William OMalley, S.J.

, has been a leader in Catholic secondary

and higher education, Christian spiritual writing and speaking,
and fundamental faith formation in this country for the last forty years. He is a Jesuit priest who cannot write an uninteresting
sentence, and who never fails to inspire.
Rev. James Martin, S.J.
Author of Between Heaven and Mirth

Because we have to ask many questions about being Catholic

today, no one is better prepared to give us intelligent, honest,
and faith-filled answers than OMalley. Just when you think
you have considered every perspective, OMalley will give you
another oneand it will be well worth considering!
Rev. Richard Rohr, O.F.M.
Author of Falling Upward

I have long respected OMalleys work and find his clear, concise, and direct manner truly beneficial for pastoral leaders and
those we serve. Choosing to Be Catholic is perfect for so many
who seek deeper understanding of our faith.
Leisa Anslinger
Founder and Director
CatholicLifeAndFaith.net

If you are a spiritual seeker, this book is for you. An experienced teacher and writer, OMalley deftly guides the reader on
a journey that tackles key issues of modern belief, such as the
nature of the soul, the existence of God, and the value of religion. Because it is a journey that challenges us to rethink our
deepest values, it is one well worth taking.
Neil A. Parent
Author of A Concise Guide to Adult Faith Formation

Previously published by Thomas More, an imprint of Ave Maria Press, in 2001.

Nihil Obstat: Michael Heintz, PhD, Censor Librorum
Imprimatur: Kevin C. Rhoades

Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend

July 31, 2012
____________________________________
2001, 2012 by William J. OMalley, S.J.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever, except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews, without written
permission from Ave Maria Press, Inc., P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556.
Founded in 1865, Ave Maria Press is a ministry of the United States Province of Holy
Cross.
www.avemariapress.com
Paperback: ISBN-10 1-59471-343-X, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-343-9
E-book: ISBN-10 1-59471-360-X, ISBN-13 978-1-59471-360-6
Cover image Elio Ciol/CORBIS.
Cover and text design by David R. Scholtes.
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
OMalley, William J.
Choosing to be Catholic : for the first time or once again / William J. OMalley.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59471-343-9 (pbk.) ISBN 1-59471-343-X (pbk.)
1. Catholic ChurchAdult education. 2. Faith development. 3. Catholic Church--Membership. I. Title.
BX921.O43 2012
282--dc23
2012025582

Contents
Preface............................................................................................vii
Introduction.................................................................................... x
1. Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith........................................1
2. The First Conversion: Humanity......................................... 13
3. Conscience..............................................................................25
4. A World without Enchantment: Atheism.......................... 41
5. The Case for God...................................................................54
6. The Other Faces of God: World Religions...................... 66
7. Your Basic Christian................................................................85
8. Why Be Catholic?.................................................................. 98
9. Scripture from Scratch........................................................ 114
10. The Hebrew Scriptures......................................................129
11. The Gospel Becomes the Gospels................................. 141
12. The Church..........................................................................156
13. The Sacraments................................................................... 175
14. The Days of the Lord........................................................ 205
15. Praying.................................................................................. 224

For

Gerald Blaszczak, S.J.

and

Robert Sealy, S.J.

I do believe, help my unbelief!

Mark 9:24

Preface

ver the last decade or so, the Roman Catholic Church

has suffered an unnerving amount of scandal, bad
press, and internal discord. Negative news reports
about Catholics show up regularly in almost every kind of
media, even the Churchs own. Such august papers as the New
York Times always seem to have space for the latest Catholic
scandal or conflictwith plenty of sidebars for related stories
about problems within the Church. The manner in which this
internal discord has played itself out in the media has been a
matter of great frustration and even embarrassment to many
who love the Church and have long defended it.
Even the celebration of Mass has been an arena of dispute,
most recently because of the promulgation of the new translation of the Mass in late 2011. The reason for the new translation was to get our prayer closer to the Latin, which many
welcomed but others have experienced only as a disheartening intrusion into their prayer. Added to the internal conflicts
and public scandals already mentioned, many saw this change
as an unnecessary use of the Churchs time, energy, and other
resources.
We know that over the last decade or so one third of Americans raised Catholic have taken their affiliation elsewhere not
only because of scandal or disagreement with Church teaching,
vii

viii

CHOOSING to Be

CATHOLIC

but because they simply are not being spiritually fed. Any wise
person should be thinking, Dont invest in that church! So
when I recommend Choosing to be Catholic to those who have as
yet had no real commitment to religion or to those who have
stopped short in their commitment wondering whether it is
worth continuing, I am asking a lot! I am asking people to invest their very soulsthe essence of what each of them is, their
proximate and ultimate values, the motivation of their career
paths, their marriages, and the moral and spiritual formation
of their very children in a Church that often seems to be helplessly falling apart.
However, there is one critical problem with the investment
metaphor. It is completely unjustified, too easy-to-hand, and
not just limping like all analogies, but crippled. In a word its
wrong. Acceptance of and allegiance to a manifestly imperfect
Church is no more irrational than acceptance of and allegiance
to a manifestly imperfect nation.
I find a host of unpleasanteven utterly repugnant
choices made by those who have directed the United States of
America in my eighty years as a citizen. Richard Nixon was
forced to resign for suborning perjury and Bill Clinton was
impeached for having sex with an intern in the Oval Office.
Factor in the heinous tragedies of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Consider the lack of fiscal control and unchecked greed
of money managers that led the whole world to near financial
collapse. Then add lawmakers who are held willing hostage
to lobbyistsdigging in their heels and insisting on curtailing
services to the inculpably poor while refusing to fix laws that
continue to give unfair advantage to the rich. The unborn, the
elderly, and so many of our children and adults in real need remain unprotected by our laws and by our courts. But although
I despise what these people have done to our country, I have
no intention of packing my bags and winging off to Tierra del
Fuego.

Preface

ix

Despite attacks from without and stupidities from within,

the nation envisioned by those who wrote the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution has not only survived
but thrived. If those bewigged personages returned today,
the present attitudes and actions of our leaders might leave
them stupefied. But were still here. And doing both good and
well. The burden of this book is to establish that the Catholic
Church is the samestill here, still doing both good and well.
This reminder will surface over and over in these pages: An
ideal is like the North Star. Its a guide, not a destination. The
Gospel and the Constitution are ideals, but in bringing any
ideal to life in our world, we have to rely on fallible human
beings. If you expect any institution made up of and guided
by human beings to live up to the perfection of its ideals, you
probably should have arranged to land in a different universe.
But if you are ready to wade through a considerable amount
of muck to discover the beauty of the Gospel revealed in the
life and teachings of the Catholic Churchread on! Lets see if
I can convince you to choosereally choosethis Church.

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I

who had been seeking God
but God who had been seeking me.
Bede Griffiths
The Golden String

Introduction

ery often books such as this, which try to explainor

re-explainthe basics of Catholicism, seem overly concerned with thoroughly covering all doctrines as if they
all carried the same weight, and very often theology forgets to
take into consideration the complexity and obscurity of it all,
like trying to teach calculus without basic arithmetic. In the
interest of logical progression and all-inclusive thoroughness,
we teach catechetics (a summary of Christian doctrines and
principles) and completely bypass apologetics (Why should I
even bother with God, much less with Christianity, and even
less with Catholicism and all those rules?). We act as if the
interested person has already been fully converted and cares
to probe further, which is like explaining the intricate mysteries of the internal combustion engine to someone whos not
too sure yet whether she even wants to drive.
Religious conversion is much more like falling in love.
Hardly ever is it Wham! Bam! Alacazam! Wonderful you
came by! Maybe in being-in-love songs, but not in real life,
which is where most of us live. Here, it usually begins with,
He looks interesting, and Shes cute. Then comes the hard
x

Introduction

xi

part: just saying hello. The process from that moment to the
weddingand far beyond thatis dramatic only in rare moments, and not all of them pleasant. Like falling in love and
only gradually moving to greater and deeper commitment,
conversion is a process with its ups and downs.
Saint Paul, on his way to Jericho to root out Christian heretics, was apparently struck down and overwhelmed by an experience of the risen Jesus. Such conversions are rare indeed.
By far, the majority of conversions are far slower and much
less dramatic. Im a cradle Catholic, but my experience of the
conversion that was the call of my vocation, was surely not
that stunningand by no means that clear and certain. Of all
the words in the Gospel, what I find most difficult to accept
is that when Jesus stopped by the future apostles boats and
said, Come, follow me, they immediately left their nets and
followed him. Unless they had considerable previous dealings
with Jesus (and the gospels at least dont say they did), that is
really hard to accept. I mean, there were these hard-handed,
practical men, in the middle of a workday, and a stranger just
arrives and tells them to come along, and they do? Just like
that? No questions like who is this guy? What about my family? Where are we going? Or what we will eat? Not even why?
Not me. When I felt the first urges of a vocation, I did exactly
what the prophet Jonah did when Yahweh came and told him
to go and convert Nineveh: I ran the other way. I knew what
that call was asking me to give up, and I avoided it in every
way I knew how for two years. The poet Francis Thompson was
also Catholic from infancy butswamped among the dregs of
humanity and self-hatredhe shuddered when he felt the first
whispering of the call back to God.
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

xii

CHOOSING to Be

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Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
The Hound of Heaven

I dont think very many cradle Catholics understand how

conversion feels, what it costs. Perhaps many born-and-baptized, lifelong Catholics have never really suffered a genuine
conversion. The faith has simply always been unquestionably
true.
The word conversion means a total reversal of direction, a metanoia, a complete turnabout in ones understanding of what life is all about. The prodigal son, starving among
his employers swine, understood. Oedipus the King, finally
yielding to the truth about himself and the gods, understood.
Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day understood. Any man or
woman who has sinned and repented understands, but so do
men and women who have tried their best to live upright lives
butsuddenly or graduallybegin to suspect, I wonder if I
could be missing something. Its a temptation, and often one
that seems to have more drawbacks and uncertainties than
assurances.
Other textbooks I have studied that were written to help
prepare for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, for welcoming back vacationing Catholics, for preparing young
people for Confirmation, seem (at least to me) to be coming
from the top down, as if those asking for (or submitting to)
instruction were completely convinced and docile. As if there
were no hesitancies or doubts. On the contrary, Id like to offer
an approach that doesnt jump into the middle, but starts from
scratch and presumes nothing more than, Yes, uh, Im mildly
interested.
Someone wise once said that skeptics make the best preachers, and thats the way Ive written and preached all my adult
life. I try never to take an audience for granted; I never presume anyones interest. I learned that from directing over a

Introduction

xiii

hundred plays and musicals (so far), and from fifty years of
teaching theology to skeptical high-school seniors, college
freshmen, and adults. I never presume they listened to what
they were taught before or thought it valuable enough to remember, much less that they accepted it and internalized it. So
at every gradual step of the way in this text, I hope youll face
the questions as I haveskeptically. Now wait just a minute,
how can he say that? After all, this process is asking you to
reassess the basic values of your life.
In one Peanuts strip, Charlie Brown says to Snoopy whos
typing on top of his doghouse, I hear youre writing a book
on theology. I hope you have a good title. And as Charlie
walks away, Snoopy says, I have the perfect title. Has It Ever
Occurred to You that You Might Be Wrong? Unless youve honestly examined ideas that challenge your own ideas, you can
never be confident in them. If there are five ways of getting a
job done, and you know only one way, you dont take that way
freelybecause its the only one you know. At the end of this
process, I would hope we will no longer be talking about the
faith, but about your faith.
So this text starts a long way before the place most texts
for Christian initiation or returning begin: with apologetics,
not apology in the sense of Im sorry, but in the sense of
a defense of the very basics upon which any relationship with
God (religion) founds itself. Presuming nothing but good will
and mutual respect between student and teacher, I would like
to begin with terms for realities most texts presume we understand: faith, soul, pride, conscienceas if we all knew what
we meant, even the teachers. Lets have at least tentatively satisfying understandings of what these fundamental realities are
and what responses they call for, before we start barging into
problems like the validity of Scripture and the nature of the
sacraments.

xiv

CHOOSING to Be

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We face the God question earlynot the Catholic God or

the Christian God or the Muslim God or the Jewish God. Entertain the most basic challenge: What if the atheists are actually right? What if there is no God, objectively, factually, truly?
How would our lives be changed if we had the courage to reject what atheists believe is our crutch? (Has It Ever Occurred
to You that You Might Be Wrong?) What hard evidence can we
discover to prove that there is a greater likelihood that God
exists than that God doesnt? Even if there is a God, why have
organized religions? Why cant we each go out into the woods,
onto a beach, or a city rooftop and worship God gratefully in
our own individual way? If communal worship is better, then
why not be Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim? Why Christian? When
asked their core beliefs, most Christian educators would answer: The Apostles Creed. Before we study what makes
Catholics different, how are all Christians alike?
Most books like this work from the top down, from the
doctrine or the magisterium to the interested Christian. For
instance, the Catechism of the Catholic Church article on holy orders describes its degrees as episcopate, priesthood, diaconate,
because that is the direction in which the ministerial power
flows, from Peter and the first apostles (pope and bishops), to
the priests and to the deacons. I believe most readers are more
comfortable working from the bottom up, from where we
stand. Similarly, in an article on the responsibility of the laity
in the Church (#906), the Catechism says that, when they have
serious reason to object to something in the Church, they have
an obligation to manifest it to the sacred pastors. When I
quote that passage, I omit the word sacred because I believe
it skews the relationship. Members of the laity are sacred, too.
Finally, even if we can demonstrate a strong probability that
Jesus Christ was indeedand still isa visitation of God into
human life, why be Catholic, with all those rules? Only then,
I believe, will we be ready and confident, psychologically and

Introduction

xv

spiritually, to say, All right. I honestly want to find out about

the workings of this Catholic Church. Im ready to see what
I am committing myself to, where I have confusions, reservations, and objections. I want to know how I can honestly,
peacefully resolve them. If I become part of this Church, I want
to feel at home in it.
In the larger part of the text, we will treat what other such
texts treat, but I hope with the same show-me, down-toearth attitude. How do the Scriptures mediate truth? What
does the Church mean, and what effective place does each of
us have in the People of God? What is the meaning and purpose of each of the seven sacraments? How does the order of
the eucharistic liturgy body set forth and manifest the beliefs
of the people of the Church; how does it convey meaning, enliven, and sanctify? How can the progression of the liturgical
year give a broader perspective and coherence to its weeks and
days? And finallythough it is presumed all alongthe book
takes us back to the most basic connection to God: praying.
Conversion is most definitely not a blind leap into the dark.
It is a slow, taxing, enlightening, and, we hope, invigorating
process. A process we also hope will never end. And the great
truth is that, in the Church, you never have to do it alone.
This book is for adults and becoming-adults. Without being
overly technical and scholarly, it is an attempt to open up the
life of the soul, the Christian faith, and the Catholic Church
to more than mere childlike (or childish) understanding. Saint
Paul says, When I was a child, my speech, feelings, and thinking were all those of a child. Now that I am a man, I have
no more use for childish ways (1 Corinthians 13:11). I am no
theologian. I am a pedagogue, a popularizer, trying to make
complexities comprehensible without making them either too
simplistic or too baffling. Skeptic, take my skeptics hand.

Go your way; your faith has saved you.

Mark 10:52

1
Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith

efore we approach the faith, its probably wise to examine

just what faith meansnot specifically faith in God, or
faith in a particular religions unique insights into the
nature and personality of God, just a better understanding of
what the commitment designated by the word faith entails.
So lets back off a while from what books like catechisms have
to say about faith (which is often pretty heady and inaccessible) and, instead of considering faith from the top down the
way theologians do, try to understand faith from the bottom
up, starting with acts of faith were all familiar with. After all,
God isnt the only object of faith.
Weve all been through the process of forming friendships
but have probably never stopped to realize that a friendship is
a whole process of acts of faith. Think of your very best friend,
someone to whom you could unburden anything, and who
1

CHOOSING to Be

CATHOLIC

you know without question would stick by you no matter

what. Well at one time, that person was way out there in the
almost endless sea of anonymous facesalong with old ladies
in Manchuria, children in Africa, and the people who tend the
heating system in your office building. How did your friend
get from way out there into your innermost heart?
Im not asking you to explain nuclear physics here, just to
think about something we have all experienced but probably
never examined. Maybe lay the book aside a few moments
and try to figure out how that precious friendship happened.
The absolutely essential first step in making a friend is, of
course, to notice that person. Without that, he or she will remain irretrievably way out there. After that, we usually assign the new face and body a name, and he or she becomes an
acquaintance. Oh, yeah. I know who she is. Most of the people
we know are acquaintances. But a few people push forward,
impressing (or imposing) themselves, spending time with us,
and talking so that they become friends. We often think of these
people as work or office friends, even if we know them
through some other life activity, such as our neighborhood association, charitable outreach, or a civic project. These are individuals we dont mind sitting with at lunch.
Some people penetrate our defenses even further, offering
not just shared time, conversation, and interests but mutual
sacrifice in pursuit of a common purpose. That sacrifice tightens our relationship with them. They become real friends
people with whom we assume well go to lunch, a movie, or
a game. Still others work their way into our innermost hearts,
usually because weve shared some truly daunting experience. These are our best friends. Those few become the people
whom we trust implicitlynot blindly, but because of all that
shared risk beforehand, based on all that previous experience.
Those are the people we trust enough to cry with, and know

Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith

that the tears are not a threat but a kind of cement to the bond
of friendship.
Marriage is also an act of faith. In fact, marriage is not just
the dramatic commitment at the altar but also an uncountable
series of acts of faith. It begins from the very first date, when he
stares at the suddenly intimidating phone, wiping his palms
on his pants, trying to get up the courage to call or text. He
thinks to himself, Oh, God, she wont even remember who
I am! When he reaches her, she paces and thinks to herself,
Hes nice, but his friends are weird. The acts of faithand
the related risksmultiply in number and escalate in intensity
as the two date, get serious, announce their engagement, and
on their wedding day vow to stay together forever. Even then
they dont know its going to work out; theyre betting it will.
That is faith.
And thats by no means the last of it. After the (more-or-less)
blissful honeymoon period, when reality stops by in the form
of bills, household chores, ingrained habits at cross purposes,
career conflicts, and all the other frictions that naturally arise
when two once-autonomous individuals try to form a partnership, spouses have to face the real act of faith. Now they
need to keep loving one another without the constant supportive help of thumping hearts, lusty urges, and the love potion that once made her seem like Cinderella and him Prince
Charming. Thats when romance can turn into love, which is
considerably less dramatic than being in love. Married love
becomes stirring-the-pasta-sauce love and letting-go-of-thegrudge love. In a very true sense, this maturing love with all
its many acts of self-emptying is a more profound expression
of genuine faith than was expressed on the wedding day.
Later comes the titanic act of faith required when having
a child. Husband and wife commit themselves to raising another fragile human being for the next twenty-plus years and
to raising at least a quarter of a million dollars to support that

CHOOSING to Be

CATHOLIC

child. All this they dosight unseen and without any chance
of an exchange! Day after day and week after week, there are
acts of faith: investments, job changes, and school choicesad
infinitum. On the couples thirtieth anniversary, they are a lot
more married than they were on their wedding day because of
all those acts of faithtrusting one another through thick and
thin, titanic and trivial. Faith grows incrementally as each new
act of faith is easier because of all the previous acts of faith that
proved to be worth the risk.
At least for me, this gives a more solid basis for understanding faith than the usual dictionary definition: belief that is
not based on proof. If you had proof, what need would there
be for belief? Seeing isnt believing; seeing is knowing. Its also
better than Saint Pauls definition of faith as the realization
of what is hoped for (Hebrews 11:1). In my waning years, I
think I have better insight into the difference between faith
and hope than I did when I was younger. Hope is the gut
urge to cling on even though all the evidence seems to undercut
that option; faith is the gut urge to cling on even though the
evidence for it is persuasive but not compelling.
A lifetime of belief has convinced me that real, genuine,
and authentic faith still doubts. It must doubt. Otherwise its
not faith but witless conformity. When I ask people what faith
means, almost without exception they say, a blind leap in the
dark. Just think for a minute what a blind leap in the dark
really means. Putting your lifes savings on a single lottery
ticket is a blind leap. Buying land in Mexico sight unseen is
a blind leap. Hi, weve just met; lets get married is a blind
leap. And these are preposterous choices! If thats what most
people think faith isholding hands and jumping off a cliff
then its not surprising that having faith is so difficult.
Whats more, that blind leap business flies directly in the
face of what we know from our own personal experience about
those other acts of faithfriendship and marriage. Those acts

Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith

of faith are most often not arrived at logically, but neither

are they completely impulsive. And though they may not be
painstakingly rational, they are by no means irrational. At each
stage of the journey of friendship and marriage, when the relationship calls for a deeper commitment and a more profound
level of trust, the new commitment is not baseless (like a blind
leap), but rather based on all the previous experiences the two
people have had together. The same holds true with God.
At the other end of the spectrum from those who say faith
is a totally irrational, baseless leap in the dark, there are those
who say, Okay, Ill believe if you give me scientific proof.
Theyll commit only when they have an ironclad guarantee,
evidence so clear and distinct they can have no occasion whatever to doubt it, and certitudes as unarguable as water freezing at thirty-two degrees, objects released from a height going
down, and the inevitability of death.
Just as the relativist, blind-leap people labor under a conviction about faith thats irrational, the rationalist certitude folks
labor under a conviction about faith thats impossible. Even
in the examples mentioned above, there is room for uncertainty. Someone might have dumped antifreeze into the water
this time or the object that dropped from a great height might
be jet-propelled. The only unquestionable certitude in life is
death, and even that is wildly unpredictable.
In physicsthe hardest of the hard sciencesweve
known that nothing is certain since Werner Heisenberg won
the Nobel Prize in 1932 for his Principle of Uncertainty that
demonstrated how objects in the sub-atomic world simply
dont yield to absolute certitude. You can tell where an electron is located at the moment, but you cant tell its velocity at
the same time, because when you bounce a bundle of energy
off it to tell where it is, you change its velocity and direction!
Sometimes the electron acts like a pellet and sometimes like

CHOOSING to Be

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a wave. Which is it at the moment? Well, uh, we dont know.

Thats not theology; thats the best of science.
This misconception of scientific proof comes, I believe,
from the fact that most of us never took anything more than
very rudimentary science classes. The experiments we did
were not experiments at all in the real sense of that word: a tentative procedure to see if something works. The lab manuals
were books of recipes: if you just dont mess up, this will come
out exactly the same every time. Chemistry was cookbook science. When a real scientist goes into her lab, she doesnt expect
to find the cure for the common cold by the time the bell rings,
or by the end of the term, or even by the end of her career. Real
scientists are content with knowing just a bit more, with pushing back the frontiers of knowledge just a bit moreexactly in
the same way as people learning to become better friends and
better marriage partners learn a bit more at a time. Its exactly
like establishing faith in God.
Even science, then, is an act of faith! It begins with preparation in the rudiments of science. Then, given that knowledge,
the scientist gets a hunch: Maybe if we fiddled with this bread
mold we might come up with a medicine; well call it penicillin. . . . Maybe if we fooled around with these silicon chips we
might find a kind of conductor. . . ! Maybe out of this mountain
of pitchblende we could get just a small vial of radium.
Those who study the way the human brain works discover two quite differentbut complementaryavenues to the
truth, two mental functions isolated (more or less) to the left
and right lobes. The left brain is analytical and takes things
apart. It is rational, logical, organized, and works in definitions and formulas. The right brain is intuitive and sees things
whole. It is insightful, engages in hunches, and operates in
seeming leaps. It works in symbols, pictures, and stories.
Each function is vital for a fuller, richer, less simplistic view
of whats really out there. In the cases just mentioned, the

Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith

scientist gets a right-brain hunch about the bread mold and

silicon and pitchblende and then turns those intuitions over
to the left brain to see if it does in fact work out rationally and
physically. The two functions complement one another and
work toward a unified understanding of reality.
If one were to work exclusively with the operations of the
analytical left brain, for instance, there could be no such thing
as friendship and love. Getting married and having children
would be utterly foolish without guarantees. Integrity, patriotism, honesty, and humor simply wouldnt compute. All
judgments of human behavior would be unbending and merciless. Conversely, if one were to work exclusively with the
operations of the intuitive right brain, any opinion would be
self-justifying, without any need to back it up with evidence.
Everybody would be going off haphazardly in all directions
at once. All judgments of human behavior would be random,
wishy-washy, and spineless.
The two lobes of the brain need one another to achieve a
balanced look at the truthno matter what the question. To
neglect either the rational powers of the left brain or the intuitive powers of the right brain is to act half-wittedly. To say that
faith requires absolute certitude or that it is a blind leap without any evidence at all is, well, half-witted.
An act of faith in anything is therefore neither a commitment based on certitude nor an irrational leap. Rather, its a bit
of both: a calculated risk, an educated guess, and a well-reasoned hunch. Both elements are essential for a well-rounded
opinion: the calculated-educated-reasoned part and the riskguess-hunch part. You will almost never have certitude (about
anything), but you come to a point where you have to make
a commitmentto a college, a career, a spouse, a child, an investment, and to God. You gather all the evidence and advice
you can (the calculation part) and then you come to a point
where you have a hunch that it all just feels right (the risk

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part). Then at least for a while you have to give yourself to the
decision to find if it is, in fact, right.
In the case of friendship, one takes a greater risk at each
stage of the relationship, often trusting the other before one is
really certain the other is up to it. The same is true of marriage
and the scientist in her lab: each act of trust fulfilled provides
an even firmer basis from which to take the next leap. There is
a risk, all right, just as there was for diver Greg Louganis when
in 1988 at the Seoul Olympics he hit his head on the concrete
high platform in the preliminaries. After he was patched up,
he climbed the ladder and dove again with a concussion. It
was a leap, all right, but it wasnt a blind leap. It was based on
the advice of his coaches, the approval of his doctor, and the
track record of those countless thousands of other successful
dives. It was an act of faith: a calculated risk.
Most of us would like things clear: its either this or its that.
But reality fails to conform to our desires (one more proof that
we are not God). For example, philosophers have always neatly
defined humans as rational animals. But this is far too simplistic, too reductionist, leaving out evidence that is not only
crucial but that definitively separates us from other animals.
There are distinctively human activities that simply cannot be
reduced to rational or to animal, to body or brain, or to a
combination of the two. Take for example displaying unselfish
sacrifice even for people we dislike; acting with honor when
we could easily get away with something; needing purpose
and meaning; and using understanding, wisdom, or good humor in the middle of terror. All these constitutively human activities, which no other animal has, defy reduction to body or
brain. They are solid evidence of a third human power: the
soul. And thats where faith happens.
The principle of complementarity requires a greater tolerance for ambiguity than many people are able to muster. They
want clear simplicities. The action in Goldings classic novel

Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith

Lord of the Flies, for instance, demonstrates a belief of German

sixteenth-century reformer, Martin Luther. Luthers idea is
that human beings are basically savage beasts, held in control
only by the structures and strictures of organized society. The
first third of any tabloid newspaper gives ample evidence of
that truth. Conversely, J. D. Salingers The Catcher in the Rye
demonstrates eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseaus belief that human beings are angelic innocents corrupted by society. Stories of sublimely noble and rare humans
such as Mother Teresa, Terry Anderson, Nelson Mandela, and
Helen Keller give ample evidence for that truth, too. Year after
year, my students say the two aforementioned novels really
tell it like it iseven though the novels are completely at
odds with one another. But the students are right because human beings are indeed bothangelic and bestial at once. This
is complementarity. Even if the two assertions seem contradictory, you can understand human beings better if you allow
them to be not either/or but both/and.
Is an electron a pellet or a wave? Yes. Are humans beasts or
angels? Yes. Are the operations of the left brain or right brain
more important? Yes. Is God utterly otherworldly (transcendent) or utterly this-worldly (immanent)? Yes. Is God three or
one? Yes. Was Jesus God or man? Yes. Are the eucharistic elements bread and wine or body and blood? Yes.
If you deal with God exclusively with your prove-it left brain
or exclusively with your blind-leap right brain, youll quite likely never find God, or at least the God most religions know.
This book attempts to lessen the precariousness of the commitment in faith to a person you cannot see and whom you
cannot box into a definition or into a picture. We can and will
explore the strictly rational evidence for and against a Mind
behind It All: the calculation. But just as in the case of friendship and marriage, this calculation cannot compel assent. If
God is going to prove himself, God can do that only in the

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way your other friends prove themselves: noticing, sharing

time and talk, sacrificing for one another, and trusting one another at rock bottom. This is the journey we begin.

Questions to Ponder and Discuss

The late film critic Gene Siskel used to ask those he interviewed: What are you sure of? Its a fine question.
Im sure Im a flawed good man who tries his best. Im
sure I was born to be a teacher. Im not at all sure of the
causes of original sin, but Im completely sure of its effects. Im sure I will not convince allor even manyto
reject their self-absorption, fears, and shortcomings in order to become more fully alive human beings, much less
Christians, much less Catholics. And Im content with
that. What are you sure of?
You know that you are sure of certain truths about yourself and your life. For instance, you know that honor is
more important than dishonor and kindness better than
exploitation. Explore what brings you to these convictions. How did they evolve? Surely not overnight. Try to
apply your insights into that process to what lies ahead in
trying to become sure about God, about organized religion, about Christianity, and about the Catholic Church.
Each of us holds certain values, without which we probably couldnt get through life. Brainstorm and jot down
the values you hold with greatest conviction: honesty?
ambition? responsibility? security? dignity? creativity?
Then try to put them in a rough order of priority for you
personally. They tell a great deal about you and about
the person you bring to God. Mull over the people, the
crises, the challenges, and the unexpected opportunities

Uncertainty: The Meaning of Faith

that have brought you to where you are as a person now.

This process surely didnt happen completely by chance,
nor did it come about from scrupulous planning. How
does one come to know, trust, and respect ones own self?
Some people are by nature or by upbringing shy, hesitant, and reserved. Others are outright paranoid, fearful
of trusting anyone, anytime. Still others can confidently
stride through the jaws of hell without batting an eye
because they trust themselves and life itself. Where do
you see yourself along the spectrum between those two
extremes? How easy or difficult is trust for you? What
are the obstacles to trusting others that are within you?
What are the hesitancies (and there surely must be some)
in trusting God?
Many people seem to have a quite satisfying relationship
with God without recourse to any organized religion.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of sharing
a common belief in ritual and community rather than
one-on-One, person-to-Person with God? (Again, surely
there are both pluses and minuses; surely a private connection to God and a common connection to God do not
preclude one another.)
If you are exploring these questions within a group, how
are you being called to trust in the other members of the
group? And to trust yourself?
Thomas Aquinas, thirteenth-century philosopher, theologian, and saint defines faith as an act of the intellect
assenting to the divine truth by command of the will,
moved by God through grace. Does this work for you?
How would you change the definition to reflect your

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own experience of faith in your friends, in your marriage, and in God?

Its perfectly okay that you have hesitations about statements from the Fathers of the Church, the present-day
administration of the Church, and even with Jesus himselfas long as you find some honest way to resolve
these difficulties, a way which keeps in mind not only
your discomforts with a particular thing that is said but
also with the powerful source of what is said. If you feel
such hesitations, raise them with a priest or other parish leader and try to make peace with them, rather than
let them irritate you to the point of bitterness. Dont be
afraid to ask questions. This is why God gave us minds.

For Further Exploration

Scripture: Genesis 22:113; Mark 9:1429; John 6:6669; Hebrews 11:140
Catechism of the Catholic Church: 199, 1816, 208789

For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man

nothing to give his soul for the whole
world . . . but for Wales?
Thomas More
In Robert Bolts A Man for All Seasons

2
The First Conversion: Humanity

t is a clich that the purpose of the Catholic Church is to

save our souls through the merits of Jesus Christ. Like most
clichs, it comes trippingly off the tongue, unexamined.
What are we saving souls from? Indeed, what are we saving?
What is a soul?
If you roam the jungles of our cities, its easy to become disheartened. You see so many hooded eyes and so many deadended faces. People are hurrying unsmilingly past, unaware
of anything but other insulated bodies, locked into various
electronic devices. They are so focused, so businesslike, so efficient, dehumanized, and seemingly soulless. Everywhere you
look, ads bastardize the meaning of value. Nothing seems
really sacred, not even sex. Especially not sex.
Picture a group of babies on a blanket, sweet-smelling,
giggling, and exploring one another. Now picture a group of
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people on a subway, slack-jawed, shrouded in blank indifference, and merely coping. All of those older people were once
exactly like those babies. What got lost?
A lot of things: vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder, to name
a few. It may sound silly at first, but I think the death of the
soulwhat makes us humanbegins around second grade.
After the innocent self-absorption of infancy, when parents catered to a childs every need, the world continued to be fascinating. A three-year-old is startled into wonderment every five
minutes even by such things as an empty box, the swaybacked
nag in a fairy tale, or raindrops trickling down a windowpane.
Preschool and kindergarten are intriguing, too, exciting. So is
first grade: Look, Daddy! I wrote my name!
But after that, weve got them. Learning becomes a serious,
efficient business, pointing toward those SATsand beyond to
the dog-eat-dog, its-a-jungle-out-there, rat-race world. Dont
ask questions or make waves. You get this material. Dont ask
why. Its required. The kids who still retain their curiosity, still
have hunches, smell rats, and ask why, become colossal headaches because they get in the way of the syllabus. Education
real learning, being curious, following the truth wherever it
leads, reasoning on your ownyields to schooling, whose sole
purpose is to get you into a good college so you can get a good
job. Most of the time, this is the way the system works. But at
least by seventh grade, youve learned how to beat the system:
Cliffs Notes, the Internet, and faked outlines. Thats life: beating the system, doing the minimum, and getting by. You tread
water and tread water and tread water. Then you die. But is
that really all there is?
The sole purpose of education ought to be mastering the
skills to answer the only truly important questions: What are
people for? What will help me live a truly fulfilled life? What
does success really mean? I have only one time around; how
do I get the most from it?