Victor R. Claveau, MJ
Before Protestantism reached England, the Roman Catholic Church was the established state church. Wales and Ireland were also closely tied to Roman Catholicism, but Scotland had been dominated by many pagan religions that the Celts practiced.
The 2011 Census shows that minority and alternative religions are steadily growing, as is Islam. Less than half of the British people believe in God, and from 2009, the annual survey results in the British Social Attitudes has revealed that over 50% of Brits say that they are not religious[1], and a 2014 YouGov poll recognizes that 77% of the British public claim they are not very, or not at all, religious.[2] Comprehensive professional research in 2006 by Tearfund found that two-thirds (66% – 32.2 million) of the people in the United Kingdom have no connection with any religion or church.[3]
Polling in 2009 suggested that there were about 5.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, about 9.6% of the population, concentrated in the northwest.[4] In 2010, the Church of England counted 25 million baptized members out of the 41 million Christians in Great Britain’s population of about 60 million.[5] They form 41.6% of the population. According to the 2011 Census, 2.7 million Muslims live in England, where they form 5.0% of the population.[6] Today Islam is the second largest religion in England with 38% of Muslims living in London, where they make up 12.4% of the population.
Following Christianity and Islam, the religions with the most adherents are Hinduism, Neopaganism, Sikhism, Judaism, Buddhism, and the Bahá’í Faith. There are also organizations promoting irreligion—atheist humanism, secularism, and Satanism. There may now be as many as 100,000 Satanists in the world.[7]
As we know, the Catholic Church is a divine institution insofar as she was founded by Jesus Christ. It is unfortunate that many misinformed people reject the Catholic Church as the true Church because they have heard that she has a humanly imperfect and nefarious past, which they feel disqualifies her. They point out instances in history that seem incompatible with an organization that represents Christ.
If the Catholic Church were truly what she is represented to be by her opponents, there would not be over 1.3 billion members worldwide. The Church would have died out long ago. If the Church is one-hundredth as bad as her enemies picture her, she cannot be the Church of Christ. I do not say that there were no abuses in the Church, butthey were the abuses, which more or less, had been a part of her from the beginning, and which Christ had foretold. Jesus guaranteed His Church against error, not against scandal. Did not the Savior dine with the social outcasts of His day, and did not Peter’s denial and Judas’ theft, ultimate betrayal, and suicide also cause grave scandal? Human weakness has always been a part of the Church. But aside from this, the Church’s enemies accuse her of crimes when there is no evidence to support these charges, let alone their verdicts.
Converts to Catholicism soon recognize that the Catholic Church is “fair game’ for those who wish to attack her. They quickly become sensitized to the anti-Catholic bias found in the secular media. Many a scholar who investigated the history of abuses of the Catholic Church has ended up converting to Catholicism. Can we not trust history? Yes, we can trust accurate history, but we cannot trust the multi- colored version of the history of an adversary.
History is now being rewritten. Scholars who delve deeply into the matter are unanimous in their verdict that the Catholic Church has been consistently maligned during the past five hundred years by a history that has been distorted in order to uphold groups opposed to the Church.
The Catholic Church shows the way of truth, and she encourages all to persevere to the end, but our destiny is in our own hands. It is safe to say that, if all Catholics would live up to the standards set by Christ and promulgated by His Church, the people of the world could not hold out against conversion. Catholicism calls for the restraint of passion and the exercise of virtue. Many Catholics under strong temptation have fallen. Lust, ambition, power and wealth have led many of us astray. But they knew they were doing wrong; they knew they were going against the Church’s teaching. They never attempted to justify their wrongdoing. There have been, even among high churchmen, men who have lived evil lives, but the Church has never condoned their actions. The Catholic Church has never led anyone into sin. She never taught that wrong was right or that right was wrong. The Church has always stood forth as a beacon of righteousness, always protesting when she could not prevent evil.
[1] British Social Attitudes Survey results from 2009, published 2011 Jan.
[2] YouGov poll results, published 2014 Apr 23.
[3] Tearfund research, “Churchgoing in the UK” 2007 Apr 03. The survey involved 7000 UK adults aged 16 or over, interviewed between 8th February to 5th March 2006.
[4] “Numbers Game,” The Tablet, 31 October 2009, 16.
[5] “How many Catholics are there in Britain?” (BBC (London). 15 September 2010.
[6] 2011 Census: KS209EW Religion, local authorities in England and Wales”. ons.gov.uk.
[7] Robinson, B.A., (March 2006). “Religious Satanism, 16th-century Satanism, Satanic Dabbling, etc”.