©2022 Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Since the time of the Apostles, there has been a continuing onslaught against the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Many and varied heresies have arisen and have been put down by champions of the Faith. However, like the Hydra of Greek mythology, each heresy confronted and dealt with seems to be replaced by two others.
There are tens of thousands of Christian groups and denominations in the United States, each vying for converts. Roaming door-to-door, or standing on street corners with a little bag of tracts, the proselytizers and missionaries do their best to convince listeners they have the answers to life’s most difficult questions. “Follow me,” they say, “for I will show you the truth.”
We live in an age of chaos and anxiety. Many of the values people say they hold dear seem to have gone by the wayside. Many people seem lost, or at least confused, in their search for some meaning in their lives. These people are easy prey for the gurus, charlatans and counterfeits of our age who prey on the lonely, the marginalized or those uneducated in the proper truths of Christianity.
Jesus Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) He established His Church (read here, Catholic) as an avenue of hope for the world. His teaching, as passed on by His Apostles, revealed the Father’s will for our lives. Through the years, His Church has guarded and defended these truths and will continue to do so until Jesus comes again in the flesh.
Every Catholic has a responsibility to make the effort to learn the tenets of the Faith in order to be able to explain these truths to others. Every reflecting Catholic must render to himself an account of the faith that is within him. None but an enlightened faith will be proof against the crafty onslaught of modern betrayals and the ignorance of others.
Many harbors in their hearts a secret distrust of their most sacred convictions because they have never taken the time to examine the platforms upon which those convictions rest. Thus, we owe it to ourselves to “test everything; and hold fast to what is good.” (1 Thess. 5:21) A peaceful sense of intellectual assurance will accompany finding a solid foundation for the faith that lies within. For the serious inquirer, the result will be a deep-seated conviction that what the Catholic Church teaches today is exactly what Jesus Christ taught His Apostles and disciples — no more, no less.
Membership in the Catholic Church in the United States has been steadily increasing in spite of discrimination, opposition and slander, offering a striking parallel to the marvelous growth of the early Christians from an impoverished and persecuted minority to the dominant religious organization in the Greek and Roman empires. Yet, this is not enough; Christians cannot rest until the people of this nation truly become “One nation under God.”
The magnitude of this task becomes evident when one begins to consider there are approximately 130 million of our fellow citizens with no church affiliation. An additional 20 million, though nominally members of some church, rarely attend religious services. These statistics make the United States one of the greatest mission fields in the world.