Things to Consider Before (or After) Converting to Catholicism

The original purpose of this blog was to expound on issues relating to Jews and Jesus. But for about the last 5 years, I've increased my focus on talking to Catholics and understanding issues regarding Catholicism.

To be blunt and with much honesty, I wanted to write a summary post I wanted to share to those who have "swum the Tiber" or are considering it. I would plead with you why this is a bad idea. There will be some links to detail some thoughts, but this is just a summary. I know most of the objections and counter-arguments and would be willing to get into them if anyone desires.

This isn't exhaustive. But I hope this post covers the top things I want you to consider.

1) The most important issue is the denial of justification by faith alone. 

According to Scripture, if you are trusting for your declaration of righteousness and acceptance with God based on any behavior you do, you will be condemned.

For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." Galatians 3:10

If you want to add works to be declared righteous before God, you will be judged by your works. And by those works, you will be condemned. Why? Because God's standard is perfection. "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."

You have two choices. Perfection and condemnation with works or grace and a declaration of righteousness apart from works.

1b) God wants to eliminate boasting.

Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. Romans 3:27

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8-9

Catholicism can't remove the grounds for boasting, so it should be rejected.

2) To be deep in history is to realize Newman was way off-base.

One of the more famous quotes you'll run across is by the late John Henry Newman. "To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant." What I've found, on multiple issues, Catholicism does not do well when you compare it against actual history.

Familiar with the term "retcon"? In fiction, that's when later works is a literary device where later works break continuity with facts that are already established. The established facts are "adjusted, ignored, or contradicted".

In fiction, an example would be in the original Star Wars. Obi-Wan told Luke Skywalker that his father was killed by Darth Vader and then in Empire Strikes back we learn that Darth Vader was Luke's father. George Lucas came up with the story idea in between movies and the past movie is reinterpreted in light of the change.

I would recommend Timothy Kauffman's blog, which goes over many examples of Catholicism's innovations and claims that aren't grounded in the apostolic witness.

Which brings me to the main example I would give a prospective Catholic.

3) The office of the papacy is a historical fiction. 

It didn't exist in the first centuries of the church. Papal claims from Rome only held sway in Western Europe, where there wasn't another major seat of power.  And there wasn't a single head bishop at Rome until at least 150 AD or later.

If you can't establish the papacy historically, then Catholicism shouldn't even be in the running for viable options of what you should believe.

4) Apostolic succession arguments create a house of cards that can be easily toppled.

Many arguments I run into from Catholics boil down to this: We're the one true church. We have apostolic succession. So they have to be correct because they're the one, true church.

Many others have argued better against apostolic succession than I will here. (See here here here here here here and here and also here)

Apostolic succession relies on the papacy to be true, at least for trusting the Catholic Magisterium. So what we mentioned in 3) could also be mentioned against to argue against their conception of apostolic succession.

How I've seen apostolic succession is used in arguments is to short-circuit discussions of biblical and historical errors that Catholicism has produced. "We can't be wrong because we are descended from the apostles and are protected from errors."

But what if we reverse this and flip it on its head. We can see the errors. So if apostolic succession doesn't protect your church from error, now what? If honest as it applies to how they use apostolic succession, it means the "gates of hell" have prevailed against their church. Or maybe it just means their conception of the church was incorrect in the first place.

You need the church. But what the conception of what "the church" needs to be is an a priori theological assumption that's smuggled in. Keep this in mind when we discuss our last point.

5) Are you converting to a museum piece that no longer exists?

If you're conservative, you need to go in with eyes wide open even if you disagree with me on the above. Are you converting to a museum piece that no longer exists? Are you aware that pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II aren't the same theologically? See here for the most obvious example.

The conservative Catholics are, I hope unintentionally, engaging in a bait and switch. The bait is the idealized One True Church that leads people with the truth into salvation. The switch is the post-Vatican II church where the modernists are in charge.

6) Don't Trade a False Certainty Because You Can't Deal with a Messy Truth

But above everything else, from talking to conservative Catholics, I think the main impetus for swimming the Tiber comes from what I call the "existential freakout."

How do I know what's the correct interpretation of the Bible? There are so many denominations, which church should I join?

Who can rescue us from this mess we find ourselves? Rome comes riding in as a white knight to rescue the day.

You'll see this expressed in various ways. From the side of Catholic apologists, they'll say things like "without an infallible interpreter how can we know what the Bible really says?"

I have a few things to say about this. First, just because life is messy epistemologically doesn't mean "Rome" is the correct answer. Secondly, if you can't trust yourself to figure things out, why can you trust yourself to figure out Rome is the one true church? And why do you trust yourself to trust to figure out Christianity is true in the first place? Islam could be true or Buhdism or Jainism or something else for all you know.

Third, if you need an infallible interpreter for the infallible Scriptures, why don't you need an infallible interpreter for the infallible interpreter ad infinitum? You are always the last step in the epistemological chain.

There is the divergence between how we wish things were versus how they were. It would be nice if there was a church that explained everything. That doesn't make it true.

Side note: these type of arguments rely on skepticism. You can't figure things out on your own. We're here for you. This is how they have been used historically. But this is also how skepticism was unleashed on the world.

Conclusion

So why should you either not make this decision or reconsider a decision you already made?

Catholicism is not faithful to Scripture nor history and it makes errors that would be fatal for your standing before God if you embraced them.

God bless you.

Athanasius on Penal Substitutionary Atonement

7. And having declared that he would become man, afterwards the Psalter also points to his passibility in the flesh. Perceiving, then that there would be a plot on the part of the Jews, it sings in Psalm 2, Wherefore did the heathen rage, and the nations imagine vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered themselves together against the Lord and against his Anoited. In the twenty-first it tells the manner of death from the Savior's own lips: ... you have brought me down to the dust of death. For many dogs have surrounded me; the assembly of the wicked has attacked me from all sides. They pierced my hands and feet. They counted all my bones. They divided my garments among themselves, and cast lots upon my raiment. When it speaks of the piercing of the hands and feet, what else than a cross does it signify? After teaching all these things, it adds that the Lord not for his own sake, but for ours. And it says again through his own lips in Psalm 87, Your wrath was pressed heavily upon me, and in Psalm 68, Then I restored which I did not take away. For although he was not himself obligated to give account for any crime, he died - but he suffered on our behalf, and he took on himself the wrath directed on us on account of the transgression, as it says in Isaiah, He took on our weaknesses. This is evident also when we say in Psalm 137, The Lord will recompense them on my behalf, and the Spirit says in the seventy-first, and he will save the children of the needy, and shall bring low the false accuser... for he has delivered the poor from the oppressor; and the laborer, who had no helper.

Athanasius, "A Letter to Marcellinus", The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, Paulist Press, 1980, Page 105.