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Joe Heschmeyer discusses when someone should consider becoming Catholic and the pitfalls to watch out for.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and one of the questions that I get a lot from people is when do I know that it’s time to become a Catholic? It’s not always worded that way, but you kind of know what I’m talking about. I think maybe you’re a Protestant who watches videos like these and you think, wow, I’ve never heard this before. About one after another issue. You find one after another of your objections to Catholicism falling away, or maybe you’re a non-Christian and you’re starting to wonder, what do I make of the person of Jesus of Nazareth? All of this can be enormously stressful. It might mean hard conversations with loved ones or it might mean people judging you. I’ve talked to Protestant pastors who realize God was calling them to become Catholic, even though it meant resigning their jobs, losing their livelihood, giving up their house in some cases and everything they kind of knew.
So I realized this is not a question that people take lightly, nor is it a question I think people ought to take lightly. This is an important moment and it’s one that I think we can get wrong sometimes. So I want to look at a couple ways not to move forward and then see if we can’t find a spiritually and biblically sound way to answer this problem. Now, in doing that, I want to look at this in two parts. I’m going to take maybe a unique approach to it because in asking the question, when should I become Catholic? I want to first ask the question, when should I become Christian? Now, I know many of you watching this already are Christian, but I think as we think about how would we answer this question, it’ll help us to answer the first question, how should I, when should I become Catholic?
And maybe in answering the when should I become Christian? Question, you can see some errors that have crept into your own thinking, and I think you’ll see the connection by the end, but maybe a little two things kind of on the way. Bear in mind that the earliest Christians or the earliest people discerning Christianity, for many of them, the question, when should I become Christian was the question, when should I become Catholic? There weren’t a bunch of denominations out there. So it makes sense to put these two questions next to each other, but second, Jesus seems to draw a sort of parallelism in a certain way. In Luke 10 16 when he says, he who hears you, here’s me, and he who rejects you, rejects me, and he who rejects me, rejects him, who sent me. We’ve been wanting to divide and say, no, Jesus, I accept you.
I reject your church, I accept you. I reject the people who taught me about you. That sort of message, I accept you and not the apostles. That sort of, and Jesus makes it very clear that is not a biblical answer to this problem. So with that is maybe a little bit of a preamble for why I think it makes sense to think about these two things together. What would you say to someone who said, when should I become a Christian? Or maybe you’re someone who’s asking that question right now. One answer I think it’s easy to latch onto is when you mostly agree with Jesus. Because if you’re used to how we think about things in the world, that kind of answer makes sense. If I’m 60% pro Jesus and disagree with him 40% of the time, well in other contexts that would be enough, right?
If I’m 60% Republican and 40% Democrat, I might say I’m mostly I’m a moderate Republican or vice versa, whatever. I’m not trying to make a point about politics. Or you might say with philosophy, Plato teaches this and I mostly agree, but over here I’m more like Aristotle and over here maybe I’m more like I like the parties, Epicurious has that kind of thing. You could still say I’m a plats even though I don’t agree with Plato on everything, and that would be perfectly coherent and perfectly consistent, but I think anyone who understands Christianity recognizes you can’t do that with Jesus, right? There are going to be times where Jesus says things that are really beautiful and inspiring and you really say, yeah, I love it. And then there are going to be times where Jesus says things that are really hard and we can’t just say, well, I think there were slightly more things in the first category of things that I liked.
So I guess I’ll call myself a Christian. That’s not what it is because Jesus doesn’t claim just to be a good teacher. He claims to be more than that. He claims to be the son of God. And if that’s true, then we can’t just say, I’m going to follow you 60% of the time. So that first standard, when you mostly agree with Jesus, we have to see that that’s clearly incorrect. And to be fair, I don’t think a lot of people would say that, although I do think you get some of that. I’m kind of Christian in kind of the popular imagination. I don’t think people watching this video are going to be in that category. That then leads to another category, kind of the opposite extreme, which is, okay, I’m going to become Christian, not when I mostly agree with Jesus. I’m going to become Christian when I completely understand and see the wisdom of everything that Jesus says.
I want to understand and choose to accept each and every one of Jesus’s teachings. And again, I see the appeal of this approach. It makes a lot of sense, especially if you see why the first one’s wrong. You might think, well, therefore this one must be right, not so. This one is actually unbiblical as well, and we can see this in several ways. So in one instance, just in Mark nine, you’ve got a man who’s the father of a child who’s struggling with a demon, struggling with a demon possessed by a demon. Maybe that’s a better term. And Jesus says, if you can do anything, have pity on us and help us, and Jesus is incredulous, he says, if you can, all things are possible to him who believes. And the man is really struck by this and he says, I believe, help my unbelief.
Now notice there the man doesn’t come saying, I’m a hundred percent, I’ve got it all figured out. We got it all sorted. I understand completely who you are and what your message is, and I see the wisdom of all of it. No, he’s got something. And clearly enough, Jesus Aedes, he grants his request, but he’s also clearly someone who’s still a work in progress and acknowledges it being such, but maybe you don’t want to pick on the father of a child with a demon. Let’s talk about the apostles then. In Matthew chapter four, Jesus calls the apostles, particularly Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, and he says, follow me and I’ll make you fishers of men. You’ll find various versions of this in the New Testament counts. So the point is they’re clearly in a relationship with Jesus. They’re clearly followers of Jesus. And you say, okay, well did they get things a hundred percent?
If you’ve read any of the New Testament, that’s not the case that they were not a hundred percent understanding of what was going on and agreeing with that, wasn’t it at all? In fact, we can see that in all four gospels. So for instance, in Matthew chapter 15, there’s a moment where Peter, they’ve taken Jesus aside to warn him. The Pharisees aren’t liking some of the things that he’s saying, and then Peter uses the opportunity to say, explain the parable to us. And Jesus says, are you also still without understanding? So we know Peter in the apostles, they didn’t get things all the time. Well, likewise, in the gospel of Mark chapter four, Jesus says to the 12, do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables? Because they didn’t understand the parable of the sower and the seed. Later in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is teaching them about how the son of man will be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him.
And when he is killed, after three days, he will rise. And at this point, they’re so used to Jesus giving these parables and these figures of speech that they don’t understand that Mark tells us they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to ask him, we know there’s no parable. He’s just telling them what’s going to happen. They’re like, we don’t understand this parable either. So that’s the apostles, right? They clearly are a following Jesus, and it’s right that they are. Jesus has invited them to follow him, but B, they don’t understand a hundred percent, and that is okay for now. It doesn’t mean Jesus’ teaching doesn’t matter. It means it’s okay if there’s still a work in progress. Likewise, in Luke chapter nine, Jesus says, let these words sink into your ears for the son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men.
And again, they did not understand this saying. It was concealed from them that they should not perceive it. I think that’s really important because Luke is telling us something that Mark doesn’t even mention, namely that it was God’s will that they wouldn’t understand it. Yet we imagine this as kind of like a hardening of the heart, like, oh, God hates this Pharaoh or whoever. You’ll sometimes hear that kind of Calvinistic rhetoric like, oh, God hardened their hearts. They wouldn’t know. So they couldn’t be saved. No. The point here is that the answer was concealed from them for now because they weren’t ready for it yet. This was actually part of God’s mercy. He allowed them to kind of progress at the speed they were able to progress. They just weren’t there yet. And then finally in the gospel of John, in John chapter 12, we hear about how his disciples did not understand this at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this has been written of him and had been done to him. Again. You see that there’s a process, and it’s okay that there is a process.
When should you become a Christian? While it’s tempting to say only once you understand everything and see the wisdom of each and every one of Jesus’s teachings, this is also biblically untrue. Now, I’d add two things here. One, this is an unreachable standard, meaning there are still places in Jesus’s teachings where I think, oh, I didn’t get that before. Or there are passages where I read it and think, I don’t know what he’s saying and I’ll go and read and try to understand. And so if you’re waiting until you completely understand the mind of God to convert, that’s never going to happen. And so that’s an unreachable standard, but also I would suggest it gets wrong, the relationship of sheep and shepherd, that Christ is our shepherd and we are the sheep. And if we wait to follow the shepherd until we know exactly where he’s going and what he’s doing and agree with all of his decisions, that’s not actually submission.
I’m only submitting insofar as I see the wisdom of it, and therefore I’m still the one in the driver’s seat. So while that looks like faithfulness, oh look, I’m trying to understand all of Jesus’s teaching. It can mask a sort of self-reliance. I need to figure all this stuff out for myself on my own, and then if there’s still room, I’ll follow Jesus. And I think if you put it like that, you see why it’s unbiblical and spiritually unsound. So you might say, well, where does that leave us? We don’t follow Jesus when we just mostly agree with him, but we also don’t wait to follow Jesus until we understand a hundred percent. So what is it? Well, there’s a pretty clear biblical answer, and it says, when you come to realize that Jesus is who he says he is and that he can be trusted.
So for instance in Matthews chapter 16, Jesus takes the disciples to Cesia Philippi. Now, we’re going to get back to this when we talk about the church, but for now I want to draw out the questions that Jesus asks because they’re not about his teaching, they’re about who he is. He asked him, who do men say that the son of man is? And then he asked him, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter who we’re going to return to says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. But the question itself is quite remarkable. As Bishop Baron has pointed out, Jesus doesn’t ask what people are saying about his preaching or his miracle working or his impact on the culture. He asks who they say he is, and this is radically unlike other religions. Muhammad for instance, claims to be the prophet of Allah.
That’s all. He doesn’t say he’s God. There’s no question of who do you say that I am? It’s very clear Moses for this matter, is the same. He’s clearly a prophet, nothing more, nothing less. He’s got a clear defined kind of role Buddha and these great Eastern teachers claim just to be teachers who’ve discovered something about the nature of reality. No one is asking Du men say the Buddha is. That’s not the question. But with Jesus, the question isn’t just what do you think of his teaching? That is almost, well, no, it is it secondary. The question is instead who do you say that he is? And if you get that question right now, you’re having a different conversation. It’s not, do I agree with 60% or a hundred percent of his teaching? The relationship of the teaching and the teacher has now come into a different view.
I’m going to give you another passage that I think points to this in John chapter six. Jesus has given his eucharistic teaching called the Bread of Life discourse at the synagogue in Capernaum, and it’s shocking and it scandalizes a lot of people. And so we’re told in verse 66 that many of his disciples draw back and no longer go about with him. And so Jesus sin goes to the 12 and he says, will you also go away? Listen carefully to Simon Peter’s response. He says, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. So I think we’ve got the biblical answer right there, and that biblical answer has two parts to it, teaching and identity. What do we make of Jesus’s teaching is inseparable from who do we believe Jesus is?
And so in John six, when Peter says, you have the words of eternal life, he’s speaking of Jesus’s teaching, but he doesn’t stop there because his belief about the reliability of Jesus’s teaching is inseparable from his belief that you are the holy one of God, a question of identity. And so once you’ve got the question of identity, right, Jesus is who he says he is, then you can follow in good conscience. Why? Because look, Jesus says some hard things. He says some things that are confusing, and he also says some things that are challenging, things that are uncomfortable and plenty of things that if I were making up my own religion, I wouldn’t have included fine. I know that if I would go this way and he would go that way and he’s God and I’m not, that I should follow him instead of my own inclinations.
And so once I can get to that point, I can follow in good faith. Even if I don’t see the wisdom of why he’s doing what he’s doing, I can trust him enough to know that there is a wisdom there even if I don’t see it yet. And I hope that’s clear. You don’t have to understand why God does everything he does, and more than that you don’t and won’t understand everything God is going to do. You can’t predict the mind of God. And so if your standard for accepting him is that you can, you’re never going to reach. Instead, you have to see enough. So the relationship of the message and the messenger I would suggest is this. It’s in two directions. On the one hand, Jesus’s teaching along with his miracles, most especially the resurrection, tell us something about his identity. He speaks and acts in a way that points to him being who he says he is the son of God.
So teaching leads to identity. Once you get identity, that then leads back to how we understand the teaching. Now it’s not just here’s a wise man giving me practical advice. Now it’s the son of God who is God himself is telling me the nature of reality. Now I’m going to listen to that with a great deal, more interest, reverence, respect, right? Okay, let’s then turn from that and say, okay, that’s how we understand. When should I become Christian in general? When should I become Catholic? And I would suggest we are faced with very similar questions. First you might say, I should become Catholic when I mostly agree with the Catholic church. And this is not just the way politics work and philosophy. Frankly, this is the way a lot of Protestantism works, where to be a Methodist, you don’t have to a hundred percent agree with what other Methodists believe.
There’s no statement of faith. We have to say, I 100% agree with this or else I don’t count. It doesn’t work like that, and at least most of Protestants, so this is a hard thing to run the numbers on, but I know that back in 2015, the Pews Research Center found that some 42% of Americans had switched religions. That’s a huge number, but even that number is actually too low because the thing I was really interested in is not like someone who believed in Jesus deciding they don’t anymore. Vice versa. I’m interested in the movement within Christianity and particularly within Protestantism because I think it’s often not regarded as a conversion at all. If someone is in one town and they go to a Lutheran church and then they go into another town and they don’t have it, they go to an Anglican church or they’re Baptist and they go to a non-denominational church, that sort of thing.
Experientially, just in talking to people seems to happen a lot often for trivial reasons, the music, geography, those kind of things that you would never do a major movement from religion to religion for something that tri reveal. But you see a lot of that movement and we see some of that in the, again, it’s hard to get good numbers on this, but at least in that Pew research study, which is from the 2014 religious landscape study, it found that of those raised Protestant, only 47% remained in the denominational family they were in before. Now notice you can actually still move pretty broadly within denominational families. You could go from being a conservative Baptist to a member of a really liberal Baptist group, and it would not count as a conversion here, only 47% stayed even within the denominational family. Some of those people of the other 53% were leaving Christianity entirely or they’re becoming Catholic or whatever.
27% of those raised Protestant end up becoming another type of Protestant. So there’s this movement from one to another. And again, it’s hard to prove this, but experientially, I’ve talked to enough people that I think I can say this without fear of a lot of contradiction. It is much more acceptable to say, I’m 60% non-denominational, 30% Pentecostal, 10% Baptist, whatever, and that decides where you’re going to go. And if those fluctuate those balances, then you go somewhere else because none of the denominations claim to be infallible. And so it’s tempting to want to do that with Catholicism as well. Say, I’m 60% Catholic, I’m 30% non-denominational, 10% Baptist. But it doesn’t work like that. Why does it not work like that? Because the Catholic church claims to be infallible. So just like Jesus doesn’t just claim to be a good teacher, the Catholic church doesn’t just claim to be a good denomination.
The Catholic church claims a kind of authority that can only come from God just as Jesus Christ claims the kind of authority that can only come from God. Now, as a result, you have to evaluate differently. You have to say, is that claim true or false? Not do I happen to agree with some of the things maybe the Catholic church got really lucky with the Trinity got really lucky with the Christology and you could I guess hold to that. But what you can’t do is end up saying, eh, close enough. 60% luum in the second Vatican Council reaffirms what Vatican one had said about the role of how Christ establishes church and put their successors to bishops in this position of authority and reiterates this idea of infallibility and particularly looking at the role of papal infallibility saying all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, excuse me, the meaning and reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman pontiff and of his infallible magisterium.
This sacred council, meaning Vatican two again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful that language is slightly technical language, but it’s saying this is not an optional thing. This is something you actually have to believe. Okay, so then the standard, well I mostly agree with the Catholic church is clearly inadequate. So I might say, and I think many of you probably do say, I’m going to wait to become Catholic until I can understand everything and sees that wisdom of each and every Catholic teaching. I’ve talked to people who are exploring Catholicism and they have an initial list of objections and those objections are even answered and they say, well, I’ve got some other objections, and we just keep working on that list and working on that list. And there might be a couple things that are holding them back. And I would suggest this is itself not biblical and not a sound way to explore Catholicism.
It is certainly not the Catholic understanding of why one should be Catholic or when one should be Catholic in a document called Veritatis, which is on the role of theologians, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith headed at the time by Cardinal Ratzinger talked about what to do if a theologian is trying to accept a church teaching but is grappling with some difficulties. And it says this, if despite a loyal effort on the theologian’s part, the difficulties persist, the theologian has the duty to make known to the magisterial authorities the problems raised by the teaching in itself and the arguments proposed to justify it or even in the manner in which it is presented. He should do this with an evangelical spirit and with a profound desire to resolve difficulties. His objections could then contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the magisterium to propose the teaching of the church in greater depth runs a clear presentation of the argument.
So maybe a theologian comes upon a place where the church has not spoken very clearly and there’s some clarification needed. And so raising that objection in a helpful way could be really good in reaching greater clarity. This is not something the church wants to discourage, although the theologian is told you should avoid turning to mass media. Don’t air your grievances and try to start a mass popular campaign, but rather have recourse to the responsible authority for it does not by seeking to exert the pressure of public opinion that one contributes to the clarification of doctrinal issues and rendered service to the truth. Straightforward, right? What if you keep having trouble? Well, it can also happen that at the conclusion of a serious study undertaken with the desire to heed the magister’s teaching without hesitation, but theologian’s difficulty remains because the arguments to the contrary seem more persuasive to him, faced with a proposition to which he feels he cannot give his intellectual assent.
The theologian nevertheless has the duty to remain open to a deeper examination of the question. Now, to put this in context, we’re dealing here with non infallible teaching. There may be areas where the church has spoken but not in a binding kind of infallible way. And in those cases a theologian might say, I don’t see it, I just don’t get it. And it’s not for lack of try. It’s not for lack of research. And the church says, for a loyal spirit, animated by love for the church, such a situation can certainly prove a difficult trial. It can be a call to suffer for the truth in silence and prayer, but with a certainty that if the truth really is at stake, it will ultimately prevail that you can trust, okay, this will somehow get harmonized. But notice even there, you’ve got theologians who may struggle with some church teaching and they’re not publicly dissenting.
They’re not saying, I reject the divine authority of any of the nothing like that. They can believe that the Catholic claims are true and still say, I don’t understand how we’re getting to this conclusion over here, and that can be a cause of tremendous suffering. But notice what the church isn’t saying, oh, if you struggle with this, you’re automatically out. Or if you struggle with this, we can’t let you in. That is not what’s being said here, something quite different. So the standard when you understand everything and see the wisdom of each and every Catholic teaching is also clearly false. So where does that leave us? Well, if you understand how parallels work, you can probably guess just as the answer for when you should become Christian is one rooted in that relationship between message and identity. The question of when should I become Catholic is also rooted in the relationship of message and identity, and it’s virtually the same one.
You should become Catholic when you come to realize that the church is who Jesus Christ says she is, and that she can be trusted and she can be trusted because she is who Jesus Christ says she is. So for instance in Matthew chapter 16, we looked at that passage before when Jesus asks the questions, who do men say the son of man is? And then who do you say that I am? And it’s very much this question of identity. And Simon Peters the one who gets it right? You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Well, remember, and this is a famous passage, I don’t imagine, I’m the first one pointing this one out to you. Look at Jesus’s response. So he says, blessed are you Simon Barona. Notice there’s already identity language coming in. He’s using Simon’s, son of Jonah. That’s what barona means for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven, and I tell you, you singular very much an identity sort of framing of this. And I tell you, you are Peter and on this Rocco build my church and the gates of Haiti shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whenever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whenever you loose on earth shall be loose in heaven. That’s a lot. But let’s think about that passage in light of the relationship between teaching and identity.
On the one hand, you’ve got all the identity language of you are Peter, you also have the identity with the church. Jesus says, I will build my church. So what is the identity of the church? The church is Jesus’. And this is worded in different ways throughout the New Testament. But the point is the church is not just a collection of the believers as if we are the ones who make the church rather according to Jesus. He’s the one who makes the church. I love the way St. Paul puts it in Ephesians one, where he describes the church as Jesus’s body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. Well, think about that. If the church is the fullness of Jesus, that’s about as strongest a statement as you can make about the church. Now, Jesus either is or isn’t talking about the Catholic church in Matthew 16.
That’s a question of identity. If he is talking about the Catholic church, and that’s how people for 2000 years understood him. Well, we should all be Catholic. If he’s not talking about the Catholic church, if he meant either some other body or some concept, oh, church to Jesus just meant some vague concept of people gathering together however they wanted. We should find that out. We shouldn’t just assume that we should look for actual evidence of that. But that’s the question of identity that should be answered because whoever and wherever the church is, it’s spoken of in these very big terms in scripture, it’s called the pillar and foundation of truth, but more than that, it’s called the fullness of Jesus Christ. It’s called his body. I mean it’s called the continuation of the incarnation and calling him that that’s what it is to be the body of Christ.
So that either is true or isn’t. But notice that this identity claim I will build my church then has a lot of teaching implications. Peter is given the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which is a symbol of authority, and he is given the binding and loosening authority, which is again a symbol of authority. So I think it’s fair to say if the church really is the body of Christ, if the church really is the fullness of Christ, if it really is the church built by Christ, then it follows that even if I would go one way and the church would go the other, I should go the church’s way because I am not the bride of Christ. I’m not the body of Christ in the fullest sense. I am not the pillar and foundation of truth. Certainly I’m not the fullness of Christ. I have not been given the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
I have not been given the ability to bind things on earth that’ll then be bound in heaven or loose things on earth that’ll then be loose in heaven and the church has. And so if I find myself at odds with the church, particularly on any binding teaching, on any infallible teaching, then I can know I should defer, I should trust. And if I can say that, if I can say yes to all of that, then I’m in a good spot to be Catholic. And if you can say yes to all that, if you’re not Catholic, you should certainly become Catholic. If you can’t say yes to that, let’s keep talking. I’d love to kind of see where you are in the journey. Maybe find out more about what are the things that you’re still struggling with or grappling with, because obviously, as I say, the message matters, but one of the reasons that the message matters is because it helps to prove the identity. And once you have the identity, you can trust the rest of the message, even the parts you couldn’t reason to on your own. Alright, I hope this helps. I’d love in the comments for you to share maybe your own place on the journey. And also, as always, a great way you can promote this channel if you want to. You sharing things like this with other people and engagements of any kind are super helpful and totally free. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.