Paul Whitcomb - Confession of a Roman Catholic

Confession of a
Roman Catholic

Paul Whitcomb

Nihil Obstat:	Rev. Edmund J. Bradley
Censor Deputatus
Imprimatur:	Timothy Manning
Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles
Vicar General
December 23, 1958

Formerly published by Loyola Book Co., Los Angeles, California.

ISBN: 978-0-89555-281-5

The typography of this booklet is the property of TAN Books, an Imprint of Saint Benedict Press, LLC, and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher.

TAN Books
Charlotte, North Carolina
www.TANBooks.com

2012

Dedicated to
the Unification of All Christians
within the Mystical Body
of Jesus Christ

Paul Whitcomb

Gift better than Himself God doth not know,Gift better than his God no man can see;This gift doth here the giver given bestowGift to this gift let each receiver be:God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me,Gods gift am I, and none but God shall have me. St. Robert Southwell 16th century English priest martyred during the Protestant Reformation

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

So that the title will not mislead anyone, it should be pointed out that this booklet is NOT a transcript of a Roman Catholic confessing his sins in the Sacrament of Penance. Nor is this booklet a critique on a particular church or religious faith. This confession is simply a graphic recounting of a rather extraordinary spiritual odyssey, a spiritual odyssey which had its finale in the Catholic Church. This is simply a testimonial of one mans faith, an intimate glimpse of one mans soul . Viewed in the broad sense one might call this a study of the Catholic psyche , for contained in this testimonial is the basic Catholic motivation, the reason why all Catholics are Catholics. To get the most out of the authors narrative, however, one really should view it in the narrow sense, that is, as an individual religious experience confided privately, person to person, for then one will more fully recognize the sincerity and good will that inspired it, and more fully appreciate the unreserved frankness of its presentation. But viewed either way this booklet is sure to provide a memorable reading experience.

Yes, dear reader, I am a Catholic, or Roman Catholic, if you prefer. I recognize the Pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth, I worship God at that solemn rite called the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, I venerate the Blessed Virgin Mary and I confess my sins to a priest.

I am one of those people who harbor the conviction that the Catholic Church is the one true Church of Jesus Christ .

And if you happen to be of another religious faith, particularly if you happen to be a Protestant, I have a pretty good idea what you are thinking. You are probably thinking: Poor deluded fellow...it is a pity that he has never been exposed to the light of Scripture, a pity that he does not enjoy the intellectual freedom enjoyed by other Christians...for if he had the least familiarity with Sacred Scripture, the least freedom of intellectual inquiry, he would never subscribe to such a faith...he would be Protestant, or an Eastern Orthodox, or an unaffiliated Christiananything but a Roman Catholic.

This is likely to be your opinion. In fact, if you did not regard me as something of a religious oddity I would be very surprised. You hear so many stories about the strange goings on in the Catholic Church, and so many of these stories purport to be authoritative reports on Catholic belief and practicewhat else can you think? If you did not attach some credence to these stories, or at least entertain some lively suspicions, you just would not be a normal non-Catholic.

Before you pass final judgment, however, there is something I feel you should know: I have a confession to make. I have something to tell you that will undoubtedly surprise you and strike you as being altogether incredible; but believe me, dear reader, it is the truthevery word of it.

All the stories you have heard about the unscriptural and totalitarian character of the Catholic Church notwithstanding, it was my pursuit of Scriptural truth and my exercise of intellectual freedom that led me to become a Catholic .

I mean that! But for the fact that I was exposed to the light of Scripture, but for the fact that I do enjoy freedom of intellectual inquiry, and but for the fact that I found all those accusations against the Catholic Church to be thoroughly untrue , I would, in all probability, have this day the same opinion of Catholics that you have.

You see, I have not always been a Catholic. For the first 32 years of my life I was a Protestant. And what is more, I was a through and through Protestant. I was born of Protestant parentsan Episcopalian father and a Methodist mother. I was baptized a ProtestantEpiscopal because my brother before me was baptized a Methodist. I was reared a Protestantsent regularly to Episcopal, Methodist, Congregational and Baptist Sunday schools, whichever was handiest to where we lived, and enlisted in various Protestant youth movements. My parents were staunch liberal Protestants: they believed that one church is as good as anotherso long as it is Christian and Protestant.

As might be expected, when I reached manhood I married a Protestanta devout Augustana-Synod Lutheran. Then began my stint, for the sake of domestic harmony, in the Lutheran faith. I say my stint in the Lutheran faith, because within a years time my wife and I were obliged by economic considerations to move to another section of the country where, except for a sprinkling of Baptists and Pentecostals, all of the Protestants were Methodist. There I became active once again in the Methodist Church, my wife joining with me (I think that, with the possible exception of Missouri-Synod Lutherans and some Southern Baptists, all Protestants are liberals at heart), and there I decided to become, and in due course did become, a Methodist minister.

Yes, for 32 years, through childhood and well into adulthood, my environment was strictly a Protestant environment, my creed strictly a Protestant creed. If ever there were a thoroughbred Protestant, it was I.

And I say that without any misgivings. Why should I have misgivings? My association with Protestantism did me a great deal of good. It was as a Protestant that I learned of the reality and power and munificent goodness of God. It was as a Protestant that I learned of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, come into the world to atone for the sins of man and lead man in the way of eternal salvation. It was as a Protestant that I learned to acknowledge and revere the Bible as the holy Word of God . And it was as a Protestant that I came to know many wonderful God-fearing people, people whose sincerity and genuine Christian charity were a great source of inspiration to me.

It would be deceitful and most ungrateful of me to deny that I benefited from my long association with Protestantism. In all Christian truthfulness I must admit that those were good days, so good I still feel a very pleasant nostalgia whenever they are recalled to memory.

However, be that as it may, I had to make a change. In conscience I had to become a Catholic .

Divine Providence just would not have it any other way. To be sure, I was an avid student of the BibleI believed that the Bible is the sole Christian rule of faith. But, as Divine Providence would have it, the more I studied the Bible, and the more I made it my rule of faith, the more I realized that my faith was not wholly what God had ordered. I discovered voids in my religious fabric, voids which had to be filled if I were to know real peace of soul. This feeling of spiritual insecurity led me inexorably to a study of comparative religion; and, again as Divine Providence would have it, the more I studied comparative religion the more I came to realize that the Catholic Faith was the one faith that could fill the voids in my religious life, the one faith that could give me the real peace of soul I longed for.

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