What can Catholicism offer the spiritual seeker that no other religion can?

Justin Quirin

What can Catholicism offer that no other religion can? Everything. 

Perhaps I should explain a little more fully. In a certain sense there are only two types of religion in the world, that is if you discount Scientology.
 

There is no doubt that God exists. That’s easy. God exists by definition. God is defined as that greater than which nothing can exist. God is the supreme being.  If the universe is the greatest reality, well then the universe is God. Cold interstellar space and the raging inferno of the stars that couldn't give a good golly gee whether you and I exist or not, it’s all just a coincidence. If there is a loving all knowing all powerful creator, who made me and loves me then that is God. 

So the question then is not whether God exists or not, but what is the nature of God. 

The pantheists are mostly primitive nature worshiping animists and a few professors at U.C. Berkeley. But, there is a group of religions that believe an all powerful creator made all things out of nothing. The four major religions in this group, in the order of their historical appearance, are Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and most recently Islam. All these religions believe in one way or another that God has spoken to his creation through prophets. 

Christianity, my personal favorite, says that not only did the creator send prophets, but actually came to live in his creation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The amazing claim of Christianity is that you — yes, you — can personally know God. Intimacy with the Creator of the Universe is really quite an offer. The Catholic Church further claims that Jesus of Nazareth who promised to be with us through all times is still physically present in the form of a piece of unleavened bread that is found in the ritual of the Mass and is reserved in churches all around the world.

In other words, Catholicism believes that you can pop into a church most anytime and visit the sovereign creator of all things. Heck of a deal, no? However, that is not the exclusive offer of Catholicism. Most of the Eastern Orthodox Christians believe the same. 

So what in answer to your question can the Catholic Church offer that none else can? 

Simple: the pope.

“Wait,” I can hear you saying, “I thought you promised me everything. The pope is just a Bavarian in a beanie who won't let me practice artificial birth control, as if it were any of his business. You can keep the whole thing for all I care.”  

Not so fast!  

The pope is the visible symbol on this fractured little globe of something called the Communion of Saints.  The word catholic is a Greek word that means "universal."  There is a fellowship, a family of believers that extends through space and time. All believers are united in their faith, practices and moral life by this diminutive German in a white outfit who is the latest in a list of 267 popes that stretches back to the first one, St. Peter, who was Jewish and taught that Jesus was the Messiah for the whole world.

The Roman church is the only church that can make the claim to universality embracing the whole word in space and time. You may have Swedish Lutheran and Albanian orthodox but a Catholic is a Catholic is a Catholic, if he’s doing it right. The role of St. Peter and his successors guarantees that what is done and taught in the twentieth century is the same as was taught in the first century, though it may have a different cultural expression in different times.

Americans go from church to church looking for a church that “feels right.” 

All that Catholicism can offer is a church that was founded by Jesus though the ministry of the apostles. Jesus taught that he was the fulfillment of the longing of the Hebrew prophets and he promised that he would give us his flesh and blood to eat and drink and that he would be with us all days. The popes, whether good ones or the few bad ones that history has tossed up, are the guarantors of that legacy. 

So I give you the pope, who guarantees the valid, physical, Eucharistic presence of Jesus the Son of God, which gives you the fullness of intimacy with God. And that, Justin, is everything! No other religion I know can do that.

Yours,

Rev. Know-It-All