One of the last and strongest oppositions that I maintained against the Catholic Church had to do with the fruits of people that I saw all my life that called themsleves Catholic. I knew that the Catholic Church taught a high standard of morals but it did not seem that it translated very well into changed lives. Consider the following example from our Engaged Encounter weekend, which we attended prior to our marriage as Episcopalians:

(from the previous blog entry) there was a time when all of the couples sat in the round and a couple of questions were asked. The questions were about cohabitation and sex before marriage. The responses included

"I'll call you a liar if you say that you are not sleeping together before you get married"
"After all, you wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, I don't see why getting married is any different"
"We would be living together but my future father-in-law threatened to kill me if that happened"
"The everyday difficulties of life require us to live in sin"
and the gem of the evening.
"We are all sinning and know it but we know Jesus is going to forgive us anyway so what is the point"

Add to this my wife knowing a Catholic girl in college that maintained that "Mary would be at her wedding and that it didn't matter whether or not Jesus showed up" and intending on getting a divorce because "love doesn't last but about 7-10 years anyway" and we had seen a wide array of bad examples in our own lives. To add further damage to the matter we had numerous pro-choice Catholic politicians both in Louisiana and around the nation. The case for bad Catholics was overwhelming.

Three things changed my mind:

First, meeting and reading about solid Catholics: At first this was limited mostly to online since the majority of my contact with Catholics willing to talk about their faith was through message boards, blogs and web sites dedicated to defending the faith. There I met folks who were intelligent, lived their faith and who presented logical arguments in favor of the Catholic position rather than wilting under the fire of Bible zingers. I was so excited to see this. It let me know that solid Catholics existed. Also, I couldn't discount the lives of the saints and fantastic modern examples of pious Catholic living. How could I not see at a minimum Mother Theresa and Pope John Paul II?

Second, reading a solid biblical defense of sinners being in the Church: On Sinners in the Church Some select quotes

The parable of the wheat and weeds (cf. Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43) and wheat and chaff (cf. Matt. 3:12; Luke 3:17)
Matthew 7:21–23 implies that there are many counterfeit believers
‘Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able’" (Luke 13:23–24).
Jesus himself rebukes six of the seven churches of Asia he addresses. Most scholars think that the book of Revelation was written no later than A.D. 100. Yet look at all the serious problems we already observe in these apostolic churches even before the last apostle (John) died

The Church then, as now, was riddled with problems: hypocrisy, lukewarmness, heterodoxy, fornication, idolatry

Third, a dynamic unique to Catholicism: The dynamic I am referring to is best described by pointing out the WAY dispute is handled in the Church. If Catholics disagree with the Church, schism is simply not an option. Christ prayed, "that they may all be one" (John 17:20-23). Catholics understand and believe this very strongly. There are ways to handle dispute in the Church and it might take hundreds of years for a matter to be settled. Both the faithful and the dissident know this history. Meanwhile, I have to sit next to someone who disagrees with me, even on things I know have been settled for centuries. In the Catholic Church you have VOTF, Catholics for a Free Choice, The Rainbow Sash movement and a host of other groups that disagree with fundamental teachings in the Catholic Church. They typically remain in the Church despite their gross disagreements with Rome. Protestantism, on the other hand, contains a heritage of schism. "Here I stand" is the battle cry for one group of members in a church who have decided that a doctrine held by others in the church is unacceptable. When the matter reaches a certain boiling point, a new church is formed and doctrinally like-minded folks group together while leaving the remnants holding to the less favorable doctrine behind. The result is that the people in the pew next to you hold very similar doctrinal beliefs and tend to have similar standards of morality. It makes it appear as if where you went to church contained a minimum standard of folks that should call themselves Christian. Reality, paints a different picture, even in Protestantism. If you were to combine all Protestants, from the morally liberal all the way to the most pious of puritans, you would have something quite similar to what I see at mass every Sunday.

As I mentioned earlier, in the Catholic Church, I might be sitting next to a rainbow sasher. What that reminds me most is that I TOO am a sinner and that pride is my weakest link. Who am I, a lowly sinner, to judge one who is there presumably seeking the Truth. The Catholic Church is for the sick, the dying, the grossly sinful and the Holy too. Jesus came for ALL of them and while I may not like sitting next to a bored teenager defiantly clad in tight Abercrombie and Fitch clothes, there she is and Sunday after Sunday she hears Sacred Scripture and she participates in the Holy Sacrifice of the mass. Every day, that grace calls you to decision. My prayer should be that each day we all (my self included) accept that grace and follow Him, and never turn away from the Lord, our strength.

There is a reason you see a lot of little old ladies scooting around the parish every day, serving with every last ounce of life they have in them. They used to be that defiant young girl.