Having A Catholic Worldview

Back in 2005 when some friends of mine learned that I was going to be attending a Catholic university I was asked if I was going to be a priest. There is a common misconception among certain people that anyone who takes their faith seriously must either be a member of the clergy or at least considering entering religious life. Mark Wahlberg has shown us that not all devout Catholics are priests or nuns. Marky Mark is a regular lay person who also happens to be a film maker and actor. He took his religious faith and crafted the fine artistic film, ‘Father Stu.’ There are devout Catholics in every walk of life. The one thing they have in common is they have put on a particular set of glasses that enable them to see the world with a…

Catholic Worldview

There are Catholic school teachers, Catholic writers, and even Catholic politicians. Whatever one’s personal vocation is in life, how does one’s Catholic faith affect their vision of the world and how they act in it? If one is truly a devout Catholic school teacher must they only teach religion classes? If one is truly a devout Catholic writer, are the only books they will ever write be of a theological and biblical nature? If one is a Catholic politician how does that faith affect their policy decisions, especially if their elected president?

Catholic Politicians

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Alex Brandon/AP/Shutterstock (12830130h)

There was a time in American politics when the idea of a Catholic politician assuming the oval office was meet with suspicion, scorn and loathing. It was believed among evangelical Protestants that a Catholic president would enforce his strange and weird religious customs upon the land. John F. Kennedy shattered these fears in the 1960 presidential race when he affirmed in an interview that “Whatever one’s religion in private life may be, for the office-holder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts – including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state.” [1] In the present day political sphere Catholic politicians have echoed Kennedy’s philosophy by separating their private Catholic belief that God condemns abortion as morally evil and their duty they believe as elected public officials not to force this private religious belief on the American population that don’t share this same conviction.

Can a Catholic politician really compartmentalize his faith in God into private and public belief? Can an authentic religious faith in God lie secretly buried in the confines of the human soul? When one looks at Christian martyrs it becomes obvious that none of them were killed for keeping their faith in Christ privately to themselves. What a person believes in their heart about God can hardly be considered private, because a person’s core belief influences their decisions about life. Catholic author Frank Sheed points out logically that “rivers of blood have flowed because of what men have believed about God. And now, suddenly, it has become their own private affair.”[2] Those who believed in the god Moloch thought he would be pleased by the blood sacrifice of small children. Certain radical Muslims believe whole-heartedly that God will be pleased if they kill whom they consider to be his enemies by blowing themselves up in their midst. There is a small group of Christians whom believe that God is pleased when they go to different funerals and inform the grieving family members of the deceased that God hates them and that their son or daughter is burning in hell and that God is happy about this.

None of the folks described above thought their belief in God to be a private affair. For many the ultimate reality of life is God. What a person believes or does not believe The lack of respect for a person’s dignity or a person’s life reflects the vision of God seen by that individual. The choices a person makes in his daily life “are shaped by what he believes to be real and true, right and wrong, good and beautiful. The choices one makes is shaped by their worldview which is simply the sum total of a person’s belief in the ‘big picture’ that directs their daily decisions and actions.”[3] about God shapes his worldview and his worldview shapes his behavior and interaction with other people.

The Catholic Vision of God

The Catholic vision of God presents him as a mysterious personal being who exists beyond the ordinary understanding of human reason. He is pure spirit with no material aspects in His nature. He is a self-sustained entity who has always existed and is all-powerful. He personally designed and created the universe out of nothing. It’s worth stopping your reading of this essay at this point to really ponder this thought. You and I, this paper you are reading, the planet we are living on was all made out of nothing. The Wright Brothers created the first airplane out of wood and other material objects. Shakespeare created plays out of words and older stories. Beethoven created symphonies out of sound. [4] Little children create great works of art out of legos, crayons and playdo. God created the universe out of nothing and continually sustains the universe he made by willing it to exist.

This is what the Church sees when it looks at the universe in which we live. “Do we? It is not merely a matter of knowing that this is so. Do we actually see it so? If we do not, then we are not living mentally in the same world as the Church. What is more, we are not seeing tings as they are, for that is how they are.” [5]Our very existence and the universe in which we live in is not self-sustaining and would cease to exist if God willed it so. He is not absent from our lives because he holds our lives in His hands and keeps us from returning from which we came; nothing. God not only keeps us in existence but has placed reminders of his existence in his creation. The first truth we can and must believe about God is that He exists. If you deny the fact of God’s existence you deny the ultimate reason for your existence.

He has placed evidence for His existence within the reach of human reason. This evidence is seen anywhere and everywhere through out creation. To live within the framework of this reality is not something you need to be religious to believe.

“Seeing God everywhere and all things upheld by Him is not a matter of sanctity, but of plain sanity. To overlook God’s presence is not simply to be irreligious; it is a kind of insanity, like overlooking anything else that is actually there.” [6] Through the light of human reason, mankind can detect and deduce the designer from the design. “Like the artisan whose choices of media, colors, and brush stokes are his signature, God has created a masterpiece writing His name in every corner of the canvas.”[7]

God Revelation of Himself in History

The Catholic vision of God goes beyond God’s revelation in nature and includes God’s revelation in history. The all-powerful God who fashioned the stars and formed the molecules we are made of out of nothing, became a little baby who grew into a man. God eat, drank, slept, sweated, and cried. His human voice revealed things about God that natural revelation or philosophy could not teach. From Jesus we learn that although there is one God, He consists of three individual persons while still remaining one God. Jesus is the second person of the Trinity who en-fleshed invisible divine nature in human flesh. Amazingly the one who holds all reality in existence suffered and died. Christians believe that He personally died for each and every individual human being who has ever lived in order to restore their fallen humanity back into right relationship with God. His painful and horrible death on the cross proved God’s immense love for mankind and his resurrection from the dead sealed that Love in the hearts of those who opened themselves up to that love.

How a person sees God effects how they see and treat other people. The Catholic worldview sees people in the same light that God sees them. “The Church affirms clearly and forcefully that every individual — whatever his or her personal convictions — bears the visible image of the invisible God. Therefore by his very nature is the subject of rights which no one may violate, — no individual, group, class, nation or State.” CA 22. When this vision of humanity is not seen certain injustices prevail as detailed in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical ‘Centesimus annus’ . There is disrespect and contempt for the poor, the working man is deprived of livable wages, and freedom to seek the truth about God is taken away. It also produces the hatred which causes war and selfishness which causes man to seek his own wants and desires to the exclusion of those in need. “When man does not recognize in himself and in others the value and grandeur of the human person, he effectively deprives himself of the possibility of benefitting from his humanity and of entering into that relationship of solidarity and communion with others for which God created him.” CA 41

Loving God through Loving Other People

A Catholic worldview means seeing all of life within the perspective of the truth about God and other people. This vision affects all the choices and decisions that we make about life. It does not mean that a Catholic school teacher only teaches religion, but that they teach English, math, science and history within the vision of the God who created all reality. J.R.R. Tolkein considered his fantasy novel ‘Lord of the Rings’ very Catholic in its writing. He never set out to write a religious work, but because his religious faith was very much a part of who he was, it came through in his writing. “Flannery O’Connor defined the Christian novel not as a novel about Christianity, Christians, or a Christian world, but “one in which the truth as Christians know it has been used as a light to see the world by”.[8]

Witnessing to the Catholic faith means witnessing to the truth of God whom is present in all reality, even to those whom don’t believe. Catholic politicians, writers, or teachers who want to keep their faith at home and away from their professions help advance a secular worldview. This worldview is one of insanity as it denies the truth about humanity, because it denies the truth about the one whose image they are made in. “Thus, the root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, is the visible image of the invisible God.” CA 41 “As Fr. John Neuhaus notes in his book, The Naked Public Square, the banishment of religious belief and religious actors from the public square creates a power vacuum to be filled by a totalitarian state.”[9] It is important for Catholics to witness to the truth of God and of humanity so false ideas about God and humanity do take precedence in society.

A person who lets their Catholic worldview direct their actions will always be a person who respects humanity. They will be like Mother Teresa who treated her fellow human beings with dignity and respect. She held the sick in her arms as they lay dying and cared for the poorest of the poor. She did this because she let the truth of Christ’s love flow into her soul and loved those she saw formed in His image. She understood that the God who made and sustains the universe is found in Jesus Christ. This worldview is the light that all Catholics see by, whether they be teachers, writers or politicians. If you really believe that the God who made you out of nothing loves you enough to suffer death for you, you won’t be able to keep this faith private for it will seep out of your heart and create a light for all to see.