Pilgrim’s Progress: My Journey Home to the Catholic Church (by ContraSuggest)

Looking back at my life, I don’t think there was ever a time when I learned anything important through conventional means.  As a kid, my grades in school were pretty decent overall, but by the time I crammed my brains out, passed the tests and graduated, I was an exhausted nervous wreck, and my ability to retain knowledge ranked up there with that of a lab rat.  Not until much later did I discover that I was best able to learn only slowly, on my own, through independent study.  As a kid, my inability to retain academic knowledge stood side by side with ignorance of my religious faith.  Furthermore, I thought that anyone who practiced so-called “organized religion” was basically a douche-bag.  Oh how I detested those pushy, self-righteous, over zealous religious lunatics, who were going to convince me that I faced eternal damnation in the pits and bowels of Hell, lest I immediately repent and turn myself over to Christ!  These boobs were able to gain access to my attention through several different means.  The main avenue of access was the television airwaves.  Having spent the better part of my childhood in front of the tube, I received quite a large dose of “televangelism” in between reruns of Star Trek and the Odd Couple.  These televangelist guys, mostly dressed in dark three-piece suits, always seemed to be yelling at the tops of their lungs and foaming at the mouths.  Every now and then they’d work themselves up into such a lather that tears would stream down their faces.  Suffice to say that these various televangelists all seemed like babbling lunatics to me and so, I thought, the most unlikely messengers of Christ that I could conceive.  Another method used by the minions of religious conversion was to set out on Sunday mornings pounding the pavement, going from house to house to spread the word of the Lord.  So while your bacon and eggs were getting cold, these dapperly dressed automatons would take to buzzing around your front porch, quoting scripture, refusing to leave until you agreed to take some of their omnipresent literature for later reading.  I tried everything to keep these religious Amway salesmen away from the house, including keeping all the doors and windows closed, turning on the lawn sprinklers (making sure that they were aimed squarely at the front porch).  I tried letting the dog out with no leash, and some even more radical measures, like telling them (with a straight face) that our family were worshipers of mighty Satan and so could not possibly have any use for Christianity.  Although each method was effective to varying degrees, the situation was always uncomfortable, and those people always managed to piss me off.

I certainly had a lot of frustration and anger towards the world of religion back then, even my own church was not immune from the harshest of my criticisms.  I was raised in a not so devout Roman Catholic family; since I attended public schools, I had to receive religious instruction on Sundays and in the evenings, received my first communion, was confirmed, but attended Mass sporadically.  During my formative years, though I always remained respectful of Jesus Christ, there weren’t many positive things I had to say about the Church.  Mass was too long, boring, and annoying (sit-stand-kneel-repeat), the liturgy incomprehensible (the Catholic missal might as well have been written in Klingon), most churchgoers looked like a bunch of mindless zombies, some parishioners observed various customs while others did not, etc.  As I got older these resentments grew stronger, and learning about the politics and scandals within the Catholic Church (always from secular, anti-Catholic sources, mind you) including infidelities on behalf of some priests, helped to reinforce all my negative feelings.  Taking some crash courses in world history (again, from anti-Catholic sources) I discovered that the Church had been the progenitor of many a bloodbath: the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the improprieties that made the Reformation necessary, just to name a few.  The “proofs” of science seemed to disprove the literalness of many biblical events.  I proceeded to enter a period of great doubt, never questioning the existence of a God, but believing God to be something other than what Christendom claimed Him to be, and thinking Christianity to be nothing more than a quaint and convenient mythology.

As the years wore on I pictured myself to be on a course moving farther and farther away from my Catholic faith.  Who needed organized religion and all the scandal and guilt that went along with it?  The dastardly cartoon image of the Church, viewed through the lens of our destructive secular culture, was a perfect fit with my cynical immaturity.  I had a habit of siding with anyone who had even the slightest beef with the Vatican, imagining the Church to be a cross between the Mafia and the evil M.A.D. organization from the Inspector Gadget cartoons.  I drifted in a nebulous void for years; reading, contemplating, and searching.  I read books and pamphlets on just about every other belief system known to man: Christian Gnosticism, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, I Ching, Shinto, Mithraism, Kaballah (aka Jewish Gnosticism), Ceremonial Magic, Wicca, Astrology, and the list of drivel went on and on.  There were few I hadn’t heard of or read something about, but none of them could fill the void that I felt in my heart and in my soul.  I viewed religion as something that you kept tucked away in your pocket, to be taken out as a crutch at funerals, merely to be tucked away afterwards out of embarrassment.  I just couldn’t understand the concept of faith: believing in something with all your heart when most of the salient facts told you otherwise. Taking things “on faith” seemed to me like a fool’s pursuit; I wanted truth, and to me truth meant possessing the cold, hard facts, not some fuzzy, illogical belief in something that I couldn’t perceive with my five senses. 

But things are not always as they seem, as I came to realize that the course leading me away from the Catholic Faith was more akin to that of a boomerang than a bullet.  For so long I assumed the grass to be greener on the other side of the religious fence.  However, when looking at the unmolested historical record, it becomes clear that Catholic Doctrine, although based upon faith, is invariably consistent with reason, history and scientific inquiry (for a thorough exposition on this topic, see my post of 12/26/2011 titled, Merry Christmas and a Defense of the Catholic Faith linked here: http://contrasuggest.blogspot.com/2011/12/merry-christmas-and-defense-of-catholic.html).  Throughout my long period of disillusionment there were two people, both practicing Catholics, who helped to guide me back home.  One was my mother; the other my oldest friend; they were always there as gentle defenders of the faith, sounding boards, and shoulders to cry on in my spiritual frustrations.  They continually showed me a side of Catholicism that was inconsistent with the presumptuousness that I attributed to it.  Never did they dismiss me out of hand, never did they back away from me, and rarely, if ever, did they exhibit the smug sanctimoniousness that I at times engaged in.  They nearly always showed patience and tolerance for my dissenting views of the Church, no matter how harsh and disrespectful those views were.  And in attempting to answer some of my often very tough questions, they taught me, through example, one of the key exponents of faith: never be afraid to say, “I don’t know the answer,” while still maintaining your belief.  Somehow they just knew that I would eventually return, and they made that prognostication without consulting the Psychic Friends Network, a deck of Tarot Cards, or even the much-revered Magic Eight Ball.  Without their prayers and patient support, my journey would certainly have been a longer and harder one.  And, lucky for me, I married a fantastic woman who happened to be on a similar journey, which allowed the two of us to return to the Church together.  I know that I speak for her as well when I say that it feels great to be home.  And so I encourage all cradle Catholics who have drifted from the faith to fairly reexamine the Church; you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what you discover.     

Beyond the Shrouds of Islam (by ContraSuggest)

On several occasions I have been asked to explain my critical views of Islam.  Although I have done so in private letters and communications, I have never posted a blog on the subject.  Since most Americans, and the major media outlets that Americans look to for their information, continually display ignorance about the history and disposition of Islam, I felt it was time to broach the subject here at the OTPE.  Before I begin, there are two things I’d first like to get out of the way.  One, I harbor no ill will towards law abiding Americans who happen to be Muslims.  Two, I do not believe that President Obama is a Muslim.  It’s a shame that I have to state these things up front, but I strongly suspect that I’ll be accused of believing them somewhere down the road.  What you’re going to get here is a fact-based, historical analysis regarding the main problems with Islam, unknown to the average American.  I’ll begin with Islam’s version of Holy Scripture:

Foundational Texts of Islam:

Koran (or Qur’an) (Words of Allah)

Sira (Life of Mohammed)

Hadith (Traditions of Mohammed)

These are the three sources from which all Islamic belief is drawn; although the media only speaks of the Qu’ran, the Sira and Hadith are perhaps more important, for they provide the only context within which the Qu’ran can be properly understood.  Now let’s dive right into the three things that I believe most people don’t know about Islam, but should:

1. In theory and in practice, Islam is more of a socio-political ideology than a religion
2. Islam is the only one of the world’s major “religions” that does not have a version of the Golden Rule
3. Islamic thinking uses a kind of dualistic logic that is alien to our Western thinking

I’ll briefly touch on each of these three points. 

(1) Radical political Islam has existed ever since the 7^th century when predatory Muslim hordes first issued forth from Arabia, unprovoked, in order to conquer a decaying Byzantine world.  The Christian Middle East, Northern Africa, and Western Europe were ferociously invaded and conquered by Muslim armies, 200 years before the first Christian Crusade was launched.  The unrelenting jihad has continued, almost unabated, for 1400 years, claiming nearly 300 million lives.  In any country or province where brutal Muslim law (Sharia) is practiced, it is used as an alternative to other systems of law and other forms of government (which makes its implementation anywhere in the U.S. a serious threat to our secular rule of law and representative government).  Muslim law distinguishes itself from other forms of government to such a degree as to reveal its political nature. 

The great theorist of The Muslim Brotherhood, Sayyid Qutb provided this instructive quote in 1948:

“We only have to look in order to see that our social situation is as bad as it can be.  …we continually cast aside all our own spiritual heritage, all our intellectual endowment, and all the solutions which might well be revealed by a glance at these things; we cast aside our own fundamental principles and doctrines, and we bring in those of democracy, or socialism, or communism.”

^(Source: Quote- Social Justice in Islam, translated by John B. Hardie and Hamid Algar, revised edition, Islamic Publications International, 2000, pg. 19).

If Islam is not a political doctrine then why does Qutb juxtapose it with other forms of government rather than other religions?  He is in effect admitting that Islam is a political doctrine.  Oh, and by the way, political Islam, rather than religious Islam, makes up the largest part of subject matter in Islam’s foundational texts. 

 

(2) Every one of the world’s major religions has some version of the Golden Rule, namely, the concept that one should “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Every religion, that is, with the exception of Islam.   Over the centuries, the Catholic Church has been the greatest promoter of the natural rights doctrine (outlined and defended by Aquinas and many others); and the United States of America was founded upon that same doctrine.  It holds that all people, regardless of creed, color, national origin or social standing, are equal in the eyes of the creator, and possess unalienable rights upon birth (see the second paragraph of The Declaration of Independence for the most eloquent statement concerning these rights).  In Islam there is a set of rules that applies to believers and another set that applies to unbelievers.  One may not lie, cheat, murder or steal from a fellow Muslim; but doing those things to non-Muslims is not only permissible but encouraged, this is clearly outlined in the Hadith.  Westerners regularly fail to live by the Golden Rule, but it is the standard by which we are judged and the ideal which we aspire to; there simply is no corresponding doctrine or belief in Islam.

(3) When faced with two statements that contradict each another, Western logic informs us that at least one of those statements must be false.  Not so with Islamic dualistic logic.  The Muslim holy books are filled with glaring contradictions that make the Bible look like a Nobel-winning chemistry dissertation, in terms of its consistency.  The Qur’an contains the words of Allah, as told to us by his one and only profit Mohammed.  Since Allah is perfect, everything that he says is the unimpeachable truth.  Therefore, if one sura (chapter) of the Qur’an says that unbelievers should be shown tolerance and left to their own devices; and another sura says that the unbelievers should have their heads and the tips of their fingers cut off; in Islamic thinking, both are considered true!  I expect that the “moderate” Muslims that the media always tells us about choose to adhere to the former sura; Islamic fascists, like Osama bin Laden and Kalid Sheik Mohammed, choose to adhere to the latter.  But there are further twists: firstly, the vast majority of the statements concerning unbelievers in the Muslim holy trilogy are of an intolerant, violent nature; only a small minority of them urge tolerance.  Then there’s the Islamic doctrine of “abrogation.”  The Qur’an’s moderate suras were written in Mecca, before Mohammed and his followers were forced to flee that city; the intolerant suras were written later when Mohammed settled in the city of Medina. The doctrine of abrogation in Islam holds that the later writings take precedence over the earlier writings.  So the harsher, more intolerant suras take precedence over the earlier, more tolerant ones. The sad truth is that there is far more in Muslim holy writings, history, and tradition that inspire the bin Ladens of the world than the Muslim moderates of the world.

Finally, it’s rather clear to see that whatever brutal, regrettable actions have been taken throughout history by some adherents to the world’s non-Muslim religions; with very few exceptions, those actions were in violation of those various religions’ tenets.  The opposite is true of Islam; this is the historically verifiable legacy of jihad.