We were not made to get through life by ourselves. We need something outside of ourselves that steers us away from the rocks of despair on the one hand, and the vanity of egoism on the other. We are complex beings and need an array of safeguards because there is a multitude of ways in which we can fall.
An enemy awaits for every need we have. If we believe only in ourselves, we fall into the abyss of pride; if we believe only in others, we are untrue to ourselves. If we dedicate ourselves only to work, we forfeit the benefits of play; if we dedicate ourselves only to play, we lose sight of life’s meaning. We need a great deal of antidotes so that we do not fall. We must find an equilibrium that protects us from tumbling into the trap of one-sidedness.
In the Catholic Church we find a paragon of balance. In this regard, She has no peer. Sin is expiated by forgiveness. Chastisement is tempered by mercy. Nature is elevated by grace. Sexuality is made meaningful by responsibility. Rights are counterbalanced with duties; work is crowned by prayer. Will is tethered to reason. Where there are difficulties, there is hope. Where there is doubt, there is faith. Where there is goodness, there is love. Problems are resolved; order is maintained. No other organization offers such a system of balance.
G. K. Chesterton described this equilibrium in peerless prose when, in his Orthodoxy, he summed up the undeviating history of the Catholic Church:
It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.
The Church must be doing something right since it is the only institution that has survived for more 2,000 years. She has won loyal adherents throughout the world. The Church certainly has both longevity and ubiquity on Her side.
What are the various needs of the human being that give meaning to his life? Apart from the material needs which the secular world provides, there are his spiritual needs. He needs to love and be loved. He needs a sense of purpose. He needs encouragement when he slips, correction when he errs. He needs to be in touch with the Divinity. He needs to be assured that life is worth living and that death is not the final chapter of his life’s tenure.
His mind must find truth, his will must discover the good. Beauty in art will enrich his soul, philosophy will lead him to wisdom, and theology will teach him about God. The Catholic Church is the only organization that can satisfy all the needs.
The Church answers all man’s spiritual needs, but in a way that forms a synthesis. The Church not only responds to each need, but, collectively, Her responses produce a unified whole. In this sense, the Church is ecological, balancing all the parts into a splendid unicity. There is no need for an admixture from some alien source.
“All being is nuptial,” declared the distinguished psychiatrist, Karl Stern. By that he means that every being is mysteriously linked to its complement. Man and woman, Christ and His Church, God and creation, marriage and offspring, and heaven and earth are just a few examples of this nuptial quality. So, too, the individual is a person, which is to say, both a unique individual and a caring member of the community.
G. K. Chesterton recounts a conversation he had with a publisher. “That man will get on,” said the publisher, “he believes in himself.” Chesterton’s retort may have stunned and surprised his companion. “The men who really believe in themselves,” said the author of Orthodoxy, “are all in lunatic asylums.” “Well,” answered the publisher, “if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?” Then, further surprising his friend, Chesterton said, “I will go home and write a book in answer to that question.” The book, of course, is Orthodoxy, and the answer is God and the Church.
If people who believe in themselves are not in lunatic asylums, they may be campaigning for political office, or writing TV comedies, or providing the world with a novel philosophy that is totally unrelated to reality. Or they may be vandalizing Catholic Churches. Catholicism, on the other hand, because of its balance and wholeness, is a recipe for sanity.
If we may refer to the inimitable G. K. once more, let us cite his work The Well and the Shallows: “For that peculiar and diplomatic and tactful art of saying that the Catholicism is true, without suggesting for one moment that anti-Catholicism is false, is an art which I am too old a rationalist to learn at my time of life.”
We need not be diplomatic to present Catholicism in all its balance and wholeness and invite one to examine it for what it is. One can dispense with any concern for choosing any one of Her rivals. She shines on Her own. There really are no competitors.
Photo by Loic Leray on Unsplash
