One of the world's most famous converts to the Catholic Church in the twentieth century was the prolific British writer and apologist, G.K. Chesterton.
In his book, "Orthodoxy", he describes his search for the truth.
- As a young man he was sent to excellent schools, where he studied well and fell in love with various non-Christian philosophies.
- He became quite unsatisfied with Christianity as he had known it growing up.
- At one point he decided to create his own heresy, as he put it.
- He started putting together a view of the world and reality that combined his own observations and insights with the best insights he found in his favorite philosophers.
He describes the process as similar to building his own castle from the ground up.
- It took him a long time and a lot of effort to construct his world view. But once he finished, he was satisfied.
- But almost as soon as he finished, he realized that all his efforts had only built up a clumsy and incomplete replica of a beautiful and powerful castle that incorporated everything he had discovered on his own and added on much, much more: the Catholic Church.
Sometimes we forget this aspect of our faith and we don't pay enough attention to what Christ teaches us through his Church about day-to-day life and happenings; we just don't listen.
Sometimes we fall into the mistake of considering the voice of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him when it speaks about morality and faith and the meaning of life as just one more opinion among many.
But it's not. The voice of Christ's Vicar has the guarantee of Christ himself to guide us surely and to give us trustworthy orientation through the dangerous and confusing channels of current events and issues.