Why Are We Catholic?

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[00:01:21] Our Lady Queen of Peace Retreat Center was built for all of us to enjoy. To learn more, visit olqpretreats.com and contact Steve Fracchia at 901-351-9832. You're listening to Saints Like Us. They did it. We can too. Now, here are your hosts, a couple of guys who are still working on it,

[00:01:49] Deacon Jeff Draczynski and Joe Thordeson. You're listening to Saints Like Us, and we have one really big question for you. Why are you Catholic? That's, I mean, why am I Catholic? Why is anybody Catholic? Why be anything? And that's a big question in the world, and we're here to try and do our best to answer it. I'm Deacon Jeff Draczynski. And I'm Joe Thordeson. How much time do we got today, man? Are we going to be able to do this? We can squeeze it all in in 30 minutes. I know we can. How about some reasons, I guess.

[00:02:18] Well, yeah, but, you know, at the end of the day, it's why are you, like, why am I? And so we can just speak from our own point of view. We don't have to answer for everybody else, but hopefully some people might hear in some of our answers, they might hear reasons why they should consider if they're not Catholic or maybe help them as Catholics to practice their faith more faithfully as Catholics. That's always a good thing to do. I will say this, sort of launching into this kind of conversation, is one, you know, I

[00:02:48] am a big advocate of doing things that you know what you're doing, right? Now, when I say it that way, I'll give you some context. People have asked me questions like, are we supposed to hold hands at the Our Father? You know, things like that at Mass. Oh, oh, yeah. So you ask that question, and then you start going like, well, why do you do it? Well, that's the way I was taught, or that's the way I was raised, or that was, you know, I see other people doing it. And you know, that's fine when you're a kid.

[00:03:15] Like you're, in fact, it's important when you're a kid to do what your parents do, to follow their path. They're supposed to be leading you down a path. But at a certain age, you have to discern for yourself, what is it that I believe? What is it that I want? So if I'm going to, don't hold hands at the Our Father if you don't know why you're holding hands. You know, even if you know, it's like, well, it's in the rubrics, which is actually not in the rubrics. But if it's in the rubrics to do it, then you should do it because the church, says to do it, because as your parent, and there's a reason behind that, why the church

[00:03:44] would say that. The church would never have arbitrary reasons. But at the end of the day, if someone says to you, hey, so I hear you're Catholic. Yeah, I'm Catholic. Why are you Catholic? Now, if you have to sit and pause and stop and ponder and think and then start kind of hemming and hawing, and then you wind up on something like, well, I was raised that way. It's kind of comfortable to me. And this is what I believe. And it's just how I am. You know, and you start playing that card. The honest truth is, A, it's not very convincing.

[00:04:13] It doesn't convince me, especially since, and it's not your job to convince me. But at the end of the day, if you're trying to convince me that maybe I should be, that's a terrible argument. You know, well, I was just raised that way. And, you know, I just kind of feels comfortable and I kind of do it and I'm used to it. At the end of the day, you are like low hanging fruit for a good Protestant who knows how to bring in a couple of little arguments from the Bible. They're going to pluck you right off the tree because you just, you don't know your faith.

[00:04:40] And so I'm a big believer in, if you're Catholic, be Catholic, be 100% Catholic. But to do that, you've got to actually discern what that is. And so everyone should, you know, as the scriptures say, give a reason, give a defense, you know, for their faith, be able to give a reason for their faith. And that's what each of us need to do. And it's the same thing when someone asked me like, well, why did you decide on the Catholic church? Right.

[00:05:05] And it's helpful in my own story, which I've only gone into detail on here, but a lot of people know that they've heard a witness talk or whatever that I've done. And they will hear that I was born and raised Catholic, kind of fell away because I didn't really study, didn't really understand, didn't really know. And that's very, very typical of people who were just kind of raised in a custom, right? In a familial tradition. We've just always been Catholic, you know, but no one ever sat around and talked about

[00:05:35] catechesis and the catechism and the teachings and the doctrine of the church at dinnertime. Right. You know, a lot of people don't do that. So then you raise these kids that are kind of lukewarm Catholics. Well, they're going to leave as soon as they find something better because they don't know what they're leaving. So for me, it was important for me to be able to leave the church, to be able to come back to it with a, with a vim and a vigor, with a, with a firm purpose of, of amendment of like finding my way back and suddenly going like, no, I searched and this is the church.

[00:06:04] Right. And I have reasons for the, for this is the reason, this is the church. But at the end of the day, I had to leave it to find it. If that makes sense. Well, I'm kind of curious because, you know, we don't really talk much about your, your, I don't know what you say, your reconversion. Reversion. Was there, were there, because at that point you're married and you got kids. Yeah. Is it along the lines of, I guess I'm wondering, was there a moment or was there just kind of a buildup of why am I not going to mass? In a nutshell, it was a one year process. No. Okay. Okay.

[00:06:34] So the falling away was a gentle, it was a general gradual thing. Okay. You know, I, I've always been like, I'll just say I've been a decent guy growing up. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink excessively. You know, I had my little bouts with a few things like in college or in high school, you know, just a few sips of this or that, you know, and just nothing really bad. I didn't steal. I had never been to jail. You know, I, I didn't like do a whole lot of dating and have all kinds of lascivious relationships or anything to be ashamed of really in that way.

[00:07:03] It was a generally regular guy, you know? And so it was a decent person. Now I went to church when I was growing up. We never missed mass. We never once missed mass as a family. Right. But I don't think we ever appreciated mass. We never talked about mass. It's just something we did. Right. And that custom is, I'm not saying that's bad. I think that's good. But at the end of the day, there needs to be a follow-up. Right. And so over the years, as I got exposed to college and other ideas and stuff like that,

[00:07:31] I started getting a little more lax in my, I'll just say need to go to mass. I didn't need it. Right. And I started becoming this sort of independent young man who's like, I don't need to have this and I don't need to have that. So I started buying into a lot of the worldly arguments. And so it was very easy to leave, but I got married in a Catholic church by God's grace. I found a nice Catholic girl. We got married in a Catholic church. We had, we had a couple of kids at the time, but I still didn't, I wasn't going to live a lie in my mind.

[00:08:01] I wasn't going to sit there and go like, I believe this firmly because I didn't at that time or, or I was kind of waning anyway. I didn't think a lot about it until I was really easy to kind of go like, you know, I'm just not going to go to church anymore. You know, I'm just, I'm just, it doesn't, you know, and I, and I never actually came to a point, Joe, where I said, I'm not going anymore. Like I'm an atheist or something like that. I would have told you I believed in God. And I did. I believed in some creator, some creator being I, I, I, so I, and I, and I prayed to that God.

[00:08:31] I really did. I just generally had these general kind of utterings that would go up to somewhere up there in the sky. And, you know, and I was just kind of a regular guy, but that, that was a gradual process. But after a while there was an emptiness in my wife, you know, we were married and she's like every Sunday inviting me to go to mass again, you're going to go this week. It's like, eh, maybe next week kind of a thing. So it was just kind of a thing you fall out of. Right. It reminds me of these, uh, when you get the gym membership and it's like, you're still

[00:09:00] a member of the gym, but you go twice a year or something like that. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, well, yeah, I'm a member of gold's gym, but if you don't go, then it, yeah. But after a while I started feeling an emptiness, right? I started feeling an emptiness and I won't go into all the details, but basically I started to feel this hunger and this need. And I worked at a place that was founded by non-denominational evangelical born again Christians. And they saw me as low hanging fruit, right?

[00:09:27] They saw me as, as a, as a good Mark, you know, and they're good people. They're not, they weren't doing any, they had no, uh, you know, hidden agenda or I'll just say they didn't really have any kind of malicious intent. No, they're, they were, they love Jesus and this is how they love Jesus. And they wanted me to love that, that way as well. And so they invited me into that process and I actually, uh, took it. I went that way, but it caused stress in our marriage right off the bat because I wanted

[00:09:56] when I had a sort of a born again relationship with Jesus, I'd said the sinner's prayer and I thought, Hey, I used to be Catholic, but now I'm a Christian, you know, which is bad language for a Catholic to say it that way. Cause it's not true. Catholics are the original Christians, but that's exactly right. But at the end of the day, uh, you know, this is how I kind of identified and said or whatever. And, and I'm like, well, best, here's what we'll do. We've got a couple of kids, you know, every other week we'll go to your church and we'll go to my church. I'm Mr. Compromise here.

[00:10:25] You know, she's like, no, you knucklehead. She wouldn't have liked that. No, no. She said no, you know? And, and so I had set off on a, like a one year plan to prove her wrong by examining like history. And when I did that, I started, I started going like, I'm reading a lot of, uh, like, uh, modern day theologians, Protestant theologians. I'm reading all these books and I'm really liking them. Um, and you know what? I'll, I wonder if there's some old books out there, some really old writings that would

[00:10:55] prove to my wife that the original church was a non-denominational. It was just Jesus church, right? It was the way it wasn't, it wasn't Catholic. Right. And so I wanted to prove that to her. Well, lo and behold, not only were there one or two, there were thousands of documents. So I started reading them and one after another, I had to discard them because they were very Catholic. I mean, we're talking about first, second, third, fourth, fifth centuries. And they're, the writings are explicitly Catholic.

[00:11:22] They're talking about a confession of sins to a priest. They're talking about Jesus's presence in the Eucharist. I mean, that's from like one, uh, 150 AD. St. Justin Martyr talks about not as a bread, uh, you know, traditional bread, uh, food. Do we eat this? But as the body and blood of Jesus is, you know, it's like, this is not ordinary food. Right. You know? And so when that, when that happened, man, it just opened my eyes and I came back

[00:11:48] with a, with a, with a firm, uh, just love for Jesus, but also in the Catholic church. So that was amazing for me. It's funny how many people study their way into the Catholic church. Scott Hahn, you know, uh, Dr. John Bergsma. There's a ton. Half the, half the faculty probably over at Steubenville are, uh, people that studied their way in. You're exactly right. And you can do that. Now there's also, also conversion of the, of the heart as well, where people can be drawn to like the, the beauty of the liturgy. Right.

[00:12:18] Right. There's something intrinsically beautiful about a beautiful liturgy that makes you go. Something is bigger than like just my earthly experience. There's something supernatural going on here. And you can have that experience as well. That, that speaks to your heart. Uh, but like my, it started with my head and then all the other stuff followed. The heart followed my head. Some people's heads follow their hearts. Uh, either way you get there by like discovering things and going like, I love my Protestant friends.

[00:12:48] I really do. And I know they love Jesus and Jesus loves them. And I know they have as good of a chance of going to heaven as I do. Right. They really do. But at the end of the day, um, I wouldn't choose another faith over the Catholic faith as I've been presented with many. I can't imagine it. Yeah. No, we should go through some of those reasons for each of us as we, uh, uh, uh, as we continue to ponder all this stuff. Well, it's interesting too, because, um, you know, being Catholic, it's, it's not just,

[00:13:14] okay, well, it's kind of a both and it's like intellectually, it makes sense. And, and, uh, emotionally and spiritually, it makes sense. It feels right. And maybe there's a balance of why, you know, that's what keeps us, uh, grounded in. I want to talk about feelings when we get back. Yeah, absolutely. So, all right, good stuff, man. So you're listening to a saints like us, uh, before we go to the break, I just want to remind everybody, get on over to memphiscatholicradio.com.

[00:13:41] Check out all the great podcasts that we have there, uh, binge listening and get in touch. It's really easy to do. You can go to the contact page and reach out that way. Or the more fun option is hit the little blue button on the right that says leave a voicemail and you can leave a voicemail for any of the shows. And if they're interesting, we'll play it on the air and download the Memphis Catholic radio app. You're listening to saints like us. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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[00:14:50] The Memphis Catholic Radio Network is supported by listeners and sponsors like you. If you'd like to support Memphis Catholic Radio for as little as $10 a month or advertise your business, visit us at memphiscatholicradio.com. You are listening to Saints Like Us and we are talking about why we're Catholic. We're going to really get into some reasoning behind that. I'm Deacon Jeff Draczynski.

[00:15:19] And I'm Joe Thordeson. And you know what's interesting, Deacon Jeff, before the break, we kind of went through your journey of, well, you strayed a little bit into Protestantism and intellectually it didn't hold water for you. So you came back. But it's interesting. I mean, hey, sometimes people, you know, maybe they hit rock bottom and they have a spiritual experience and that's what prompts them. And then eventually, hopefully they study and then intellectually it also makes sense.

[00:15:47] But every person's journey is different. Right. Right. Everyone's journey. I think the Holy Spirit's involved. And when the Holy Spirit's involved, the Holy Spirit will reach you how you need to be reached. Yeah. But it's interesting because I think this is sort of, it's amazing how often we overlook fundamental questions in our life. Like, why are you Catholic? Well, you have to think about that. Yeah. Why am I Catholic? Why do I go to, why do I go to mass every Sunday? Exactly right. Why not? Because you know, I'm going to be honest with you. It's actually easier to be Protestant.

[00:16:17] It is easier. I mean, in terms of like doctrinally explaining things, it's a very simple idea. Right. Right. You know, Jesus, you know, I love you. I'm a sinner. I can't do it without you. And I invite you into my life to be my Lord and Savior. And then once saved, always saved. And now I'm not saying that Protestants are lazy or anything like that. And you can work really hard and you can study the Bible. But they make things, you know, you don't have to go to mass every Sunday.

[00:16:47] You don't have to go to worship every Sunday as a Protestant. You don't have to do certain things. There's a lot more rules in being Catholic. Yeah. Right. And you start thinking like, hey, why don't I just make this all easier? You know, and there are some things that like to me sounded like it was just catered right to me. That just made it so much easier. Let me just say, I'll say the sinner's prayer. You know, you can say this prayer. And if you mean it, then you can go to heaven and you can basically just, you can be assured that you're going to heaven. It's like, well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. Yeah.

[00:17:16] You know, I'll take that. But the honest truth is, I think I was being disingenuous, you know, and I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think that was disingenuous on their part so much as on mine of accepting something like that and thinking like, if I just say this and I genuinely would mean it, but at the end of the day, is that enough? Yeah. And it's like, no. But at the end of the day, when I went back and started looking, once I started searching

[00:17:43] because there was stress in our marriage and I knew that it wasn't going to work and I tried to prove my wife wrong, I ended up proving myself wrong, right? Proving her right. But I don't think she even knew all this stuff, but I studied. But one of the first things that got me was really just the historical aspect. The idea that this is the one church that was founded in 33 AD, all the other churches. If you, if you look at every major denomination, every single one of them, they have starting

[00:18:11] dates, you know, so if you, if you look at like any kind of Protestant faith, they, the earliest ones are in the late 1400s, but, but 1500s, the early 1500s. So Henry VIII, right, started the Anglican church, the Church of England and, and Martin Luther started the Lutheran church. And then after that, there was all these, you know, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. And all these different people, Wesley, you just go down the list, John Smith, you know, the Baptist.

[00:18:41] Yeah. I have a Google challenge for people. If you're, if you're interested in seeing, seeing what this actually looks like, I know Deacon Jeff in your office, you've got a famous drawing that, that I actually, that I also have at my house where it shows a tree. Oh yeah. So folks, if you, I don't know what you would call this, but you could say that the, the tree of Christian history or something, but basically in the trunk of the tree, it lists

[00:19:07] literally every single Pope that's ever lived when they, when they died. And then on the branches going out, it shows where different denominations like Protestant churches started and that they were actually started by people. Ours was, I mean, well, they were started by an individual. Ours was started by Jesus who appointed Peter. Right. And he said, you are Peter. It's visually very compelling. Yeah, exactly right. And he said, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

[00:19:37] And I give to you, Peter, the keys to the kingdom of heaven, which you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Yeah. What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. And it's like, and from that point forward, the apostles, the other apostles treated Peter with respect. And there's so many examples in scripture where Peter's listed more times in the new Testament than anybody, but Jesus. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, but it's like, it's like, there's a reason for that. Almost a hundred times he's mentioned all the other ones.

[00:20:03] The closest apostle is John who's, if you include the, the, the one Jesus loved also, it's like 40, 40 times or so. Well, one of the things that, so I've never, I've been Catholic my whole life. And I gotta be honest that the times where I went to other, to like my friends, just maybe there was a wedding and we went to a church, you know, to a Protestant church. I never once felt attracted. And I'll be honest, I felt it was almost kind of repellent to me. Like I didn't like being in there.

[00:20:31] Like I felt very comfortable being, you know, a Catholic. However, I, as a kid, I probably was a lot more defensive because we're doing all these things that they don't do. You know what I mean? And then also they would, if they challenged me like, well, you Catholics do such and such. I didn't always have a good answer and I didn't totally understand. But you were a kid. As you got older, you, I hope you developed an answer.

[00:20:57] Well, what I was going to say is what I found was when I got older and I, and I really in my, my, I guess you could say my re conversion to the faith happened at about 24 years old. I, you know, I w I was a bartender. I tried, I was living by the beach. I was doing kind of that lifestyle and that, that got old really quick. And I wanted to do something meaningful. But what I, what I found was that, um, you talked about history and, um, archeology and

[00:21:25] science actually really prove out our faith pretty in a pretty compelling way. But one of the things that I found really empowering was that I used to think that to answer or to, to sort of prove the faith or to just demonstrate that the Catholic church is the true, the true church was really complicated and I would need like hours to do it. But really you don't, there's, there's a lot of pretty compelling arguments you can, you can put forth pretty succinctly in a pretty easy way.

[00:21:54] The first church and it was the only church for the first, it was, it was unbroken for the first thousand years of Christianity until the Eastern and Western churches separated in a, in a way, uh, right. But there's still the two lungs that that's why they have valid sacraments, but it wasn't until 1500 years. And then all, so there was this Catholic church. There was basically one church and there were all these popes and historically this was the church.

[00:22:22] There is no mystical golden thread that goes back of all these evangelicals. It wasn't the case at all. There were bishops, priests, deacons, uh, there were religious, there were, uh, the lay faithful and that had been that way for 1500 years, you know? And, and so if you just look at the history, you realize there was, there was only one church. And so why would you abandon that church? Because you can have lots of reasons. And I don't want to dismiss people's reasons, like if they wanted to leave the Catholic church,

[00:22:52] but like this idea that like, well, you're, you're, you're priests, uh, abused children or whatever. It's like, okay, so now we're talking about individuals that, that had problems or did problematic things, but that doesn't condemn an entire church. Um, you know, and there's lots of arguments that we won't even be able to spend time doing that I could easily dismiss those, those charges. It actually demonstrates it because they're violating the, the principles of our faith. And they'd be laicized and kicked out exactly because they didn't hold muster.

[00:23:21] But, but, um, what, when it makes sense, that's really like it, it, it turbo charges your, um, I don't know where you're not just saying, well, I believe in a once upon a time, there was a such and such. No, you're believing in an actual historical figure. And then when you start looking at the, um, I don't know, the, uh, sacraments, I think, cause you were talking about why do we, why are we Catholic? Basically to me, the sacraments, it's almost like a superpower you, you, you receive and you feel it too. Right.

[00:23:50] And this is what I think like in terms of the sacraments has another big reason why I'm Catholic is because of the sacraments. No other faith tradition, especially the modern, modern Protestant, uh, traditions offer the sacraments in the way that we do. Some have a few things that they will call sacramental, but they don't convey the grace like we define them to be able to do. And the church has always held this to be true for, for 2000 years. This has been true. Right.

[00:24:15] And the biggie of course is Eucharist and the idea of, of Eucharist and that, that you could be so close to Jesus so much so that you take him into your body, that God would come to us as something as commonplace as bread, as nourishing, as good and tasty as bread, but also something as simple. And every day, give us this day, our daily bread. He taught us in that prayer. And that's why we look at this and go like, wait a second.

[00:24:42] So unless you eat the flesh of the blood of the, the, the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life within you. It's like, what is he talking about? In John chapter six, he's talking about the daily bread. He's talking about us receiving him. And he even let people leave him out of a misunderstanding that we can't handle this. It's a hard teaching, right? It's a hard saying. And they left and he didn't call them back and say, Hey, I was just speaking symbolically. He meant it literally. He was setting up so that we would understand that he would come to us in this sacramental

[00:25:11] way and that we would actually be able to taste of the divine nature. We could actually touch the divine, touching the face of, of, of God on this earth. No other faith tradition offers that. And one of the things I, I, another thing, and we saw this in our own lifetime, especially, you know, growing up with Pope John Paul II, let's face it, the guy was, I mean, he, he was what, 26 years or 20, maybe 20. How many years was he Pope? He was Pope for over 25 years.

[00:25:41] And, and one of the things I always loved is because we see this even, you know, there's other denominations where maybe, you know, the popular thought of the day is that, you know, so, so we're going to embrace, you know, we're going to be a pro-choice now. This, well, the Catholic church has never waffled, even when it's, even when there's a lot of pressure politically, or there's pressure in society to get us to, uh, the Catholic church, we stand firm with, we have never.

[00:26:10] We're, we have never changed doctrinal, uh, de fide, true teachings. We have never changed them. They've held true and they will continue. That's why when people say, Hey, so, uh, you know, you're going to be ordaining women soon, right? No, we're not. And if we do, I'm leaving the Catholic church cause it's not the true church. Right. Right. Cause it would have just changed. Or if they would say like, well, Jesus, you, if you believe Jesus is not present, you know, or you don't have to confess your sins to a priest or, uh, two, uh, same, uh, same

[00:26:39] sex couple can get married. If, if any of these things happen, then it's not the true church. That's why you can tell that the Catholic church is never going to alter its doctrinal, uh, uh, truths, right. That have been revealed. And the, the church is the megaphone of God and speaks the voice of God to the people, but we don't come up with the teachings like we didn't, they're revealed by God through the church. Yeah. And, and basically I know it sounds, uh, maybe it's a simplistic way to look at it, but I've

[00:27:08] always thought of the Catholic church as almost like, um, uh, we're like, it's like the popes and the bishops and the priests. It's almost like they're Jesus's babysitters till he gets back. You know, making sure that he, they interpret, uh, his instructions clearly. It's a living church. They don't have the authority to change. Well, they're not going to be exactly right. They are not. That's the teaching magisterium of the church. It can't be changed. It won't change. Right. Now, the other big reason why I'm Catholic and why I love it so much is really the,

[00:27:37] the beauty, the, it's part of the history, but like the, the architecture, the music, uh, the, the poetry, the, the, they gave us the Bible, the Catholic church, bishops argued about what books should be in it. So Protestants thank your, your Catholic bishops who gave you the Bible as it stands today. It was ratified in the Catholic church and promulgated by the Catholics. It's like all that stuff together to me is this beautiful heritage, this great tradition. That's so beautiful. And so wonderful.

[00:28:06] I could not see myself in any other faith. Me, me too. And it's funny because I knew we wouldn't get to everything. I mean, there's, there's a million other reasons too, but, um, maybe we can have a part two on this. Yeah. Maybe we'll do a part two, but Hey folks, if you've got your reasons, we'd love to hear from you. This is another great opportunity to reach out at memphiscatholicradio.com. Cause, um, I mean, it's, I, I can't imagine not being Catholic, Deacon Jeff. Amen. Amen. So, but, um, all right, well, uh, another action packed episode is in the can, so it's

[00:28:35] time to get out of here. So you've been listening to saints like us. So until next week, I'm Joe Thorderson and I'm Deacon Jeff Draczynski.