I cannot more appropriately conclude this attempt at Christian and Catholic Apologetics than by citing an extract from a very convincing article written by William F. Poland, S. J. It is found in the Young Men's Sodality Bulletin of 1891, and is entitled: Thoughts For Thoughtful Non-Catholics. In it he says:
It is a peculiar fact about the truth that it is hard to get a hearing for it from those who are in error. Men looking for something consistent in religious tenets, will usually try every error before they consent to examine the truth. They seem to scent the truth just to fight shy of it. When every error has been tried and found wanting, and the truth has stood before them waiting for a hearing, they will say, "Well, there is no use searching any further;" or, at most like Pilate, they will ask "What is truth?" and turn upon their heels and walk away.
I speak in a sincere and nowise unkind spirit. If what I say is distasteful, I disclaim, in it, any other spirit than that of charity and earnestness. It is time for the non-Catholics of America, who call themselves Christians, to give up toying with religion. They are doing nothing more. Their conventicles and their disputes about what they do or do not, or may, perhaps, after all, believe; their fine temples and empty pews; their mimicry of Catholic ceremony on the one hand and stout denunciation of it on the other, prove that they are all at sea upon the question of questions.
If you believe in Christianity, and you do believe, you certainly cannot suppose that Christ established four hundred churches, all contradicting one another. If, for instance, Christ taught eternal punishment, then, certainly, the preacher who denies the eternity of punishment cannot be teaching the doctrine of Christ; and the sect that professes that denial cannot claim to be founded by Christ.
The existence of the Catholic Church is a great fact that cannot be ignored. No sincere-minded non-Catholic can examine candidly the fact and origin of the Catholic Church, and still contend sincerely that he is in the right. No one has ever sincerely examined the Catholic religion without becoming convinced of its truth. You may say that many have examined and have not become Catholics. Well, then, either they did not examine sincerely or fully, or if they did, they refused after conviction, through earthly motives, to follow the voice of conscience.
There is no one of the "sects" that can show any shadow of succession from Christ and the Apostles. They are called by the names of mortal men -many of whom are anything but an honor to the race. There is not a respectable Lutheran to-day who would sit at table with Martin Luther. No decent Anglican to-day would let Henry VIII cross his threshold. Founders!!
To the "Non-Catholic Christian" in America, the marvelous unity of the Catholic Church here in the United States should be a mark of her divinity. In eighty-five dioceses, containing nine million people (which, since this was written, have increased to ninety-eight and fourteen million respectively), there is not a shade of difference in belief. If the Church did not hold the unchangeable truth, we should soon see each diocese a sect, and soon after, a new sect in each parish.
You are not assured that you are right. The Catholic Church is sure that she is right and that all the sects are wrong. Hence, if you have a regard for your salvation you are bound to examine. If you were pressed with hunger and in danger of starvation, and fifty pieces of money were placed before you to choose from; if, moreover, not knowing whether they were counterfeit, you should take one and start off to buy some bread; if at that instant a friend should say to you, "You have a counterfeit coin," you would answer, "How shall I know the good coin?" If then your friend should say to you, "Forty-nine of these coins are counterfeits, but here is a good one. Take it and buy some bread. I know the coin. I have used it myself," what would you do? Would you cling to the counterfeit? If you suffered starvation on that account would it not be your own fault? Would it not be wisdom for you at least to take that particular coin and test it? Apply this to the Catholic Church. It is the good coin; the others are spurious. You doubt. If in your state of doubt you still cling to the counterfeit when you have the chance to test what I assure you is the true Church, are you not responsible for the damage that will follow?
Outside of the "Sects" it has never been heard that a body of men pretended to absolute intellectual independence, and yet subscribed without any inquiry to the proclamations of a leader or even of one leader after another. Yet this is what goes on in the great body Protestant. The adherents of its sections holding intellectual independence as the first principle, still accept without examination whatever the preacher chooses to give them.
But is the principle of private judgment really the invention of Protestantism? No: it has been the pretext of all the sects of nineteen centuries. Protestantism is simply the rejection of authority. To succeed it had to proclaim the principle of private judgment. And whilst proclaiming this it was inconsistent enough to try to impose a belief upon its members. It thus broke up into sect after sect on the principle of private judgment, and unless it goes back to authority, it will go on breaking up, until the few members that remain become either Catholics or. unbelievers.
Private judgment means No Church. A church is a body of men with a common belief. Private judgment is the opinion of an individual. Is an individual a Church? Or if the "sects" claim to be Churches, what becomes of their private judgment? Accordingly, we see they are beginning to reject the fundamental principle of Christianity, the Divinity of Christ. What kind of a Church of Christ is that which recognizes as its members those who believe and those who do not believe in the Divinity of Christ? Surely it is not the True Church of Christ.
The doctrines of Christ are unchangeable. How then does the Methodist differ from the Baptist, the Baptist from the Presbyterian, the Presbyterian from the Episcopalian, the Episcopalian from the Lutheran? And withal, how are they all willing to acknowledge one another as of the Church of Christ? Is it in keeping with a profession of Christianity to say that Christ in founding a Church left mankind in the utter impossibility of finding out what He taught? Yet this is the position that every Protestant holds. For whilst admitting one doctrine he allows that it may not be true; that those who assert the opposite may be right; that, therefore, he himself may change his mind to-morrow and change it back again the day after.
If you say that the Bible and the Bible only is the rule of faith, what are you going to allow for the thousands who cannot read? How did people get along for fifteen centuries before the Bible became common through the printing press? The great mass of the people had no Bible. Books written by hand were too costly. The great mass of the people could not read. Do you make the printing press the condition of faith?
Moreover, even with your Bible, I will ask you to prove me just one point of discipline. Find me in the Bible anything about the observance of the Sunday. The Bible speaks only of Saturday. How was the day of religious observance changed from Saturday to Sunday? Did the non-Catholic body do it? On whose authority does the non-Catholic body observe the Sunday?
As a non-Catholic, how do you prove the inspiration of the Bible? As a non-Catholic, you cannot prove it. You accept the inspiration of the Bible on the testimony, the authority of the Catholic Church. You have it no other way; and then you turn around and deny the authority of the Church. Again, why do you accept certain books of Scripture on the authority of the Catholic Church and reject certain others which have the seal of the same authority? You dare not attempt to prove the inspiration of the Bible. You cannot do it without first recognizing that the Catholic Church alone has the truth and the Commission of Christ.
If private interpretation of the Bible is to be the sole rule of faith, then every "non-Catholic Christian" must be a religious sceptic until he has read the whole Bible. If private interpretation is the sole rule, how is it that so many hundred non-Catholics usually remain in the sect in which they were brought up? Is it the result of their own interpretation of the Bible?
There are about nine or ten million non-Catholic Church-goers in the United States. It behooves them to turn over bodily from what they themselves recognize to be an inconsistency, and to embrace the truth.
If you wish to know what Catholics really are, you must read the books that Catholics read. Ask your friend to give you a Catholic book. Read even a Catholic Prayer Book, and you will be far advanced on the way to the truth. There is light in truth which is not in error.