Skepticism

I am the first to admit that I'm a skeptic. I like to have things proven to me, because otherwise I find it hard to believe in them. It therefore probably seems strange that I'd be a Christian, let alone a Catholic if you go by some stereotypes.

Charismatic prayer is something I have been and at times remain pretty skeptical about. I've seen it in three settings; the first of which is that of a non-denominational church. The second was in a Pentecostal church, and the third has been in a number of Catholic Night of Worship settings. Of the three, the only one I've genuinely felt something I'd even come close to believing is the Holy Spirit is at the third.

I say I'd come close to believing it, because I am indeed a skeptic. But there are differences, not just in how it feels to me, but also in the presentation of such. In the first two places, I shuddered during most of that sort of thing as people fell to the floor and writhed and shouted nonsensically during the worship services. At the third however, I found people would quiet almost immediately if someone was speaking from the front, and that hundreds of voices could harmonize in a tongue I didn't speak to sing off cuff. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, and something I totally can't explain.

It is my skepticism that makes me feel so at home at Catholicism. With all one hears about the Catholic Church and how it's accused of just about everything under the sun as crimes against science and humanity, I found that it was the one Christian group that didn't yell and scream at me for actually asking questions. Imagine my surprise, having been taught the Church demanded unquestioning obedience, that you not read the Bible, and that you be entirely closed minded...to discover that I've yet to meet a priest or a friar who has told me to outright dismiss something I'm struggling with. If anything I've been encouraged to read more and more Scripture and to try to use faith and reason, because God gave us both.

There is even an encyclical called Fides et Ratio, faith and reason. During that discernment process in converting I was forced to ask myself questions: Who compiled the Bible? Who preserved the pagan philosophers' works? Who established universities? Who was around before the Protestant Reformation?

The Catholic Church was the answer to all of these things. Luther took books out of the Bible, that doesn't square with Scripture alone, because Scripture is incomplete. The Church established universities, and it preserved the works of the likes of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates through the ages alongside the Bible (although there were unfortunate incidents like the Bonfire of the Vanities).

I still struggle with some issues of faith, but you know what? I'm okay with that, because I'm encouraged to question things. Let me tell you, no Protestant Bible Study I ever attended holds a candle to some of the Catholic ones I've been to in terms of sheer debating and why something means what we think it does or not. The Catholic Church is the first spiritual home I've found where I can ask "Why do you believe X" and someone will point to an entire chain of documents and Scriptures. That my dear readers, still amazes me after almost three years.