I recently found out that a friend of the family, a rich American who owns a company in a major European capital, was planning to sell his business and use the money to promote a “new philosophy of life” worldwide. Intrigued and curious, I wrote him a letter asking for details about his new venture.
He sent me e-mail explaining that he had “come to the conclusion that there is a fundamental need developing . . . for a more pragmatic and evolved way of understanding life and reaching more permanent states of pure and natural happiness, joy, and inner peace. We have all been domesticated by global belief systems which do not seem to be lining up with each individual’s essential self, spirit, soul, chi, etc.”
He continued that there is a need “to reconnect with the essential self” that is not being properly nurtured by our current living styles and socioeconomic systems. In addition, he wrote, “The religions that currently exist are mired in traditionalism and very strict beliefs systems, rules, and procedures.” He concluded his correspondence by saying that people want to be free to express themselves and to be themselves. This, in turn, will “lead them to the happiness, joy, and peace that we are all seeking.” The venture to promote these ideas, he asserted, would be “very big.”
I was, to say the least, disappointed. So many people speak about moving toward a belief system founded upon relativism and away from any kind of established order. Sometimes it seems as if the whole world has been moving in this direction. The most disconcerting aspect for me was the amount of money and effort to be spent on promoting this new belief system, whatever it was. So I decided to respond.
I wanted my response to be pragmatic and persuasive. Not everyone comes to understand the truths held by the Catholic faith by treading the same path, so after some thought, I decided not to be too heavy in Bible quotes or theology. I knew that the reasons for my own personal convictions probably would not persuade him. I would begin with something rational and deductive: philosophy.
When I replied I vaguely mentioned the experiences that had “changed my life,” though I did not mention what they were or that they had led me to the Catholic Church.
“[Finding truth came] after spending years searching for the meaning of my life (and the meaning of all of our lives) by reading philosophy and studying intensely the answers that people had discerned,” I wrote. “My first real passion was Taoism, which then moved to Buddhism. But I also spent a great deal of time reading western philosophy, particularly Plato (fantastic writer and thinker), Immanuel Kant, some of the existentialists, as well as volumes on the trends in the development of philosophical ideas.
“The amazing thing was that every single philosopher, no matter how profound his system of thought, was always disproved by a later thinker. I found this time and again, much to my dismay. It was frustrating. The great exception to the rule, ironically, was from a twentieth-century philosopher. His great quote, which I came to believe was true, was: “Every philosophy will suffer a deposition.” This seemed to sum up what I had been coming to conclude on my own.
It was my hope that this family friend would see the futility in coming to some humanistic or philosophical conclusion about the nature of God or the meaning of our lives. These answers come only from God himself.
Then I attached the story I wrote about my conversion (“Heaven Scent,” This Rock, June 1999) to show in greater detail the reasons for these beliefs and my final disillusionment and rejection of merely human philosophy. There are truths that can be known by natural reason, which is itself a gift of God though it operates without the infusion of special grace. But the human mind on its own, without outside help, cannot accept the Truth that is God.
God does help us when we ask. But humans, I wrote, bound from inside the system and not capable of seeing from the outside looking in, are incapable of seeing objectively. We are only capable of seeing subjectively. This ultimately means every rational philosophy is error-prone, because it only reflects the perspective of the thinker.
His response, received only a couple of days later, was very encouraging. He asked me if I was interested in helping him with his venture. Little did I know, but he had not read the e-mail attachment and still did not know that I am Catholic.
“I do believe the world is at a critical juncture,” I said in my response. “There need to be people who can speak up and add a little balance to what seems to be an imbalance in many respects. Perhaps in some capacity I can help with the association you are founding. I would be more than happy to help in any way I can (and I’m delighted just to be asked!). My primary focus is helping people to come to understand the existence of God. Without the first peg in the whole plan, lots of mistakes can creep in along the way.”
I ended the letter by responding to his belief that finding happiness and contentment are the goal of each person. “By the way,” I wrote, “I don’t believe that joy is the absence of pain and the experience of pleasure. Joy is having meaning to your actions, regardless of whether it gives you pleasure or pain.”
During the next few days he must have read the conversion story I had sent, because he responded that he had never had any kind of similar experience (feeling the prayers of friends, experiencing responses from God, et cetera). Then he tactfully rejected the premise of the story—that is, that truth comes through the Catholic Church and that Jesus Christ is and should be the center of our existence.
“I must also say that I am not associated with any one belief system or religion per say,” he said. “I do believe that there is a ‘universal intelligence’ out there in some form, but I think it’s presumptuous of humankind to put a description, label, or other form of categorization on this intelligence. I also believe that to categorize a God is to create division among humankind. All humans want to believe in their own form of God and will always be unique in their interpretation.
“[This is] the reason why religions have led to so many wars. So in my honest and humble opinion, the solution is to allow each person the alternative to believe in whatever form of universal intelligence they want to. The key is to live a life according to a basic set of values. [When we have accomplished this goal] we can finally find the spirituality that is in all of us. I can lead a highly rewarding life, contributing to not only my well-being but the well-being of others, living by a set of values, beliefs, and rules that are all aligned with my true essence, soul, being, whatever you want to call it. In fact, couldn’t each one of us be God?”
He ended his letter by saying that all religions are equal and recommended to me Deepak Chopra’s How to Know God.
I went to the local library and checked out the book. I know the basic ideas of Deepak Chopra, since my brother is an avid follower. I read the book in one weekend and then wrote what unfortunately would be my final response. I told him I had read the book but that “I’m not sure I agree with his theology. It doesn’t seem to fit with what God himself has revealed. I think often man simply tries to recreate ‘the established order’ (whatever that may be) in order to better suit his needs or personal beliefs.
“This can be a good thing when it comes to traffic laws, taxes, how many hours are worked in a day, et cetera. But when it comes to defining or understanding God, it can create some problems. The reason I believe this is because man’s knowledge of God comes from God, not anywhere else. So we have to listen to God to understand God—not to professors, philosophers, or scientists.
“These people who speak for God are clearly distinguishable from the ordinary person. Jesus made this point when he said, ‘If you do not believe because of who I say I am, believe because of the works that I do.’”
I pointed out some of my favorite examples of God’s gifts to saints. “A woman named Cecilia (known to be able to play any instrument or sing any song) lived in the second century but, in the year 177, was given a fatal blow with an axe to the neck by a man sent to execute her in her home. As she bled to death, she held out three fingers in testimony to her belief in the Trinity.
“After she died, she was buried in a cypress coffin in the same position in which she died. In the year 822 they [Church officials] wanted to transfer her remains to another location, but they couldn’t locate the coffin and bones. The saint then appeared to the pope at the time, though she had been dead for nearly seven hundred years, and told him where the coffin was. He found the coffin in exactly the place that she had indicated in the vision. When the coffin was unearthed, they found that her body was completely incorrupt. That is, it had not deteriorated at all. She simply looked like she was sleeping. In 1599 they opened her coffin again, and, even though it was seven hundred seventy-seven years later, her body was still resting, incorrupt and perfectly preserved.
“Over the centuries there have been numerous people who have died and remained incorrupt. I have a book of more than a hundred cases leading up to the twentieth century. Another person was buried in the ground without any coffin at all. When they unearthed him later, his body was perfectly preserved even though the moisture from the ground and the worms should have completely destroyed his remains.
“It seems to me that the reason God gives signs such as these is so that we can look back and say, ‘The way this person lived their life is obviously the way I should live my life. Their beliefs should be my beliefs.’ We can study the people who have been incorrupt to understand the true path to holiness.”
I had the opportunity to close the letter at this point, but I was afraid I would not get another chance to continue this discussion and give more points in favor of the Catholic Church. So I decided to continue with another example, a real biggie that provides all sorts of firepower: Lourdes, France.
“Time magazine said that there have been 6,700 miraculous cures [at Lourdes], everything from inoperable tumors to diseases that have a one hundred percent fatality rate (no one had ever recovered after getting the illness). If you go to Grand Central Station, which I heard more than a hundred thousand people pass through each day, I’m sure we would find that there has never been a miraculous cure there of any kind. That’s because God saves these signs as testimony to the authenticity of the message that is being given.
“In fact, two summers ago I had the opportunity to go to Lourdes while I was in France. The most dramatic part for me was finding out that at the end of each day, after countless people with terminal illnesses and bleeding sores have been dunked into the baths for cures, the volunteers, in an act of faith, will dip a cup into the water and drink it. So far no one has contracted any illness after doing this.”
I then discussed the miracle of the sun at Fatima. This miracle was one of the most amazing supernatural events the world had ever seen. More than seventy thousand people were on hand to witness the event. The late Fr. John Hardon, S.J., wrote a publication called The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in which he states: “[The miracle of the sun] was necessary to provide the rational foundation for accepting, on faith, the Marian message of Fatima because of the solar event that everybody had to accept, as a fact, perceived by the senses.” It was necessary, he said, to prove to the people that the message was authentic. “The children did not need the solar phenomenon to believe what Our Lady was telling them. But we do.”
Fr. Hardon summed up the point I was making to my friend when he wrote, “Miracles are God’s way of enabling us to believe that someone who claims to be speaking for God is really telling the truth.” The reason God uses such miracles, I pointed out in my correspondence, is that he authenticates the message by the use of such miracles.
After giving these reasons as support for my argument, I concluded my letter by saying that the search for who God is would have to be done through the eyes of the great mystics and visionaries who have been so close to God that they exhibited signs and graces.
“Some of the popular writers today,” I wrote, “can’t back up their ideas with these kinds of signs. That’s not to say that they are complete frauds or charlatans out to make a buck. But it means to me that their ideas are not necessarily better than anyone else’s.”
My friend’s response was cordial but clear: All religions are equal. If he would profess one belief system, he concluded, it would be Buddhist.
I was sad to lose the opportunity to sway his opinion, particularly because the ramifications were great. If he goes through with his intentions, he will promote a pseudo-religion that is contradictory to the Christian way of life. On the other hand, my best response does not have to travel across fiber optics to another continent. My greatest weapon will never be clever arguments or logical deductions. It is the awesome power I discovered in September 1991 and continue to use each day: It is prayer.