Catholicism and Atheism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've got this gadget on my home page that generates quotable quotes. You don't know what you're going to get next. Some are funny, some wise, some rude,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2011\/12\/catholicism-and-atheism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Catholicism and Atheism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've got this gadget on my home page that generates quotable quotes. You don't know what you're going to get next. 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{"id":268,"date":"2011-12-12T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2011\/12\/catholicism-and-atheism\/"},"modified":"2011-12-12T11:51:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T11:51:00","slug":"catholicism-and-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/standingonmyhead\/2011\/12\/catholicism-and-atheism.html","title":{"rendered":"Catholicism and Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve got this gadget on my home page that generates quotable quotes. You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to get next. Some are funny, some wise, some rude, some silly, some stupid.<\/p>\n

My favorite silly one is from Groucho Marx: \u201cTime flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.\u201d Geddit?<\/p>\n

Anyway, there\u2019s one from George Bernard Shaw today, \u201cThere is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.\u201d This is typical of Shaw\u2013who regularly debated with Chesterton about most anything and everything. It\u2019s typical because an awful lot of what he wrote seems to be witty or wise on first hearing, and on reflection turns out to be silly and stupid. His aphorisms are sort of anti-Chestertonian the way Satan is anti-St Michael.<\/p>\n

What on earth does he mean that \u201cthere is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it?\u201d What he means is that all the religions are valid ways to the same truth. It\u2019s not really much more than \u201cFaith is like a mountain and we are all climbing up a different path.\u201d This is only a short hop from the subjective quote about \u201cAll searching for God in our own way.\u201d which is only a short hop from \u201cLet us all find our own Truth\u201d or the classic, \u201cI\u2019m interested in spirituality but not religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaw is right that there is only one religion, but he is wrong in saying there are a hundred versions of it. If it is a religion at all, then there can only be one version. There may be a hundred perversions of that one version, but there is only one version.<\/p>\n

What I mean by saying that \u201cif it is a religion at all, then there can only be one version.\u201d Is that a religion must be concrete if it is to be a religion. It must consist of something. Vague \u2018religious\u2019 sentiment doesn\u2019t count. Dreamy feelings of \u2018unity with the cosmos\u2019 are unreliable. A moist eye at the sight of a puppy or kitten does not constitute religion. A religion has dogma. It has something you can get your head around and discuss and debate. A religion has a moral philosophy. It has a history. It involves real people. It has a liturgy. It has books and words and rituals and actions, and all these things are either true or false.<\/p>\n

Catholicism\u2013therefore is a religion. So it Hindusim and Islam and Judaism and Buddhism<\/a> and Jehovah\u2019s Witness-ism and a whole long list of other religions that have something to them. Why then did I say that there can only be one version of religion? Because if religion, by definition, consists of something. If there is something solid to it, then that something solid must be either right or wrong\u2013true or false. It can\u2019t simply be an interesting past time or an amusing hobby for people who like that sort of thing. If it is a religion it claims not only to be interesting or amusing but it claims to be true, so therefore we must examine whether it is true or not.<\/p>\n

If Catholicism is true, than the other religions are not other versions of it. They are either pre-versions of it or perversions of it. Religions that are more ancient than Catholicism are pre-versions\u2013in other words, they are pointers in their own way to the fullness of the Catholic faith. Animism and paganism and Hinduism and Buddhism and Shinto-ism and Judaism all\u2013to a greater or lesser extent\u2013point forward to the fullness of the revelation in Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

The other religions that come after Catholicism are perversions of it\u2013Islam and Protestantism and whatever other new fangled New Age religions are out there are all, in some way reactions against the monolithic truth of the Catholic faith. <\/p>\n

As such they either lead people to the fullness of the Catholic faith, or they lead people into atheism. Of course this process does not take place for many people. They don\u2019t follow the logic. They don\u2019t think it through. They don\u2019t have \u201cperfectly consistent minds.\u201d Nevertheless, it is true, as Bl. John Henry Newman has written, there is \u201cno medium in true philosophy between atheism and Catholicism\u2026 a perfectly consistent mind, under those circumstances in which it finds itself here below must embrace either the one or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"