There is a quote often attributed to Archbishop Fulton Sheen that has stuck with me ever since I first heard it: “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church.” Whether the exact number is one hundred or one million isn’t really the point. The point is that most objections to Catholicism are not directed at what the Church actually teaches. They’re directed at a caricature that someone else handed them. I know because I’ve sat across the table from countless Protestants who sincerely love Jesus, sincerely love Scripture, and sincerely reject doctrines they have never actually heard explained by a Catholic. It isn’t usually malice that separates us. More often, it’s poor catechesis. And poor catechesis doesn’t simply leave people uninformed. It leaves them confident in ideas that are false.
I’ve learned over the years that there is a tremendous difference between mystery and confusion. God has always revealed mysteries. He has never intended confusion. St. Paul writes, “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33). A mystery is something revealed by God that the human mind can never fully exhaust. Confusion is what happens when revelation is neglected, distorted, or never explained at all. The Trinity is a mystery. The Incarnation is a mystery. The Eucharist is a mystery. None of those truths are irrational, but all of them transcend human reason because they originate in God Himself. Confusion enters only when we stop teaching what Christ handed down and begin filling the silence with our own assumptions.
I have seen this happen over and over again. One conversation in particular has stayed with me. A close friend of mine from a Dutch Reformed background asked me about purgatory. Like many Protestants, he had inherited the belief that Catholics teach a second chance after death or that Christ’s sacrifice somehow wasn’t enough. Those objections didn’t come from studying Catholic theology. They came from hearing what someone else said Catholics believed. Instead of launching into a debate, I simply asked him if he would allow me to explain the doctrine as the Catholic Church actually teaches it. He agreed.
I explained that purgatory is not about earning heaven because no one earns heaven. Salvation is entirely the work of Jesus Christ. I explained that the Church teaches purgatory is for those who die in God’s friendship but still need to be purified before entering His presence. Scripture says, “Nothing unclean shall enter it” (Revelation 21:27). At the same time, Scripture also teaches that many who belong to Christ still struggle with attachment to sin, selfishness, impatience, pride, and countless imperfections. Does God simply overlook those things, or does His love complete the work He began in us? St. Paul writes that each man’s work will be tested by fire and that “he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Corinthians 3:15). That isn’t a second chance. It is the final work of God’s sanctifying grace. The more we talked, the less strange the doctrine sounded. It wasn’t a denial of Christ’s sufficiency. It was a testimony to the power of His grace to finish what He started.
A few weeks later, we were at another gathering when someone criticized purgatory. Before I could respond, my friend did. He wasn’t Catholic. He hadn’t converted. But he explained the doctrine almost exactly as I had presented it. He defended it fairly because he finally understood it. That moment taught me something I have never forgotten. Most people are not rejecting Catholic doctrine. They’re rejecting a version of Catholic doctrine that the Church herself has never taught.
That same friend eventually accepted my invitation to attend Mass. I didn’t spend the week beforehand trying to convince him that the Eucharist was truly the Body and Blood of Christ. I simply told him to come with an open mind and pay attention. After Mass he didn’t tell me he agreed with everything Catholics believe. He didn’t suddenly become convinced of transubstantiation. What struck him wasn’t one doctrine. It was the reverence. It was the silence before Mass began. It was the kneeling. It was the prayers that had been prayed for centuries. It was the unmistakable sense that every person in that church believed they were standing before the living God. He told me, “I didn’t expect this.” Neither did I when I first encountered Catholicism years ago. Beauty has a way of disarming us because beauty points beyond itself.
The Eucharist is probably the clearest example of the difference between mystery and confusion. If someone hears Catholics say, “We eat the Body of Christ and drink His Blood,” without any context, that sounds outrageous. It sounded outrageous in the first century too. After Jesus declared, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53), many of His own disciples responded, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60). Then something remarkable happened. Jesus didn’t call them back to explain that He was speaking only symbolically. Instead, many walked away, and He let them go. He even turned to the Twelve and asked, “Will you also go away?” (John 6:67). If the Eucharist were merely symbolic, that was the perfect opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding. Instead, Christ doubled down on the mystery because it wasn’t confusion. It was divine revelation.
The early Church understood this from the beginning. Around A.D. 107, St. Ignatius of Antioch warned Christians against those “who abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.” That is not medieval Catholicism. That is Christianity within living memory of the apostles. St. Justin Martyr wrote in the second century, “We do not receive these as common bread or common drink… we have been taught that the food consecrated by the prayer of His word is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus.” The earliest Christians didn’t invent the Real Presence. They received it.
The same pattern repeats itself throughout Catholic doctrine. The communion of saints is mistaken for worship of the dead. Marian devotion is mistaken for worship of Mary. Apostolic succession is mistaken for a man-made hierarchy. Sacred Tradition is mistaken for competition with Scripture. Confession is mistaken for placing a priest between the believer and Christ. In almost every case, the criticism begins with a misunderstanding of what the Church actually teaches. Once the doctrine is explained in its proper biblical and historical context, the conversation changes. Some still disagree, but at least they’re disagreeing with Catholicism instead of a myth.
No one illustrates this better than St. John Henry Newman. Newman was one of the greatest Anglican scholars of the nineteenth century. He had no desire to become Catholic. In many ways, becoming Catholic cost him everything—his position, his reputation, many of his closest friendships, and much of his public influence. Yet as he immersed himself in the writings of the early Church Fathers, he discovered that the Christianity of the first centuries looked unmistakably Catholic. The bishops, the sacraments, the Eucharist, apostolic succession, devotion to the saints, and the authority of the Church were not later inventions. They were part of the Church from the beginning. Newman eventually wrote the line for which he is best remembered: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” He wasn’t insulting Protestants. He was describing the path his own conscience had taken. History forced him to ask whether his beliefs resembled the Christianity of the apostles or the Christianity that emerged sixteen centuries later.
That is why catechesis matters so much. We are not merely passing on information. We are handing on what St. Paul called “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). The Greek word for tradition, paradosis, simply means “that which has been handed down.” St. Paul instructed the Thessalonians, “Stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). The Catholic faith has always been lived this way. Scripture and Apostolic Tradition are not rivals. They are two ways the one deposit of faith has been faithfully transmitted through the Church Christ founded.
I often hear people say that Catholicism is too complicated. I don’t think that’s true. I think Catholicism is demanding because reality is demanding. Love is demanding. Holiness is demanding. Following Christ has never been reduced to memorizing a few verses or repeating a prayer. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). The Catholic faith asks for your whole life because Christ asks for your whole life. It asks you to worship with your body, your mind, your heart, and your soul. It invites you into mysteries that can never be exhausted because they originate in the infinite life of God.
The tragedy is not that people struggle with those mysteries. We all do. The tragedy is when they never encounter them as mysteries at all. Instead, they inherit confusion. They inherit half-truths. They inherit caricatures. They reject a Church they have never actually met.
That is why every Catholic has a responsibility to know the faith well enough to explain it with patience, clarity, and charity. St. Peter exhorts us, “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15). Notice that he doesn’t call us to win arguments. He calls us to give reasons for our hope. Sometimes those reasons will be rejected. Other times, they will become the beginning of someone’s journey home.
I’ve seen it happen.
Not because I won a debate.
But because, for the first time, someone encountered the Catholic faith as it truly is.
When mystery is explained, confusion begins to disappear.
And when confusion disappears, wonder has room to grow.
Disciples At The Ready 