I was listening to the podcast from fellow-convert, Justin Hibbard, yesterday. He runs the “Why Catholic” Podcast, which I highly recommend.
In yesterday’s podcast, he was discussing the four marks of the Catholic Church: It is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic.
These are the marks of the true church founded by Christ and they must necessarily be, as we need to be able to identify the true church that Christ founded. Christ never intended thousands of denominations that contradict each other.
When I was converting, I wouldn’t have laid out the exact words of the four marks, but it was essentially those reasons.
I had grown up believing Catholics were a small cultish group. This is how insulated I was from Catholicism and how well our public schools skipped right over all the history of where there was only the Catholic Church doing amazing things in the world. “Jesus was born…annnnddd here we have the Enlightenment period. Nevermind the in-between.”
Imagine my surprise when I uncovered that Catholicism had billions of members over the whole world and they’d been around since the beginning of Christianity and we know that because….
Of the Apostolic succession. Our bishops can trace their lineage back to the Apostles. That means something.
What got me in Justin’s podcast was when he said, “Is the Church perfect? Heck, no.” The Church is made up of imperfect people who will fail at living out Christianity well.
Those people that make a mockery of the Catholic Faith and live it out poorly, as Justin said, “do not define the Catholic Church.”
You judge the Church by those that have lived out its tenets well and those people are the Saints. And I would add, the Church’s members aren’t perfect, but the Church itself is because it is the Church Christ gave us. It’s Sacraments and teachings are perfect.
“There will always be detractors, but throughout the history of the Church, where there have been detractors, there have been Saints faithfully praying, serving, teaching and leading towards greater holiness.”
The Catholic Church has remained for nearly 2,000 years because of Christ’s promise to never let the “gates of hell prevail” and the “pillars of the Church”—the Saints. It is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.
Have a blessed day, Catholic Pilgrims.
Link for the “Why Catholic?” podcast: https://whycatholic.substack.com/p/episode70
