ext_50177 ([identity profile] fpb.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] inverarity 2011-04-01 08:31 pm (UTC)

I;m tempted to ask you to try. You see, one does not become Catholic out of a general need, but out of a specific admiration of something basic about Catholicism. In many cases it is the shining rationalism of the likes of Thomas Aquinas (although you are allowed to be a Catholic and not like Aquinas; the current Pope, an outstanding thinker himself, does not); or it may be that the claims of the Church - one, apostolic, undivided - correspond to someone's idea of what a body emanating from God must be like (that was JH Newman's path, I think); you may become convinced by its historic claims (that was mine) or by a general sense of fitness to reality (GK Chesterton's), of suiting reality as a key suits a lock. But you have to believe that some fundamental feature of the Church is - not effective, not wise, not decent or even good - but RIGHT, correct, corresponding to reality; and that is something that nobody can fake.

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