Why Do Catholics Go On Believing?

When I was a young boy I wanted to be a Catholic Priest. It seemed like a sure way to gain prestige and honor throughout one’s life. I went into the Catholic Seminary, but while I was there it occurred to me that there may be no such thing as God and that I may be wasting my life. I left the seminary and began a lifelong search for the truth about God. Ultimately, I concluded that there is no such thing as God, and that all teaching about him is an illusion.

Today, as I drive by Catholic Churches on Sunday the parking lots are filled with cars. It is plain to see that millions of Americans still believe in the Church and still go to weekly mass. It astonishes me to think that with all of the scandals and errors of the Church, there are still a lot of people who want to believe that this is the true religion.

People do not seem to be bothered by the silliness of a Pope strolling around magnificent cathedrals clad in lustrous medieval vestments and wearing a fabulous medieval crown. They are not turned off by the absurdity of a Pope claiming to be infallible on matters of faith and morals. They are not in the least bothered by the claim that Catholic priests can turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

Catholics go on believing even when their rational faculties are attacked by the most bizarre claims of the Church. When the Shroud of Turin was exposed as a Thirteenth Century forgery, believers refused to accept the evidence and continued to venerate the cloth. When the James Ossuary was proven to be a fraud, believers continued to insist that it was the receptacle of the bones of James, the brother of Jesus.

Catholics who study history seem unfazed by the many atrocities and abominations committed by the Catholic Church in the name of God. They hear about the Crusades and their slaughter of innocent Jews and Moslems. They read about Medici Popes with their rampaging greed and lust. They read about the Inquisition and its sheer horror. They read about the expulsion of Jews from Spain in the 1400s and the Church’s confinement of Rome’s Jews to a place called the Ghetto. They learn of Pope Pius XII’s failure to speak out against the Nazi terror and the aid given by Catholic priests to escaping Nazis who were being sought after World War II for crimes against humanity.

When the Catholic Church forbade the use of contraceptives, millions of Catholics went on attending mass while continuing to use the forbidden birth control devices and pills. When it was revealed that thousands of Catholic priests had practiced child molestation on tens of thousands of victims over several decades and that the hierarchy had protected the priests and failed to enforce the laws against this abomination, Catholics simply continued to attend mass in the dioceses where such priests and bishops fester.

Catholics have a powerful need to believe in their Church even in the face of the worst scandals and happenings. In my book, "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence" (now available on Kindle), I discuss the reasons why people go on believing in God despite the absence of evidence for his existence. This need to believe in God makes them able to believe in the Catholic Church with all of its disgrace, dishonor, and scandal. Catholics are taught that the Church is more than just the popes and clergy. It is the body of Christ, and therefore even when a bad priest (say a pedophile) says mass, he is capable of turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

As I noted in a previous blog, the “sacrifice” of the mass is actually a reprise of a bloody and disgusting lynching and murder of Jesus as a human sacrifice to propitiate a loving God on account of humanity’s sins. The whole basis of the mass is an affront to human intelligence.

Somewhere in my youth, after leaving the seminary, I began to realize these things and stopped considering myself a Catholic. I don’t fully understand why most thinking Catholics do not do likewise.