Saturday, June 13, 2009

Check Mate

There are a multitude of reasons why I converted to Catholicism (from many forms of Protestantism). Incidentally, the reasons I would use presently to defend Catholicism aren't necessarily the reasons I found it convincing, so I was thinking to myself how I would best sum up the reasons that personally swayed me. Keeping in mind that for me the big move was not from Protestantism to Catholicism, but "clear" Christianity to "thick" -- and from there I followed what I saw to be the natural progression into Catholicism --, the general reason was put best by C.S. Lewis:

"There isn't really... this infinite variety of religions to consider. We may divide... religions... into 'thick' and 'clear'... If there is a true religion it must be both Thick and Clear ['Clear' practices involving intellect, reason, and conscience vs. 'Thick,' being imaginative and sensual]: for the true God must have made both the child and the man, both the savage and the citizen, both the head and the belly... Christianity... takes a convert from central Africa and tells him to obey an enlightened universalist ethic: it takes a twentieth century academic prig...and tells [him] to go fasting to a Mystery, to drink the blood of the Lord. The savage convert has to be clear: [the academic has to be] Thick. That is how one knows one has come to the true religion."