Am I Still Catholic, Part 7: What is Catholic?

(01.03.2025)

This website of blogs was started in December of 2021, with my first blogs about “Am I still Catholic”, where I dug into what it actually means to be “catholic” and whether I still was, based on my current beliefs. I’m not going to re-state the discussions I had with myself in those blogs, but the summary was that I’m about 90% Catholic, based on the Nicene Creed and 100% Catholic, based on the Apostle’s Creed. However, it’s still not a simple answer when someone asks what it means to be Catholic. As I was going through some old religious books and booklets, the other day, I came across some points that made me revisit the idea of what is a “catholic” and how does that mark me, or anyone else.

From a booklet published in 1980, I found the bullet point of “Who Is a Catholic” with the following answer. "A Catholic is a member of the Roman Catholic Church, which is distinguished from all other Christian churches by its loyalty to the Pope, who is the head of the church because he is the successor of St. Peter. The earnest Catholic accepts what the Church teaches as coming from Christ Himself, and strives to conform his or her life to those teachings". That answer seems simple on the surface, but actually isn’t.

I agree with everything in that answer and therefore, I Am Catholic. However, the second sentence about accepting what the Church teaches as coming from Christ, is unclear, in my opinion. You can write down everything Jesus said and claim that those are the teachings of Christ and the beliefs of the Catholic Church. We’ve done that with the New Testament. What makes that unclear though, is that everything Jesus said was in parables and/or relevant to the society at the time. I firmly believe that there are many issues in modern time, that aren’t addressed clearly in the New Testament.

In order to answer all modern issues, a Catholic has to believe that when the Pope speaks “with authority” about something, he is in touch with God. The main complication with that is that 99% of the time, the Pope is stating his opinion and not “with authority” from God. There have only been a handful of new doctrines, from popes, in the 2000 plus years of our Church, that aren’t explicitly stated in the Bible. I still agree with those new doctrines, since there’s nothing explaining that they can’t be true.

So, if I disregard the corruption and politics of the modern Catholic Church, and just focus on the basics of the doctrine, I Am Still Catholic. That is the conclusion that I arrived at a few years ago when I first started asking myself the question. I think it still hold true now. In my spiritual journey of the last 20 years, I’ve had some new and interesting theories about the universe, ascension and descension, but none of my new ideas disregard the basic tenants of the Catholic Church. There are a lot of things about the universe and the afterlife that still aren’t explained. As a Catholic I can explore the unknowns and find answers, without contradicting any basics from Jesus.