Why Be Catholic?

The modern world is brutal today. Although we have been trying for several hundred years to direct our own evolution, supposedly to improve our lives, today, further attempts at evolving ourselves often do just the opposite. We have lost our sense of purpose for human life. Nor do we know what is real, authentic, and stable amidst the fluid, artificial, and virtual realities. It is easy to feel disillusioned and alienated from this world. This leaves many feeling anxious, depressed, and listless. Since the sciences that give us our “evolved” state of being cannot offer an explanation for why we exist, most of us are challenged to find meaning in our lives.

Christian Purpose for Living

This was not always the case. Christians believe that God created the entire universe, including us. According to the story of creation in Genesis 1, the universe was “good” until humanity was created—making the universe “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Based on this, we believe that God must have intended for us to play important roles in managing our world so that it flourishes over the long run.

Christians believe that God created each person for a purpose. Well, several purposes. In general, we are “to love and serve God.” More specifically, each of us is endowed with a set of gifts and talents to use for our individual purposes. Science tells us a lot about the diversity of our valuable gifts: differences in temperament, interests, spirituality, extroversion and introversion, in how we relate to other people, neuro-divergences (perceiving the world differently in many ways), and even variation in the degree of concern about our own personal growth and perfection. These are things that we cannot change about ourselves. 

Unfortunately, the “world” ignores much of this diversity in personality and defines an “ideal” person narrowly, challenging all of us to fit into that ideal mold. We are told that we should all be equally open, agreeable, conscientious, extroverted, not neurotic, and have strong interest in global cultures and peoples. But for many, attempting to comply is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Because of our great diversity of gifts, we just don’t fit into the world very well. The cost is often our mental health and happiness.

As Catholics, we regard our diversity differently. Instead of trying to all be the same, we believe that God gave each of us our lives and our gifts and talents for particular purposes—thereby making the world “very good.” We are supposed to develop them through education and exercise, and use them in the world in ways that act on behalf of God, doing his will to make the world what He wants it to be. This is one historically accurate way of understanding how we are made in God's "image"—we are his agents—his hands, feet, and voices in the world. Here is our purpose for having been born at all.

This has always been a fundamental belief of our faith. We venerate those who have closely followed God's will for their own lives at great cost to themselves: as Apostles, Prophets, Martyrs, and Saints. In the Church, we say that this is a kind of our "unity in diversity." 

Another way that Catholics talk about it is that we are the Body of Christ, with Christ as the head and we are his members. St. Paul gives us an example of how this works. He says that an eye and a hand are both members of this body. They have equal value, and both are needed. Further, the eye needs to be satisfied to be a good eye, rather than trying to be a hand, and the hand needs to be satisfied to be a good hand, and not want to be an eye (1 Corinthians 12:4-31). 

Since God knows, and we Christians know, that the world needs a diversity of human gifts in order for it to thrive, Christians do not share the secular discomfort with the existence of the actual diversity in humanity.

Cat in a Box

Did you ever wonder why cats love boxes? Have you ever wished your life could be as easy as hanging out in a box? Well, human life was more like a cat’s in several ways before we developed the modern aspiration and scientific tools to evolve ourselves.

Cats love boxes because they provide the means for a comfortable life. First, they provide security, making cats feel sheltered, safe and protected. They also provide a place to hide when they want to be alone. Boxes provide warmth and comfort, which help cats maintain comfortable body temperature. They also are fun during playtime. Cats can play hide-and-seek in boxes, or find things to chew or attack. Boxes are also great fun when cats look for secret treasure. "Is the treasure in here?" Finally, boxes help cats to cope when something in their environment changes, supporting their adaptation to their new situation.

Our Individual Boxes

We can think of a healthy human life as being like a box, and we are the cats who might love our individual boxes. Let’s consider the walls of our boxes.

Box bottom: Our individual gifts and temperaments

We each have ways in which we innately feel that we should live in the world. We have a sense of what is natural for how we use our bodies, minds, and souls. Given our knowledge of our own individual gifts and temperaments, we can identify a short list of things we want to pursue with deep interest and invest a lot of time into them. This is the foundation of our becoming the mature persons that God intended us to become. A solid foundation goes a long way in personal development. Without a solid foundation in childhood, chronic problems often arise later.

But God very often places his children into families and settings that are somehow lacking in the ability to recognize and develop a child's foundational gifts. Although God, in his Wisdom, knows why he does this, it is mystery to us. Nevertheless, it presents many of us with unavoidable life challenges. 

The formation of the box bottom can go wrong early on when the people around us—our parents and teachers—either do not recognize our gifts and temperaments or they do not teach us how to develop them. Or worse, they might push us to fit into the world's narrow mold when we truly don't fit. Therefore, we may need to ask for and maybe insist upon the freedom to identify ourselves as different from the world’s ideal person, and ask for appropriate teachers to help us develop the foundation that we are meant to have. 

Many adults who feel that they do not fit into the world would benefit from revisiting their box bottoms and taking some time to strengthen their foundations.

Wall: Our talents and skills

Another wall of our box is the talent or set of talents that God intended us to develop during our lifetimes. We usually discover these as teenagers and young adults. We use them for the rest of our adult lives. 

A person's God-given talents and skills, although at first may seem daunting to develop, are indeed appropriate for his individual capacity as a person. To be sure, we might need to stretch ourselves along the way in order to develop them, but God knows that we are capable of growing into them, even better than we ourselves do. 

Once we have discovered God’s intended talents and skills, we have the essentials of our box to live within for the rest of our lives. We do not need to follow the world’s trends in order to live well.

Wall: Desire to do good and realistic expectations of being good

For thousands of years, it has been known that an essential characteristic of human nature is that we all want to do good with our lives. Problems arise because although there is one overarching desire, there are as many specific definitions of “good” as there are people. Consequently, it can be difficult to discern whether a particular person's "good" is truly good—or a deception. For example, a person might desire to do good, but since each person defines “the good” for themselves, there is always a question about whether my good is truly good? Or, am I gravely mistaken, living a lie, and actually doing bad things with my life? Living with this uncertainty can be maddening! The world today does not help us resolve this problem, but stokes our confusion.

Christians, including Catholics, view it differently. In general, we can resolve the problem by classifying our desires as, on the one hand, that which God desires and is according to God’s plan, and on the other hand, that which follows human desires is apart from God’s will. The former is good and the latter is bad or evil. This is because God’s Grand Plan can always be trusted to be Good because God himself is Good and he created a world that is always "very good" in some sense. We do not expect to understand the Good as God understands it because our human minds are too limited, but we can, with help, discern God's will for our own individual lives and live it out.

At St. Alban’s, we know from experience that God’s Good is not always comfortable for us. The readings from St. Alban's feast day tell us that growth through life requires times of pain and suffering, even for faithful Christians. If we are never tested as gold is purified by fire, we know that we do not grow. Nevertheless, we often see in hindsight traces of God’s Grand Plan, and agree that it was good for us. And so we discern God's will for us and when it involves hardship, we patiently accept our trials from God because we trust that they are somehow in God’s Grand Plan, which we absolutely want to support!

Wall: Faith and virtues

Christianity has a set of virtues that we know and trust to always be good. God gave them to humanity through Prophets and Jesus between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago. Over time, they made their way into the Catechism and are featured on our Living Our Faith page. The virtues include faith, hope, and love, and also prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. A whole Christian life, however, includes everything on the Living Our Faith page.

There are several practical benefits to building a wall of the box using faith and virtues. Life is easier when a person lives this way. When we do this we find that the weight of the world is not upon one person's shoulders, but is shared with Christ. Jesus said to his disciples, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:28-30). God gives times of ineffable rest, comfort, and even joy to those who choose to live in this way.

Today, the world believes that a lot of our actions are urgently needed. But Christians rely upon God to tell us what is truly urgently needed and what is not. Those who are able to discern God's will for themselves and give God's will top priority in their lives, rather than their own desires, are best able to act upon God's desire for urgent action. To the world, this seems irresponsible. But we trust that God knows what he is doing, and we do our best to do his work for him when he desires it.

Virtues are slow to develop, but after they become habit, they become a part of the soul that is difficult to harm. With daily exercise of these virtues, our minds and our moral characters are transformed from our old ways to better ways of dealing with the world. We eventually become what we practice. As we exercise the virtues in our lives over decades of living, we become virtuous by nature. And we know that we are truly good because we know where we came from years earlier. Older adults, especially wiser older folks, know this and live it. We also know the risks of problems in life that are caused by being bad or evil. Faith and trust in God grows into habit in the same way. 

And so, the Christian moral guidelines of faith and virtues are another wall of our box.

Wall: Life stages

When we think of human life as a sequence of stages that we progress through from birth to death, we gain more certainty about whether our lives are important or not, and whether we are living our lives well or not. The essential stages are birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, maturity, old age, and the afterlife. Another way to define a set of life stages is youth (time for education), adulthood (time for work and raising family), and old age (time for wisdom and giving back to next generations). 

The secular world rejects the concepts of life stages as oppressive constraints, preferring to pursue the transhumanist illusion of an eternal "fountain of youth" that is somehow created by science and technology. 

But we benefit from living according to prescribed life stages because they help us to expect natural and appropriate things of life at the right times. Contrary to the world's beliefs, these guides through life are truly helpful. And they constitute another wall of our box.

Catholics have always had a set of life stages that mesh well with the concepts of life stages in nature. For us, the sacraments mark the stages through Catholic life. It begins with baptism to start us on a trajectory for a good life in Christ. First Communion introduces a young Christian to adult spiritual food that we can use for nourishment for the rest of our lives. Confirmation occurs as a passage to adulthood. Holy Matrimony is a passage into the new, committed family that two people create for themselves. Holy Orders are the passage from secular life to a life lived wholly in the service of God as a priest, deacon, or in a religious order. Anointing of the sick helps us ask God for extra care and comfort in our times of greatest need. As Roman Catholics, we mark the times of our lives by the sacraments.

Inside: Mastery

When we exist merely as soul-less biological human bodies or social media avatars who exist in a river of information that flows with continual disruption or perpetual revolution toward some open-ended Utopia—gosh, those are so oppressive! So is living with Internet technology that gives us all knowledge at our fingertips, but does not permit anyone to gain real expertise in anything. And, living with AI, which does our thinking for us. These and other modern forces in the world that cause us to feel hopelessly overwhelmed and stupid are dehumanizing.

In contrast, all of the parts of our boxes are given to us by God, who knows us better than any human or computer possibly can. God doles them out such that they will be well within our individual capacity to learn, conquer, and master at appropriate times during our lives. 

Our life missions involve conquering this set of activities. Yes, anyone, with some effort, can learn about themselves to discover and understand their gifts, temperaments, talents. Anyone can develop and perfect the faith and skills for doing God’s work throughout their adult lives. Anyone can learn the Christian virtues and exercise them over a lifetime to excel at being virtuous by one’s own nature. The Christian sacraments and other sets of life stages mark time for us, helping us to understand where we are in our life course and what we ought to be prioritizing and controlling. 

When we have mastery over our small part of the world from conquering the relatively small set of life tasks that God gives us to do, we can feel satisfied and fulfilled. By doing this, we can feel like flourishing persons with real purpose in life, and later in life, we become the experts who train the next generations to follow in our footsteps.

Top: Divine Providence and Spiritual helpers

When we are inside our box, we can look upward to the top and find the most valuable component of a good life—spiritual helpers. Roman Catholics enjoy easy access to thousands of spiritual helpers we can call upon any time through prayer.

God the Father is there in our box top, with a Grand Plan for the universe, ordering and governing it providentially for the greatest good for all. Although we cannot fathom God's knowledge and wisdom, we do not need to. He knows us more deeply than we know ourselves, giving each of us life so that we can participate in his Grand Plan for the greatest Good. (It is up to us to use our free will to choose it for ourselves.) As our perfect Father, he orchestrates life through Divine Providence towards what he knows is the greatest good for all.

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) is in our box top, modeling for us an important truth about our lives. Life is a paradox. He said that we must be transformed during our lifetimes: "For he that will save his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for my sake, shall find it" (Matthew 16:25). The "life" that he meant includes any expectations and habits at a stage of our own lives. We first grow into a stage, then over time, we are transformed out of it into a new stage. From Jesus' teaching we know to expect life to include periods of redemptive pain and suffering like purifying fire because these dramas are sometimes needed in order for us to grow into the complete, mature persons that God intends us to become. He will also help us when we pray to him or ask for anything in his name.

The Holy Spirit gives us life, communicating with us in our hearts and minds and guiding us providentially according to God’s Will and Wisdom for us. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, is in heaven as our most perfect mother. She is able to spiritually comfort us when we pray to her in times of difficulty. She can intercede for us with prayers to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Besides these four, there are thousands of Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs who lived holy lives over the past 2,000 years and died in God's grace. Members of the Communion of Saints are available for conversation and intercession through prayers to them.

Our Roman Catholic Box

We know that the world does not like people to desire boxes to live in, but rather, to be radically free of all constraints and open to all kinds of change, no matter how unnatural. Today, however, civilization suffers from a pandemic of souls being unmoored and homeless—the consequences of the failure of the modern utopian project to make human life better. 

Rather than evolve into ever greater flourishing, we suffer from epidemics of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and suicide, along with widespread senses of alienation and fatalism. For many, it is difficult to know why we were born at all, and what we ought to do with our lives. We see that the consequences of the human project of evolving ourselves arguably have unacceptably high costs. To push back and help ourselves, it is time to recognize that most humans really do, by human nature, need boxes just as cats do.

The Roman Catholic Church and its traditions offer boxes that we can hide and play in like cats. Our boxes are:

Box bottom: Our individual gifts and temperaments
Wall: Our talents, skills, and discoverable knowledge of our God-given purpose in life
Wall: Desire to do good and realistic expectations of being good
Wall: Faith and virtues
Wall: Life stages
Inside: Mastery of what is yours in life
Top: A heavenly host of spiritual helpers and Divine Providence.

When we are surrounded by these six sides of our Christian box, we can do all the same things that cats do in their boxes. We can feel sheltered, safe, and protected, and hide. We can be comfortable. We can play with and be entertained by what we find in the box with us (Christian art, architecture, music, and literature). We can find plenty of things in the box to be curious about (mysteries, Scripture, faith, history, nature, and theology). And, we can find strength and wisdom to help us deal more easily with misfortunes and adapt to change. We call this box “God’s created order” because he intended for us to order our lives in these ways so that, by conforming our souls to our most basic created human nature, we can flourish during the life that God gives us.

How the Catholic Box Works

Cats don’t spend all of their time in boxes and neither do we. Since our box is both spiritual and material, it works differently.

We can certainly spend time entirely inside our box during prayer, self-reflection, and journaling. Prayer is a fantastic time to reflect on all that God has wrought in us and what we have chosen to do with those gifts. Our knowledge of ourselves is not innate, but needs to develop over time as we grow, try new things, succeed at some, fail at others. We learn who we are by observing what we repeatedly return to, especially if there are no strong influences in our families, friends, and schools that push us in that direction.

Since the boxes support the essence of who we are as individual persons, we do not need to ever leave them entirely. When we leave them to go out into the world, we bring with us the content that has moved from the box into our selves: our self-knowledge, expectations, talents, skills, faith, virtues, and lines of communication with our spiritual helpers. We leave the box for a while and venture out into the world as strong persons.

The boxes, being spiritual, offer further benefits. We can surround our hearts, minds, tongues, and libidos with our boxes. By doing this, when we are out in the world, facing challenges, we can use the box to define our boundaries. The result is that we no longer let the world dehumanize us or trick us into living for its lies and deceptions.

Catholic Flourishing

Why be Catholic? Catholics form face-to-face communities of the faithful. We know that God gave each of us purposeful lives. We are always willing to helping others in the Body of Christ to find and strengthen their faith.

We are all equal in that, as humans and Christians, we all live in boxes, engaged in the long-term project of trying to discover more and more about what God intends for the purposes for our own individual lives. We are all equally subject to the workings, for weal and for woe, of Divine Providence for God's greater Good, which we can only vaguely begin to understand. We're all on the same path through life's stages with the same end.

However, when we come together to discern his will and follow through in our desires and actions, we are less anxious and more peaceful, satisfied, and happier with our lives than those who live entirely in and for the world.