Have you ever heard someone say that it is hubris to believe that the Catholic Church is the only true church? The person who remarks in this way simply wants to end a discussion by reducing it to relativism. By saying essentially that your church is good for you and my church is good for me, they seek to make all churches (or even religions) equal and the discussion irrelevant.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a two-part article titled How Counterfeit Churches Devalue Christianity in which I laid out numerous biblical and historical reasons for the Catholic Church’s divine origin. Please click here to read it.
Also, Anthony Lane, Ray Sullivan, and Guy McClung recently wrote some quality articles on similar topics. Please click on their names to read them. We write these types of articles because the truth that Jesus founded the Catholic Church and gave it His authority is surrounded by lies to the contrary. However, no matter how many lies surround the truth, the truth continues to be relatively easy to find.
Truth and Lies
Truth is simple. It is a word, either in the mind or communicated to another, that accurately reflects reality. Unfortunately, numerous lies often surround the truth. When I was a criminal investigator, I interrogated countless criminals. Before arresting these subjects, we gathered multiple items of testimonial and physical evidence. The evidence gave us assurance that we were arresting the right people. After the arrests, we conducted interrogations.
One thing every criminal had in common was that they refused, many times for hours on end, to tell the truth. They came up with every lie imaginable to hide their criminal acts. They not only lied about the crimes themselves but also about everything leading up to them. Sometimes, they even lied about the evidence we had in our possession.
Conversation With a Criminal
Imagine the following exchange:
Investigator: Did you steal from Joe?
Subject: I don’t know Joe; I wasn’t in the area; I don’t steal; I didn’t need the money; I didn’t do it.
Investigator: Why are you in this surveillance video, in which a business recorded one-half of a block from the theft?
Subject: That looks like me, but that’s not me; I don’t know; That must have been from another day; Like I said, I’ve never been in that area.
Investigator: Why is your 2012 Silver Toyota Tundra with a dent in the driver’s side door and with your license plate affixed, the same truck that was at your home when we arrested you, parked one block from the area where the theft occurred and at the time it occurred?
Subject: That’s not my truck; someone must have stolen it; I don’t know how it got there; Someone must have stolen the license plate and put it on their 2012 Silver Toyota Tundra with a dent in the driver’s side door.
Investigator: Explain why we found the stolen money in your apartment with your fingerprints on it and the apartment surveillance video showing that only you had entered your apartment since the crime.
Subject: I don’t know how the money got there; Someone must have planted it there; I’m being framed.
Multiply these lies by five or so and you will get an idea of how interrogations go. Thankfully, the lies eventually give way to the truth. When this begins to happen, the investigator can psychologically corner the subject and obtain a confession. If you let liars talk long enough, they will expose themselves as liars. This applies to those who lie about the Catholic Church as well.
(In case you are wondering, a confession differs from an admission in that a confession includes an admission of guilt along with details about the crime and how the person committed it. An admission is simply a statement of guilt without the details. Let us return to the subject at hand.)
Why the Hubris Argument Lacks Integrity
As you can see from the above scenario, countless lies often surround one truth. Now, we would not say that it is hubris to believe, based on numerous pieces of good evidence, that a particular criminal committed a crime. In fact, we would not say this about any truth, no matter how many lies surround it. Rather, we would weigh the evidence against the criminal’s statements and make a judgement that conforms to reality.
Similarly, lies and false religions surround the truth about the Catholic Church’s divine origin. But if we have numerous pieces of good evidence to support the Church’s claim, and we weigh that evidence against the statements of our detractors, then we have no rational choice but to accept the reality that Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church and gave it His preeminent authority. We call this intellectual integrity, not hubris.
Real hubris is spreading lies as if they were true because lies are nothing other than a pathetic attempt to recreate reality and make oneself God. On the other hand, humility is devoting time to learning the truths about God and submitting to them. The one who does this rejects relativism and the arrogance that goes along with it. In the words of Saint Paul, “Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.” This is not hubris at all. It is simply humble submission to the Truth Himself.
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Nate Guyear: I notice that the term Roman Catholic does not appear in any of the references. This may allow for some wiggle room. The Orthodox and the Oriental Churches were part of the Catholic Church for the first thousand years. If they ceased to be Catholic after that, why wouldn’t the Roman Church also have lost its catholicity (universality)? The schism affected the universality of both sides.
The mystical Body of Christ, with Jesus as Head of the body, transcends denominational confines. What would Jesus think of relegating a part of His Body to being non-Catholic?
First, the Catechism is written by the Roman Catholic Church. It doesn’t need to reference itself in its writings about other ecclesial bodies. Second, to whom did Jesus give the keys to the kingdom and who are his successors? Third, the Eastern Orthodox rejected the pope’s primacy of authority, especially as it related to the filioque. So, the East left the West and the keys to the kingdom, not the other way around. Fourth, what would Jesus say about people who leave His Church and then create a bunch of excuses and justifications for doing so? My guess…depart from me you wicked servants. Finally, I have already proven that Jesus founded the Catholic Church and gave her His preeminent authority. You cannot refute this. So, you’re throwing out any red herring you can think of to escape this fact.
An insightful and challenging book that addresses the Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus doctrine and related matters is Eric Sammons’ 2021 “Deadly Indifference: How the Church Lost Her Mission And How We Can Reclaim It.”
The Catholic Church is the one true Church; but, what does ‘Catholic’ encompass? There are other churches besides the Roman Catholic Church that have apostolic origin. Are the Orthodox and the Oriental Churches excluded? Then, there is the Body of Christ that encompasses those who are in Christ regardless of denomination. Are those in the Body of Christ who are in denominations without apostolic succession excluded from the Catholic Church?
Thanks Peter! First, the Roman Catholic Church with all her rites is the true Church. Individuals outside the Catholic Church are more or less attached to her through grace, faith, doing God’s will with love, and invincible ignorance that the Catholic Church is the true Church. The Church teaches the following on this question, which the following Catechism paragraphs reflect:
817 – “Where there are sins, there are also divisions, schisms, heresies, and disputes. Where there is virtue, however, there also are harmony and unity, from which arise the one heart and one soul of all believers.”
818 – “However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers …. All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church.”
838 – “The Church knows that she is joined in many ways to the baptized who are honored by the name of Christian, but do not profess the Catholic faith in its entirety or have not preserved unity or communion under the successor of Peter. Those ‘who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in a certain, although imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church.’ With the Orthodox Churches, this communion is so profound ‘that it lacks little to attain the fullness that would permit a common celebration of the Lord’s Eucharist.'”
846 – “Outside the Church there is no salvation. How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”
847 – “This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience – those too may achieve eternal salvation.”
848 – “Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him, the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men.”
By the way, the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Church’s have apostolic succession, but they separated themselves from the body of Christ and the authority He gave her when they entered schism.
And the lack of Truth is precisely what we are surrounded by.
I agree. Thankfully, if we walk with Christ, the divine Truth dwells in us.
Thank you! If we Catholics live like Catholics and followers of Christ we can change the world. Unapologetically!
Indeed!! Thank you, Catherine!
Hey, we’ve got the credentials, the bloodlines, the stud books, and the offices. What else could possibly matter? We will always be the One True Church, even when we are no longer recognizable as a church. False gospel of human progress? No biggie !
The Catholic Church needs to stop preaching humanity, and start preaching Jesus again, if it wants to be taken seriously as a Christian body.
“Hey, we’ve got the credentials, the bloodlines, the stud books, and the offices.”
Thank you, G. Poulin, for acknowledging that the Catholic Church is the true Church!
Catholics who claim their church is the One True Church never want to listen. Instead they close their ears, change the subject, insult the questioner, or (like here last week) delete comments with a dishonest explanation as to why they were deleted.
For an illustration of the self-awareness gap between Catholics and Protestants, see this appreciative article by a Protestant on Vatican II:
https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/5144/article/great-awakening
Crisis, the Catholic Church’s status as the true Church is not a claim, it’s a historical fact. This is why you can’t refute anything I have written. Instead, you respond with red herrings. Therefore, your comments, which are typically asinine, get deleted.