On the Evident Truth of Catholicism

Descartes made a good point in his Meditations. Actually, he made a few good points; but the one I'd lie to speak to today is his contention that, necessarily, God must have put the truth right out there in plain sight. It follows from the good point that God is good, which follows from the good point that God is perfect, which follows from the good point that Descartes did not create the world, which follows from the good point that Descartes exists, which follows from the good point that thoughts exist.

It follows from this good point that our human reason, used properly, is a reliable guide to the truth of things; and that our sense perceptions, when we see things “clearly and distinctly,” are reliable, and that our conscience, when it gives us a good strong kick in the butt or sense of revulsion, is a good, trustworthy guide to right and wrong.

It also more or less follows that the most readily apparent religious tradition is the best guide to God. And this becomes a good argument for the truth of Catholicism. Christianity is, after all, the world's largest religion, twice as big as the nearest competitor; and more than half of all Christians are Catholics.

Some might argue that the best religion is probably the most intellectually sophisticated, and, this being so, might only be apparent to a relatively small number of especially intelligent people. Therefore, merely going for the largest religion is wrong.

But this logic does not work. We must assume God is good. We also know that people are not primarily responsible for their own intellectual capacities. Therefore, God is not going to make the truth accessible only to the smartest people. It really has to be available to anyone prepared to seek sincerely, even the most stupid.

That's clear, isn't it? The Catholic Church is, indeed, the world's largest organization of any kind. Kind of hard to miss, when you’re out shopping for a religion.

It is also, and this is almost equally important, the most widely geographically distributed; so it is apparent to the largest number of people. It is either the majority religion or the largest single denomination everywhere in the Americas, in Australia, and through most of Europe. It dominates four of the world’s six continents; and is probably also now dominant, and growing quickly, in Africa.

That leaves only Asia in which Catholicism is not number one—i.e., the single most evident religion. But it is at least also present almost everywhere there—a majority faith in the Philippines, 15% of the population in South Korea, 7% in Vietnam, smaller proportions elsewhere. That’s Catholic, mind, not Christian; otherwise those figures would be higher.

Nobody else comes close. Islam is concentrated in a wide band across North Africa and Central Asia, and along the coastlines of the Indian Ocean: two continents, and a majority in neither. Buddhism is dominant only in a handful of countries in Southeast Asia—elsewhere, at best, it shares the stage with Communism, Shinto, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, and Shamanism.

Perhaps even more remarkably, this wide distribution of Christianity and Catholicism is not anything new; it is not an artefact of recent European empires. Christianity has always been the world’s most internationally dispersed religion. It spread through all the nations of the Roman Empire by the third century, becoming firmly rooted already in all three known continents, Africa, Europe, and Asia.
It has been dominant in Ethiopia since 330 AD. It has been in South India since the first century. The Nestorians spread as far as China, Korea, and Mongolia by the seventh century, and were common throughout the empire of Genghis Khan. Granted, they were not Catholics, but recent scholarship has decided that their theological beliefs were actually the same as Catholicism, and many “Nestorian” groups have latterly re-assimilated into the Roman church.

Catholicism is also notably widely dispersed within nations, in terms of class and location. Protestantism tends to be a faith predominantly of the urban middle class. Buddhism, as noted, almost always shares its demographics with other faiths: Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Hinduism. In India, less favoured classes have shown a tendency, when permitted to, to convert away from Hinduism en masse. Catholicism has usually appealed about equally to upper and lower classes, city and countryside, unlearned and intellectual.

Besides being the world’s largest human organization of any kind, Catholicism is also the world's oldest human organization. In this, it is downright uncanny. Ibn Khaldun, the great Arab historiographer, traced a definite pattern in all human institutions, suggesting their natural lifespan is no more than about three generations. When anything made by man lasts longer than that, it is notable, and begins to have a sacred feel to it. The British Empire lasted about 300 years before its sun set; the Roman Empire proper—the “Eternal City”--lasted 400 until it was sacked. The Olympics and the Nobel Prize are a little over 100. The UN is 60. But the Catholic Church has passed its two thousandth birthday, more or less, and is still counting—and still growing. It is a miracle in itself, and seems a direct fulfillment of Jesus's promise to St. Peter in the New Testament: “I name you Rock [i.e., Peter], and on this rock I will build my church. And the gates of hell [i.e., death] shall not prevail against it.”

Most religious denominations, by contrast, seem to follow Ibn Khaldun's life cycle fairly well: the first generation is on fire, the second generation gets comfortable, the third generation begins to lose interest. Hinduism has survived the longest, nominally, as a religion, but has no organization—and the beliefs of a “Hindu” today probably bear almost no relation to the beliefs of a typical “Hindu” two thousand years ago. Little more than the name has survived.

Among religions, by comparison, the Catholic Church is also unique in the clarity and consistency of its message—it is conspicuously “clear and distinct” in this sense as well. It is not all that easy to say what “Islam” believes—there is no central authority. The same is true of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Protestantism. But it is quite clear, on the whole, what the Catholic Church believes, and who has the authority to say so.

Moreover, incredibly, the specific teachings of the Catholic Church have not changed in its 2000 years of existence. One might say they have evolved, or been clarified, over time; but nothing maintained as true today conflicts with anything maintained as true at the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century AD. Compare that with any given “-ism” of the modern academy. Compare that with what physics or medicine believes today compared to two thousand years ago.

Another thing that strikes me as a bit uncanny is the popularity, as if instinctive, of essentially Christian artefacts well beyond the nominally Christian world. For example, everyone now, regardless of beliefs, and whether they realize it or not, uses the Christian calendar, and gives the year from the birth of Christ. No festival is as widely celebrated as Christmas—even in India, or China, or Japan. Some argue that it is no longer a Christian festival; and they point to the central figure these days being Santa Claus, not Jesus.

But that only proves it has become universal specifically in its Catholic form: Santa Claus may be unrecognizable to Protestants, but to Catholics he is clearly Sinter Klaus, Saint Nicholas of Myra, whose feast day launches the Advent season.

Similarly, even Protestants seem to love Carnival—or Mardi Gras, as it is sometimes called. There is something almost instinctive about it. Yet this is a specifically Catholic observance, marking the beginning of Lent.

Also originally specifically Christian, if not specifically Catholic, but now accepted as universal, are the doctrine of human rights, empirical science, and most of international law. The Red Cross Society, despite polite obfuscations, as the name suggests, is also a Christian (Calvinist) initiative; hence the Geneva Convention as well.

Another time-honoured way to determine the truth of a religion is in open debate. This, mind, is less persuasive, since it appeals only to those who are more intellectually inclined. But here too, I think, Christianity has shown itself the “clear and distinct” favourite. No other religion has done as well in conversions—i.e., by convincing people directly of its truth. Christianity and Catholicism in particular cut like a warm knife through butter across pagan Europe and the pagan Americas. It is still cutting like a warm knife through pagan Africa, with the number of adherents roughly doubling each generation. It proved capable of converting Buddhists en masse in Japan, Korea, and China, until deliberately and bloodily suppressed by the powers that be. There are also reasons to believe that, in the first and second centuries, an absolute majority of the Jews of that time converted to Christianity.

As in everything else, Islam is Catholicism’s closest rival here. However, Islam has far more often been spread through government sponsorship, as opposed to open debate on the merits of its beliefs; and its mandating of the death penalty for apostates means adherents are likely not to convert away out of fears for their life as much as purely on the merits of the arguments.

And, even with these advantages, Islam has not, on the whole, done as well at conversions as has Christianity and Catholicism. Islam is often asserted to be the fastest growing religion today, and that seems to be true, in percentage terms. However, this growth is primarily due to higher birth rates, not conversions. If we were to look only at adult conversions, Christianity and Catholicism are probably still growing faster; as they are in absolute terms by any measure. On current trends, they will continue to increase their percentage of world population at least through the year 2050.

If God is good, all major religions presumably contain the truths essential to salvation. But, if God is good, and he is, Catholicism is the place to get the complete goods.