Why Stay Catholic?

I have been asked on occasion, “Why remain a Catholic?”.  Usually the person asking the question is someone who has experience some injustice in the Church, or may have been a practicing Catholic but lukewarm or perhaps no longer practicing the faith.

Here is my personal response to their question.

I am and will remain a Catholic primarily because I have met Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church.  I have seen him, spoken with him and listened to him.  No, I am not psychotic, but I have met him here in the Catholic Church.  Once I met him I could no more turn away from him and his Church than I could turn away from my very self.  I cannot deny him or the Catholic Church which is his body on earth. 

Secondarily, I am and remain Catholic because it is the faith of my father and mother, and my father’s father and mother, and their fathers and mothers, for generations.  I cannot dishonor my father and mother by abandoning that which they so generously strove to hand on to me.

For any reader who may be questioning their reasons for staying with the Catholic Church, a Church no doubt weighed down by its own humanity and sin and imperfection, I say that if you are open, you will find Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church in a most powerful and personal way.  You need only be open to him and come and meet him!