This week we conclude the story of my journey back to the Catholic Church. I struggle with the question “Does God exist?” Next week, we begin a multi-part series on my travels through the special education system from kindergarten through high school.

Hello, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 14 of Contemplating Life.

This week we will wrap up the story of my journey back to the Catholic Church after a nine-year absence.

Last week I described what I did after the moving experience of attending the Easter Vigil service that had prompted me to re-examine whether or not the Catholic Church had any meaning for me. I began attending adult religious education programs and studying Scripture. I discovered that the Catholic approach to Scripture scholarship is much more logical and common sense than the evangelical or fundamentalist Protestant literalist approach.

The remaining issue was, is there really a God?

The cassette tape of a lecture given to me by Father Paul helped me understand my role in the Church using the analogy of a body that is handicapped. It was another tape he loaned me that gave me a strategy for wrestling with the existence of God.

The lecturer tried to tackle the question of proving that God exists. His conclusion was… don’t bother. It can’t be done. It wasn’t just that old adage: “For those without faith no proof is possible and for those with faith no proof is necessary.” His thesis was, proving God is a bad idea altogether. To deal with issues of faith, you have to assume there is a God and then see where that takes you.

Oh no… They got me again. They made the connection to something I already believed.

I believe in math. I believe in logical proof that comes from math. But even in the most strict Euclidean mathematical proofs you have to start somewhere. You have to start with certain things that are given. We call these axioms and postulates. Without getting into the technical differences between the two we can simply say that they are things that are so self-evident that they are assumed to be true without the need for proof. You have to start somewhere with a logical argument and then piece things together in a logical manner to develop new ideas.

Consider mathematics. We don’t ask “what is zero” or “what is one?” We assume a mathematical concept called a unit one. We can then describe zero as the absence of one. We can invent an operation we call addition in which one added to one creates something new we call two and from there, three and four and five and so on literally ad infinitum. Reverse the process of addition and label that subtraction. Do addition and subtraction repeatedly and we get multiplication and division.

In geometry, we start out with points. We connect them with things called lines and we assume axiomatic the idea that you can connect any two points with a straight line and that line can be extended indefinitely.

Logic, science, and mathematics all depend on certain fundamental axioms that we assume but cannot prove are true.

There is even a form of proof where you assume something is false and then see if that leads to a contradiction. If that contradiction exists, then your hypothesis is true.

Let’s make God an axiom. Start with it as an assumption and see where it leads us. If it leads us to an inescapable contradiction then we have to reassess those axioms.

Okay, so we got God. We got humans. Natural to assume that God being a God that he made humans. Why? Maybe he was bored. He wanted people around. He must’ve been lonely.

John the Evangelist tells us “God is love.” John the Beatle tells us, “All you need is love.” Ringo the Beatle tells us “you need somebody to love” even if you’re like me and you sing out of tune. It’s reasonable to assume God created us out of love.

Why does evil exist? Because we have free will. We have the power to choose evil over good. Why did he give us free will? The classic story of Svengali taught us that there is no love without free will. A maestro hypnotized his protégé to fall in love with him but realized it wasn’t real love and released her from his spell. We have to be able to choose against love otherwise love has no meaning.

What do you do to show someone your love? You do things to please them. You share in their goals and their ideals. You make their work your work. You derive mutual happiness from these common activities. Because, by definition, God is eternal, that happiness can be eternal as well.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

We just assumed for the sake of argument that God exists and we ended up deriving the first four questions of the Baltimore Catechism! Who made you? God made me. Who is God? God is the supreme being who made all things. Why did God make me? God made me to show forth his goodness and to share with us his eternal life. What must we do to share in God’s eternal life? We must know him, love him, and serve him.

Holy shit. There is a bizarre kind of logic to Catholic Christian theology.

Okay, if you want to get really rigorous. I haven’t proven anything. But there’s enough logic and it makes enough sense that I don’t feel like a total hypocrite to say that I want to express the values and beliefs that I share with the Catholic Church in the context of that Church. And I don’t have to check my brain with the brain check girl before they let me in the door. You can be a logical, thinking, not hypocritical person and still be a person of faith.

At least I can. Your mileage may vary.

So, maybe I can exist in this Church and not give up my logical thinking nature. Faith and reason are not mutually exclusive.

But just what the fuck do I believe? If I’m going to concentrate on the things I do believe in and not get bogged down in the things I don’t believe in, it couldn’t hurt to take a survey of where I am on that scale for each bit of theology.

I made a mental list sorted by level of belief. At the top, I put things like dedication to social justice, respect for life, opposition to war especially nuclear war, and the need to serve my fellow human beings. Somewhere in the middle, there was a belief in Scripture and respect for the authority of the church to offer moral guidance. Not really solid but not out of the question now that I had a deeper understanding of where Scripture and tradition came from. Near the bottom was a solid belief in eternal life and way low were ridiculous things like the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Some of those things I labeled, “No way José.”

I never really wrote down the list or formerly labeled each item but I had a rough idea of where things were. Occasionally, I would take something on the “I’m not so sure but I’m not totally opposed to the idea” category and ask myself, “What would it hurt if I gave them that one? Take a leap of faith and say until contrary evidence comes along I’ll give them this one.”

The result of these little moves was that something else would fall into place. Something else that had been troubling me or that I didn’t understand gradually started to make more sense. The result was that everything on the list slowly bubbled its way higher. After a year or so, I found myself such that even if I wasn’t sure or even if I had extreme doubts about certain parts of theology. There were no more items on the, “No way José” list.

Nearly 40 years later do I believe in Real Presence in the Eucharist? Who am I to say? At what point does a symbol become so powerful that it becomes the thing it symbolizes? Can a symbolic thing pass the Turing test? If so, then the symbolism of the Eucharist is so powerful that there is Real Presence. Jesus says, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” If Jesus and the Father are indistinguishable from one another then they pass the Turing test and they are equivalent. Jesus is fully human and fully divine.

What about eternal life? Am I certain I’m going to heaven? Not really. But in the end, does that even matter? Oh sure, it means I was wrong about all of Christianity. But does it change how I live my life? Do not Christian values still have meaning to me? I can hope for eternal life. If I die and I’m dead, my life wasn’t wasted by following Christian teaching. Who am I to say?
That’s just their opinion. They could be wrong. But they could be right.

Does that mean everything the Catholic Church has ever done is 100% right? Oh God no. The Church has done and continues to do terrible things. It’s far from perfect. And so am I and you and everyone else.

That’s just the beginning of my story of nearly 40 years of strongly dedicated service to my parish and my Church. I don’t have all the answers. Neither does the Church. Neither do scientists. We are all seekers.

I may go back and fill in more details of this early part of my journey and I’ve got decades of other stories to tell. Maybe these stories are my gospel. Maybe this is my version of the ascending view. I write down what God revealed to me through His presence in my life. I offer it up as my ascending view saying this is what you revealed to me. Did I get it right? I hope so. It’s the best I can do.

But for now, let me jump to the end a bit. In the next year, I agreed to be Godfather to my sister Carol’s first child Brittany. And when they asked all those questions about what I believe (reference the baptism scene from the movie the Godfather) I could say yes with a straight face.

As I mentioned, I attended RCIA and other adult education programs at my parish.

I also attended a Christ Renews His Parish weekend retreat and became part of the team that presented the program to the next group of parishioners. My Christian witness speech included some of the things in the past couple of episodes of this podcast, especially the story about the paralyzed woman and the analogy of the body.

Eventually, I began teaching RCIA classes and taught them for over 30 years. For a few years, I also presented a program called “Catholics Returning Home” in which we helped inactive Catholics who had left the church for whatever reason tried to find their way back. It was sort of a quickie six-week version of RCIA.

At the following Easter vigil, they need a volunteer to do the Scripture readings. I volunteered to read Romans 6. “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?“

The panic attacks over my mortality gradually drifted away. Does that mean I suddenly believed in a certain afterlife and was no longer scared of death? No. Nobody really knows what happens when you die… well… except that you crap your pants. But nobody knows what happens after that. I think that the peace of mind came from being occupied with living rather than preoccupied with death. I had important work to do. And I was going to do it as long and as hard as I could.

Maybe that’s why I started this podcast. I need to spend my time contemplating life.

That’s enough religion for now. I’ll return to the topic in some future episodes. Next week, we began a multipart series recounting my school days and making my way through the special education system.

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I will see you next week as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.