Psychological Healing
in the Roman Catholic Mystic Tradition

Questions and Answers

Why don’t you read the Bible and turn your life over to Jesus? You just parrot Catholic dogma.

 
 have read the Bible, and I know that there is more to Christianity than the Bible itself, since Church Tradition determined which books constitute the Bible in the first place. And I know that arguing with you about any of this won’t get us anywhere. So let’s try something different. Let’s look at some issues from the perspective of common sense.

Let’s suppose that Tradition could be wrong. Maybe the Church’s teaching about morality—such as artificial birth control, for example—that isn’t found in the Bible is wrong. And maybe Christ’s teaching about divorce (Matthew 5:31–32; Mark 10:11–12; Luke 16:18), for example, comes from an archaic culture and really doesn’t apply to today’s “liberated” modern world. Maybe the Church’s teaching about the Trinity is wrong. Maybe the Church’s fidelity to Christ’s own actions in not ordaining women to the priesthood is all wrong. Maybe the Church’s understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is wrong, and maybe we should be celebrating Communion with something—like coffee and donuts—that is relevant to the modern world.

Maybe Tradition is all wrong, and maybe God doesn’t care about any of it.

Maybe.

All right. And now that we are on an equal footing here, consider the other “maybe.”

Maybe Tradition is true. Maybe there are ideas and practices which Christ handed on to the Apostles that didn’t get recorded in the Bible. Maybe Tradition has been inspired by the wisdom of the Holy Spirit over the ages, even if to the eyes of modern logic it seems restricted and conservative.

So what is a rational, enlightened person to do in the face of one “maybe” versus the other?

Well, consider, then, what you have to gain by rejecting Tradition. Personal convenience and pleasure, perhaps. Nothing more.

And what do you have to lose by accepting Tradition—that is, if it really doesn’t matter? Personal convenience and pleasure?

Hmm . . . so far, it seems more-or-less trivial, right?

So now consider what you have to gain by accepting Tradition—that is, if Tradition really does matter: everlasting life.

And what do you have to lose by rejecting Tradition—that is, if it really does matter? Everything—including everlasting life.

So think about this now. If you have turned your life over to Jesus—that is, if you truly love God above all else and seek to live a holy life as Christ taught us—then wouldn’t you do anything to avoid violating God’s will? Wouldn’t common sense—if not love itself—say, “I can’t risk doing anything that will offend Him, even if there’s only the slightest chance that it might be wrong”?

	And if a soul, retaining the slightest stain, were to draw near to God in the beatific vision, it would be to her a more grievous injury, and inflict more suffering, than Purgatory itself. Nor could God Himself, who is pure goodness and supreme justice, endure her presence. She would be out of place, and the sight of God, not yet entirely satisfied (so long as the least possible purification remained to be accomplished) would be intolerable to her, and she would cast herself into the deepest Hell rather than stand before Him and be still impure.
	—Saint Catherine of Genoa Treatise on Purgatory, Chapter XIV

In the end, therefore, isn’t your rejection of Tradition proof in itself that you haven’t really turned your life over to Jesus? In your rejection of Tradition, aren’t you saying psychologically that you’re willing to risk everything for the sake of nothing more than your own personal convenience and pleasure, and that you value your own reason more than you value love of God? And, in doing and saying all this, isn’t your so-called “faith” really just a veiled form of pride, the great sin of placing human reason above God’s holy Will?

	And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God in hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.
	— 1 Thessalonians, 2:13

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