By David Warren
The path to Catholicism is not necessarily straight or smooth, and it may have been erased, for example, by a mountain avalanche just as it began to come into view. In my case, even when there were no memorable avalanches, it took me half a century to get there, starting from my initial position in a pre/post Protestantism.
In my case, I, who even had to convert to become a secular Anglican, what kept me away from Catholicism in the end was a combination of stubbornness (which I mistook for faith) and “family values,” that is, the need to avoid a divorce (mine). But when I was finally thrown out of my house, I became a free man.
As simple as that, then I betrayed the Archbishop of Canterbury and “went papist.”
It was a wonderful experience, because thanks to family law I was also reduced to primitive poverty. This felt more authentic.
The Catholic Church itself seemed to transform suddenly. It no longer seemed like a sect (rather flaccid). It really began to detach itself from historical time, allowing me to wander freely and easily through its many periods, and to position myself both within and outside the centuries.
It simply WAS, a complete THING, unlike anything else or set of things I had ever seen. It no longer required an effort of imagination, because one could use the eyes.
And I no longer needed to judge, as I used to do, and as I had been doing while keeping myself out. I realized that the Church required prayer and not rebellion. It is not a “protest” against anything.
I thought I might restrict myself TO ME, for having been, so to speak, white and English for too long (five centuries); but I was also freed from that anxiety, in addition to being lightened of goods. “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” The need, or obsession, for material progress had disappeared.
We live in a world of efficient cooks, with their sharp blades. You are on one side or the other of a sharp knife, or a dull one in the case of episcopalism.
Heresies may be necessary to define a church, and scoundrels to enforce the rules, but I think we can say that Christ’s order is not the police order that we see governing the world.
The question of what brings you in, or what takes you out, is like the other great questions. They cannot be appealed to a “human” court of justice. If you have loved others as yourself, and have put God at the top of your list of commandments, you are probably in.
And if you make peace, even in war, with the cause of justice, you may not survive, but you have the chance of being right. Get rid of your modern prejudice against the free expression of the crusaders.
“We must have faith,” something that cannot be checked in immigration documents. But in reality, one of the first things I learned, from outside the worldliness, is that faith is not something you have. For that kind of thing cannot be lost, it can only be abandoned, to restore one’s own unbelief.
One could be “pro-” Catholic, and certainly I was, but what is being “pro-” if not advancing toward membership in the divine body? And what is a genuine Catholic if not a bad Catholic? That is why the essence of Catholicism is found today when one goes to confession.
It requires heroism, and of a type so serene, that non-Catholics really feel uncomfortable in front of it.
Faith is not a physical thing, or we could claim to be faithful even to a set of antiquarian facts. Certainly, as a Protestant, I had that degree of “faith,” and I wanted to have more.
I enthusiastically joined discussions about whether Christ had even existed, whether the list of disciples was real, whether the “B.V.M.” (the Anglican term for the Mother Mary) participated in the Dormition or the Assumption, what the third Person of the Trinity was. Or anything else that I now consider plausible, but that I used to debate, usually from the atheist position in the institute. But I discovered that one could more easily provoke by defending Humanae vitae.
That is what faith is not: nonsense. Nor is it “belief” in the facticity of anything at all, which we derive from history. It wouldn’t change anything if “scientists” or astrologers discovered that Christ was born on December 29, instead of a Thursday. This numbered date is just a convention.
Which does not turn Christmas into the day when the fast of Advent is suddenly convulsed by joy, the astonishing joy of the heavenly child. Joy is not a statistical celebration of a date, nor of a sales season.
It celebrates the truth. What I first understood, belatedly, once Catholic, was the day “when He will come again” —when He will come again to save us—. That is faith.
We do not believe it simply because it is true, but because Christ has told us to expect it. Otherwise, we are only waiting for Godot. It is truer than anything we have seen fall into history.
And we can believe it with a certainty and a hardness that does not appear on the Mohs scale of hardness, because it cannot be scratched by human instruments.
The modern Western man has lost familiarity with such things. A child might believe, we think, because a child can be fooled by Santa Claus, and then we compare the sweet naivety of the child with our own sophistication, tested and weighed. We demand proof even for what a child believes, and a formal refutation for what he does not believe.
This is what the modern man has become. He has the brain, the intellect, of a very small child, but without the innocence. He probably won’t know that Advent is a time of fasting, until the fast is explained to him.
Even so, there remain a few hours when it will not be “Jingle Bells,” except in supermarkets and pharmacies.
About the author
David Warren is former editor of the magazine Idler and columnist in Canadian newspapers. He has extensive experience in the Near and Far East. His blog, Essays in Idleness, is now at: davidwarrenonline.com.