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.)

While we’re talking misconceptions: it is often perceived that the Crusades were nothing more than unnecessary violence motivated by irrational zealotry. In reality, the Crusades were a response to Islamic invasion of Europe, and were it not for all European states uniting against the invader, today we would live under Islamic beliefs. Given how the Islamic world has evolved since its Golden Age (i.e. not a whole lot), I don’t think that would have been a very desirable outcome. In the Middle-Ages, the only reason Europe could unite as a whole was the Catholic Church.

It is also often heard that the Vatican is stinking rich and that selling its assets would solve world hunger or something. In reality, the Vatican’s operating budget is about 385 M $, which is comparable to a moderate-size university; and its assets have, by and large, no monetary value: no one can put Michelangelo’s works or the St Peter Basilica on the market. For the most part, the Catholic clergy and religious live a life of charity and possess little material wealth: assets such as churches, schools and hospitals were generally built by their local community to benefit from their services. True, there have been scandalous counter-examples especially around the Renaissance, with a relatively decadent clergy; these periods are hardly representative of History as a whole and especially of what the Church is today.

Speaking of charities, before the Reformation virtually all charities were administered by the Church; and even in this day and age where most schools and hospitals are under the control of the State, Catholic charities are everywhere and provide for all human needs – both material and spiritual. It is often said that Catholic Church is the largest charity in the world: while the Church is not, in itself, technically, a charity, it consists mainly of a plethora of charitable organizations, and with the presence the Church has all over the world, it is difficult to imagine how any single organization could represent a larger charity.

But surely there is corruption and child abuse and greed and whatnot within the clergy, right? Sure. It used to be even worse than it is today. Catholics are as informed and preoccupied with that as any other. Why do they stay in the Church, then? For two reasons:

• Because of Catholic faith itself: Catholics believe that all men are sinners, all men are tempted by the devil, and all may fail to uphold the good whether they are laymen or the Pope. They also believe that the true leader of the Church is Christ, and that He will see that it survives any challenge whether from outside or within. In the face of human failure, Catholics keep their faith because their faith isn’t placed in fallible humans, but in God.
  
• Because very simply, the good far outweighs the bad in the Catholic Church, even when scandal strikes some of the clergy or religious communities. This is hard to believe when all you know of the Catholic Church is what you read in the news, but the purpose of journalists is to report what is exceptional, not the daily routine.

So what do Catholics believe in? Aren’t they opposed to science and progress, woman and gay rights, don’t they worship an old book that teaches men to stone their wives?

This is Jesus’ answer:

Quote

In other words, Catholics worship God and try to be charitable to others. Pretty simple stuff. There’s a lot more, of course, but charity and worship is what it boils down to.

Catholics do not interpret the Old Testament in its literal sense, for the most part. The Law of Moses is seen as an intermediary step towards the Law of Christ: love for God and others. Catholics do not believe that the world was literally created in 7 days, but that Genesis is a symbolic tale of God’s fundamental plan and man’s fall. For the record, the Big Bang theory was first proposed by a Catholic priest, Georges Lemaître. The vast majority of Catholics believe in Evolution, and as illustrated earlier, the Catholic Church has been at the forefront of scientific exploration, creating schools and universities all over the world, and including among its devout such famous names as Copernicus, Galileo, Lavoisier, Mendel, Ockham and many others.

Well what about resurrection then? What about angels, demons and such? What about miracles, or even the afterlife? Isn’t that all ridiculous in this day and age?

It is ridiculous from a materialist point of view, perhaps. The thing is, materialism is a philosophical view, not a scientific theory, and is ultimately as improvable by the scientific method as any other metaphysical view of the universe. Most people are not materialist and therefore do not see any inherent problem with the existence of non-material entities, or that of the supernatural order. There’s nothing inherently absurd (i.e. self-contradictory) about the idea that spiritual beings exist, or that an omnipotent uncreated being is the supreme ruler of the universe. Maybe you are unconvinced (as I am) by the arguments presented for their existence, but there’s a difference between insufficient proof and absurdity. Maybe Catholics believe in things that are not well-founded, but so do most people including atheists. Who can say God certainly doesn’t exist? A human lifetime is probably too short to answer the question, and Catholics have decided to side with the “yes” rather than “no” answer because the evidence for the “yes” seemed more convincing to them than for the “no”. There’s a whole bunch of them including PhDs (Benedict XVI is several times PhD), and they’ve been there for two millennia, so there must be some fairly good arguments. As a matter of fact, there are quite a lot of well-reasoned arguments for the existence of God, the truth of the Gospel, etc, and the topic is far from exhausted among philosophers today.

People tend to presume that believers do not question their beliefs or reason about them, but so do believers vs. non-believers! What I’m basically arguing is that it’s not obvious that Catholics are wrong in their beliefs, and we shouldn’t hold them to higher standards than those who agree with our beliefs. Challenge your materialist friends on why they are materialist, and I doubt they will have a much better defense than your average Catholic. We’re generally too busy with Facebook and our girlfriends to spend time thinking about metaphysics, and Catholics are not very different in that regard.

I guess I most stop this post at some point, so allow me to summarize:

• The Catholic Church has been a tremendous positive influence in History: far from stifling progress, it has essentially made it possible.
  
• The Catholic Church is a huge, epic force of Good in today’s world: thousands of charities all over the world, way above any non-religious organization.
  
• Fundamental Western values of respect, equality, tolerance are part of our Christian heritage.
  
• Catholic faith is all about love of God and others, and can make sense from a non-materialistic point of view.