An Appeal to Reason

Victor R. Claveau, MJ

I most earnestly invite the renewed attention of Protestants to the Catholic Church; a most important subject. I appeal to them to cast aside their preconceived notions and prejudices and seriously contemplate the compassionate interpretation the Church has handed down from the Apostles upon this subject. Contrast its view with the innovations of the Reformers.

I implore each one to remember the Church’s teaching on this subject is of divine origin, as are the other doctrines of the Church. No Catholic has ever dared to affix his name to these sacred truths, with a view of achieving notoriety or of gratifying an ungodly ambition. No individual has ever presumed to come within the sacred enclosure of the Church and set up his private opinions against Her divinely endowed and divinely protected truths.

The revolutionists never attempted to enter in at the door to present their complaints, but climbed up on the outer walls of the great fortress of Christianity and delivered their impotent blows against this impregnable bastion of truth. This fortress of Christianity stands immutable and affords protection, hope and consolation to more than one billion true believers.

No one can scrutinize the doctrines of the Reformers concerning original sin, free will and predestination without conceding they lead directly and necessarily to fatalism.[1] The natural results of such beliefs are bigotry and intolerance, or rationalism, atheism or a general indifference to all matters pertaining to spiritual life.

[1] A doctrine that holds that events are fixed in advance for all time in such a manner that human beings are powerless to change them.