“He was amazed…”  

      It is not unusual that the Catholic finds himself drawn into discussions and debates concerning the claims of the Church.  As one can imagine, this happens rather frequently to a Catholic priest, identifiable as he is by his clerical wear.  Rarely, I have found, do these discussions, of themselves, resolve very much; but they do, I have also discovered, uncover two different – and even opposite – reactions to an intelligent presentation of the Faith.  The first is the strangest, and most often involves a conversation with the sincere non-Catholic.  The other, the more usual reaction, is expressed by a larger group, most often of the more-or-less religiously non-committed type, including many a Catholic. 

      People of the first group are often surprised, really taken off guard, when they meet a Catholic who can intelligently answer their questions, disabuse them of their misunderstandings of Catholic teaching, and show a solid familiarity with the Bible.  Yet still, their usual reaction is quite strange:  they seem to just dig in their heels, considering it a badge of virtue on their part to adhere to what they have always believed (especially what they’ve been told by others about the Catholic Church) in spite of the facts and careful reasoning.  Refusing to admit the just refutation of their arguments, they consider themselves all the stronger in their faith for having resisted the “temptation” to be convinced by sound argument.  The Church defines this “clinging” not as faith, but as fideism, a kind of faith-in-faith, rather than the faith, given by God that enables one to receive, believe and live what God has revealed about Himself.  Fideism is very dangerous, because it grounds “faith” in the “believing” subject himself:  his fervency of belief becomes the measure of the truthfulness of what he believes.  This is self-evidently absurd, but then, once you have thrown reason out the window, religion easily becomes a circus of feelings, emotions, credulity and sensationalism.  Too, this fideism is dangerous because it is one of the chief reasons the second group of people – the religiously non-committed – respond they way they do to Christian claims:  with lots of skepticism. 

      They, this second group, are likely to repeat that worn-out cliché that one has to “check his brains in at the door” in order to become a Catholic (or any sort of religious believer).  But they too are a bit surprised when they bump into the prepared Catholic apologist who points out to them that the Church insists adamantly on the intellect’s engagement in the faith, on her age-old principle “faith seeking understanding,” and that the Church has always held that faith and reason must operate together.  The modern skeptic, normally, is surprised that the Catholic Church never demands faith where reason is due.  Thus, the Church converses with the atheist, not merely with Bible verses, but also with rational, philosophical arguments; she has, for example, ever claimed that the existence of God is knowledge attainable by human reason.  And likewise, her understanding of who Jesus Christ is and of who she herself is – His perpetual and infallible witness in this world – are things she presents not first and foremost to be believed, but to be seen as rationally well-evidenced, and only then is it time for the movement of faith, faith following in the direction the reason has prepared. 

      In our times, religion in general has given itself a bad name, both because of a lack of adherence on the part of Christians to the faith they are supposed to believe, and because of a powerful tendency to reduce Christian faith to something only of the feelings and emotions, to the merely subjective, to “whatever helps you make it through life.”  The Catholic Church, on the contrary, holds that her deposit of faith is objectively true, that her first and foundational claims are rationally demonstrable, and that all she holds and teaches to be received by faith flow reasonably from her first claims.  All this dismays many a non-Catholic Christian, unused as he is to rational defenses that long have been in the arsenal of the Church’s apologetic.  And the skeptic is surprised that he is not expected to “check his brains in at the door” (as so many of them seem to most willingly do in front of the TV, at our political parties’ conventions or at the feet of some professor who is as ignorant of the Church and her history as are most students). 

      Thus, in today’s Gospel, our Lord’s amazement at His own townspeople’s lack of faith – “He was amazed….”  His amazement could only be due to the fact that they had every reason to believe, but did not.  So many these days have lost sight of the fact that people do have every reason to believe the Gospel.  The baseless idea – assumed by fideist and skeptic alike – that to believe anything of religion is ipso facto an act of irrationality – by the first group considered virtuous and a sign of “strong faith,” and by the latter as intellectual suicide.  For the former, the Church would answer that a human act (in this case, the act of faith) is not virtuous simply because it is difficult, but rather because it is good and in accordance with reason; and that true faith is truly strong because it’s object for the human mind and will is true and good.  For the latter, the Church would answer that it is intellectual suicide to blithely dismiss the claims of such a one as is Jesus Christ on the unintelligent assumption that all things religious are claims that cannot be rationally and convincingly demonstrated. 

      St. Peter urged the Christians of his time to “always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence…” (1 Peter 3:15).   Apologian is the Greek word used here for “defense,” and it is the source of the English word “apologetics,” the defense of the faith, the Catholic faith that is not irrational and can be defended both for the sake of the strengthening of the believer and for the evangelization of others.