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How Can You Still Be Catholic? 50 Answers to a Good Question
"How can you still be Catholic?" Cradle Catholic Christopher Sparks takes the question head on, addressing an array of controversial issues and offering the same answer given by St. Peter 2,000 years ago: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (Jn 6:60).
Sparks asked Facebook friends to finish the question: "How can you still be Catholic when ... ?" Here are brief answers to their questions, including recommended reading for those who want to go deeper. These questions touch on some of the biggest issues people grapple with when they think about the Catholic Church, such as:
· the Inquisition;
· the Crusades;
· the Church's role in a state;
· homosexuality;
· procreation;
· women's place in the Church;
· and much more.
For practicing Catholics, Sparks will equip you to give a defense for the hope that is in your heart. For doubting souls, you will be happy to learn there are perfectly good answers to your perfectly reasonable questions. For those who have fought the Church tooth and nail, yield the floor a moment to Christopher Sparks. Hear him out. It's time to move beyond the myths!
Sparks asked Facebook friends to finish the question: "How can you still be Catholic when ... ?" Here are brief answers to their questions, including recommended reading for those who want to go deeper. These questions touch on some of the biggest issues people grapple with when they think about the Catholic Church, such as:
· the Inquisition;
· the Crusades;
· the Church's role in a state;
· homosexuality;
· procreation;
· women's place in the Church;
· and much more.
For practicing Catholics, Sparks will equip you to give a defense for the hope that is in your heart. For doubting souls, you will be happy to learn there are perfectly good answers to your perfectly reasonable questions. For those who have fought the Church tooth and nail, yield the floor a moment to Christopher Sparks. Hear him out. It's time to move beyond the myths!
243 pages, Paperback
Published July 21, 2017
15 people are currently reading
23 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 21, 2018
Nearly all of my life I have been anti-religious. I got and read this book as an unselfish act of friendship to better relate to a new Catholic friend.
This book broke down every single wall that had held me in contempt... prior to investigation, that I had so neatly created.
My arrogance and preconceived assumptions (prejudices) have shattered and I am left with a profound respect and desire to KNOW, as you do. I can not tell you how strange and foreign it is for me to feel (God) that this book was created specifically for me, to open my mind, heart and soul in ways I never even knew I had been so thoroughly and completely blocked from. Today, I am willing to feel that I can and will be blessed.
Judy K ~ Former Atheist
This book broke down every single wall that had held me in contempt... prior to investigation, that I had so neatly created.
My arrogance and preconceived assumptions (prejudices) have shattered and I am left with a profound respect and desire to KNOW, as you do. I can not tell you how strange and foreign it is for me to feel (God) that this book was created specifically for me, to open my mind, heart and soul in ways I never even knew I had been so thoroughly and completely blocked from. Today, I am willing to feel that I can and will be blessed.
Judy K ~ Former Atheist
November 5, 2018
Extremely helpful resource - will keep this one in my office.
May 22, 2024
A BRIEF SERIES OF RESPONSES TO COMMON CHALLENGES TO CATHOLICISM
Author Christopher Sparks wrote in the Introduction to this 2017 book, “‘How can you still be Catholic when…?’ Catholics get asked that question a lot. Sometimes, we may even ask ourselves the same question… All too often, the world throws down the gauntlet to Catholics and talks away without giving us a chance to respond. But… There are answers, often very good answers, to each and every question in this book, and to every question the Church will ever be confronted with. There are good answers for a very simple reason: Catholicism is true… So take heart, all you Catholics looking for answers to the questions you have been asked, or are being asked.”
He suggests, “So don’t be surprised when Catholics, even our leaders, sin! We’re all potential saints in progress, not perfect now… Indeed, the Gospel is the Good News for God’s salvation for sinners, for fallen humanity… We can still be Catholic, still in a Church with a lot of dirty laundry, because a lot of that dirty laundry is our own. We are the sinners that the Church has been waiting for, that Christ has gone looking.” (Pg. 16)
He explains, “How can a non-Christian enter the Kingdom of Heaven if Jesus Christ and His Church is the only way in?... Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and apart from Him, there is no entry into the Kingdom of Heaven---but some who are publicly Christian on earth are far from Jesus, and some who do not know His name know Him very well, love Him deeply, and serve Him… for they serve Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Being, and Love… Some who think they are on the highway to Heaven are instead passing swiftly to hell, and some who do not know of the highway to Heaven will one day come face-to-face with the one Gate, with Jesus Christ, who will welcome them into the banquet.” (Pg. 23)
He acknowledges, “Christians must take responsibility for atrocities committed and war waged in the name of Christianity, and surely troops fighting under the sign of the Cross committed atrocities in the course of the Crusades---including the sack of Byzantium, and, at times, ill-treatment of Jewish communities… The Catholic Church is far from pretending that its members haven’t committed evil acts in the name of the faith… when people speak of the Catholic Church and the Crusades, they often speak as though the popes directed every action, called for every slaughter, and ordered every massacre. To what extent did the Church lead the Crusades? The popes traditionally called them, but the day-to-day leadership … was given to a commander in the field… the popes did not usually have oversight of the fighting from moment to moment. So the Church could be criticized for calling the Crusades, but the actual management of them was not normally directly in papal hands.” (Pg. 27)
Of sexual abuse of children by priests, he notes, “According to the John Jay College independent study…. ‘The count of incidents per year increased steadily from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, then declined in the 1980s and continues to remain low.’ How low? Sociologist Philip Jankins estimated that… the highest respectable estimate of abusive clergy in the Catholic Church would be 5 percent, but the number is far more likely to be less than 2 percent. Compare that with pedophilia in the general population, which has been estimated at around 4 percent… The percentage of sexual predators in the priesthood is less than that in the general population… A lot of Catholics are justly furious at the priests who committed these crimes… Even in times when pedophilia was seen by the psychiatric profession as treatable, the Church’s teaching had not changed---so we are really without excuse to the grave harm that did occur. Our bishops and priests should have known better.” (Pg. 37-39)
On overpopulation, he suggests, “Perhaps our successful attempts at population control to date have removed precisely the minds and hearts we need to solve these problems. Perhaps we have aborted or contracepted the inventor who would have made possible travel to other worlds, and thus solved the issue of where to put people. Or perhaps we have aborted or contracepted people who could have cured any number of debilitating illnesses, and thus enabled far more of the population to produce, to visibly contribute, for far longer… Getting rid of people is not a solution to this sort of problem… is the problem the sheer number of human beings making use of the world, or is it the way in which we make use of the world?” (Pg. 51)
On women’s ordination, he said, “priesthood is a job for fathers… because Moses and Jesus said so by their choice of priests. But why? … I suspect it has something to do with the reason why God chose to have His Son become incarnate as a man, and the reason why the Lord’s Prayer is the Our Father, not the Our Mother… And so Catholic priests are men, are fathers, who stand ‘in persona Christi capitis’ (in the person of Christ the Head)… Does this privilege men above women? I don’t think so—if anything, it gives man an awful lot of responsibility… to serve their wives as self-sacrificingly as Jesus serves His Church, and to embody the Beatitudes for their family, friends, and enemies.” (Pg. 59-60)
He states, “Laypeople have rights under canon law and can appeal to the bishop if a priest is breaking canon law… the priest abuse scandal was not only the fault of the bishops… or of diocesan officials who never called the police. It was also the fault of the laity who didn’t call in the authorities when it was well past time to do so…” (Pg. 87)
On the role of women in the Church, he comments, “[Do] women have full representation in positions of leadership in the Church? Nope, not yet. Is this something that can and should be fixed? Yes, absolutely---more women can become consultors to the different congregations and committees of the Vatican. Let there be more female theologians. Let there be women religious with greater participation through the structure of the Church… women will not be made priests, because priesthood is inextricable from fatherhood. But women can certainly take on a much larger role in the household of God than they currently exercise.” (Pg. 110-111)
He admits, “the Spanish Inquisition … was an organization entrusted with compelling orthodoxy and killing those who would not recant. Torture was used as part of its proceedings, though rarely. Its activities… often took the form of anti-Semitism… The Spanish Inquisition came into existence at the tail end of about eight centuries of war between Christians and the Muslim invaders. It’s not unfathomable that such a lengthy struggle would have left a mark and helped form the culture of conquistadors and inquisitors…” (Pg. 121-122)
On Gay Rights, he says, “the Church is not discriminating against gays. He is applying her sexual ethic uniformly to all people: Sex belongs inside marriage, which is a covenantal union between a man and a woman. As to adoption… Placing children with gay couples puts the children in a situation where they are missing a parent. Further, the model of life given in the household of a gay couple… is not the model for children to be formed by.” (Pg. 142)
He suggests, “when you find things in Scripture that seem contradictory (the different accounts of certain scenes from Jesus’ life in the Gospels, for example; or the apparently stark contrasts between the morality of the Old and New Testaments, and between the wrath of Yahweh and the mercy of Jesus), take into account all the many, many reasons: different human authors, different historical circumstances, different genres, different levels of scientific and natural knowledge, etc.” (Pg. 167)
On the ‘pagan origin’ of the Virgin Birth, he explains, “The Greek gods and goddesses have offspring all over the place, and sometimes give birth rather oddly (Athena springs from Zeus’ head, Dionysius from Zeus’ leg), but these aren’t presented as virgin births. The Egyptian god Horus, we are told, was the child of Isis and Osiris. Horus’ conceptions was miraculous, certainly… but not the same thing as a virgin birth…the number of religious systems that Christianity could realistically have borrowed from is limited…. Early Christians went to their deaths rather than deny Christ for paganism. Is it really likely that they would have embroidered on the life of Christ with pagan myths?” (Pg. 180)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Catholic apologetics.
Author Christopher Sparks wrote in the Introduction to this 2017 book, “‘How can you still be Catholic when…?’ Catholics get asked that question a lot. Sometimes, we may even ask ourselves the same question… All too often, the world throws down the gauntlet to Catholics and talks away without giving us a chance to respond. But… There are answers, often very good answers, to each and every question in this book, and to every question the Church will ever be confronted with. There are good answers for a very simple reason: Catholicism is true… So take heart, all you Catholics looking for answers to the questions you have been asked, or are being asked.”
He suggests, “So don’t be surprised when Catholics, even our leaders, sin! We’re all potential saints in progress, not perfect now… Indeed, the Gospel is the Good News for God’s salvation for sinners, for fallen humanity… We can still be Catholic, still in a Church with a lot of dirty laundry, because a lot of that dirty laundry is our own. We are the sinners that the Church has been waiting for, that Christ has gone looking.” (Pg. 16)
He explains, “How can a non-Christian enter the Kingdom of Heaven if Jesus Christ and His Church is the only way in?... Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and apart from Him, there is no entry into the Kingdom of Heaven---but some who are publicly Christian on earth are far from Jesus, and some who do not know His name know Him very well, love Him deeply, and serve Him… for they serve Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Being, and Love… Some who think they are on the highway to Heaven are instead passing swiftly to hell, and some who do not know of the highway to Heaven will one day come face-to-face with the one Gate, with Jesus Christ, who will welcome them into the banquet.” (Pg. 23)
He acknowledges, “Christians must take responsibility for atrocities committed and war waged in the name of Christianity, and surely troops fighting under the sign of the Cross committed atrocities in the course of the Crusades---including the sack of Byzantium, and, at times, ill-treatment of Jewish communities… The Catholic Church is far from pretending that its members haven’t committed evil acts in the name of the faith… when people speak of the Catholic Church and the Crusades, they often speak as though the popes directed every action, called for every slaughter, and ordered every massacre. To what extent did the Church lead the Crusades? The popes traditionally called them, but the day-to-day leadership … was given to a commander in the field… the popes did not usually have oversight of the fighting from moment to moment. So the Church could be criticized for calling the Crusades, but the actual management of them was not normally directly in papal hands.” (Pg. 27)
Of sexual abuse of children by priests, he notes, “According to the John Jay College independent study…. ‘The count of incidents per year increased steadily from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s, then declined in the 1980s and continues to remain low.’ How low? Sociologist Philip Jankins estimated that… the highest respectable estimate of abusive clergy in the Catholic Church would be 5 percent, but the number is far more likely to be less than 2 percent. Compare that with pedophilia in the general population, which has been estimated at around 4 percent… The percentage of sexual predators in the priesthood is less than that in the general population… A lot of Catholics are justly furious at the priests who committed these crimes… Even in times when pedophilia was seen by the psychiatric profession as treatable, the Church’s teaching had not changed---so we are really without excuse to the grave harm that did occur. Our bishops and priests should have known better.” (Pg. 37-39)
On overpopulation, he suggests, “Perhaps our successful attempts at population control to date have removed precisely the minds and hearts we need to solve these problems. Perhaps we have aborted or contracepted the inventor who would have made possible travel to other worlds, and thus solved the issue of where to put people. Or perhaps we have aborted or contracepted people who could have cured any number of debilitating illnesses, and thus enabled far more of the population to produce, to visibly contribute, for far longer… Getting rid of people is not a solution to this sort of problem… is the problem the sheer number of human beings making use of the world, or is it the way in which we make use of the world?” (Pg. 51)
On women’s ordination, he said, “priesthood is a job for fathers… because Moses and Jesus said so by their choice of priests. But why? … I suspect it has something to do with the reason why God chose to have His Son become incarnate as a man, and the reason why the Lord’s Prayer is the Our Father, not the Our Mother… And so Catholic priests are men, are fathers, who stand ‘in persona Christi capitis’ (in the person of Christ the Head)… Does this privilege men above women? I don’t think so—if anything, it gives man an awful lot of responsibility… to serve their wives as self-sacrificingly as Jesus serves His Church, and to embody the Beatitudes for their family, friends, and enemies.” (Pg. 59-60)
He states, “Laypeople have rights under canon law and can appeal to the bishop if a priest is breaking canon law… the priest abuse scandal was not only the fault of the bishops… or of diocesan officials who never called the police. It was also the fault of the laity who didn’t call in the authorities when it was well past time to do so…” (Pg. 87)
On the role of women in the Church, he comments, “[Do] women have full representation in positions of leadership in the Church? Nope, not yet. Is this something that can and should be fixed? Yes, absolutely---more women can become consultors to the different congregations and committees of the Vatican. Let there be more female theologians. Let there be women religious with greater participation through the structure of the Church… women will not be made priests, because priesthood is inextricable from fatherhood. But women can certainly take on a much larger role in the household of God than they currently exercise.” (Pg. 110-111)
He admits, “the Spanish Inquisition … was an organization entrusted with compelling orthodoxy and killing those who would not recant. Torture was used as part of its proceedings, though rarely. Its activities… often took the form of anti-Semitism… The Spanish Inquisition came into existence at the tail end of about eight centuries of war between Christians and the Muslim invaders. It’s not unfathomable that such a lengthy struggle would have left a mark and helped form the culture of conquistadors and inquisitors…” (Pg. 121-122)
On Gay Rights, he says, “the Church is not discriminating against gays. He is applying her sexual ethic uniformly to all people: Sex belongs inside marriage, which is a covenantal union between a man and a woman. As to adoption… Placing children with gay couples puts the children in a situation where they are missing a parent. Further, the model of life given in the household of a gay couple… is not the model for children to be formed by.” (Pg. 142)
He suggests, “when you find things in Scripture that seem contradictory (the different accounts of certain scenes from Jesus’ life in the Gospels, for example; or the apparently stark contrasts between the morality of the Old and New Testaments, and between the wrath of Yahweh and the mercy of Jesus), take into account all the many, many reasons: different human authors, different historical circumstances, different genres, different levels of scientific and natural knowledge, etc.” (Pg. 167)
On the ‘pagan origin’ of the Virgin Birth, he explains, “The Greek gods and goddesses have offspring all over the place, and sometimes give birth rather oddly (Athena springs from Zeus’ head, Dionysius from Zeus’ leg), but these aren’t presented as virgin births. The Egyptian god Horus, we are told, was the child of Isis and Osiris. Horus’ conceptions was miraculous, certainly… but not the same thing as a virgin birth…the number of religious systems that Christianity could realistically have borrowed from is limited…. Early Christians went to their deaths rather than deny Christ for paganism. Is it really likely that they would have embroidered on the life of Christ with pagan myths?” (Pg. 180)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying Catholic apologetics.
August 28, 2022
So helpful from the point of view of someone who questions their faith daily.
December 26, 2022
This book is a series of questions Chris Sparks put out to his friends on FB which he collected and went to answer.
The Catholic Church has also been publicly stained by the acts and behaviours of some priests. So, the question for me became, how could I believe in a religion that had leaders act in this way preaching the teachings of God?
What Christopher Sparks’ book explained was God’s love in spite of what religious leaders, and what events in history on behalf of the Church has done. It reminded me about God’s love and the importance of some of the sacraments like confession and what it was meant to do, how it was meant to be used.
If I had to recommend a book for Catholic/ Christian education, it would be a book like this when the word of God is muffled and forgotten and questioned based on the acts and behaviours of religious leaders and bad people or bad events in general.
I sometimes felt the arguments weren’t really well formed and defaulted to a basic truth about God’s love, but nonetheless, Sparks wasn’t afraid to research and present his point of view whilst returning always to the fundamental truth of God’s love.
Through my re-examination off the faith, I realized how important faith can be to a person. We all default to any belief we have in our own actions such as deciding where and to whom we give charity to (to the poor or to anyone), how we behave with people (through kindness or another behaviour - for example, should we treat another with kindness when they have clearly hurt us terribly?), etc. Our decisions (including our actions) are guided by our beliefs. I find that who I am fundamentally, is driven by my belief system. If it was strongly rooted in values that God hold’s dear, I would let love and kindness be the driving force for everything and with extreme faith, I wouldn’t find myself reacting to the behaviour of others, rather reflecting on how I would like to respond, understanding that in our darkest moments, we don’t do or say the greatest things.
I love that through the sacrament of confession, it is as though anything you have been or found yourself sinning against and understand you have sinned, allows you to be absolved of those sins, to begin anew. Our sins are our mistakes that don’t align with the teachings of God’s love, we have been making them for a long time, biblically, since the time of Adam and Eve. We’re human.
The book tackles some hard questions like how and why the Catholic Church has stances or how the Church truly views subjects like abortion, masturbation, the Church’s history, priest’s behaviour, homosexuality, science and technology, etc. It’s a hard look at the Catholic religion. Although you can go to school for the education, or to mass for the teachings, I find that the Catholic/Christian religion is still very much misunderstood and a reason why so many people walk away from a life of faith in general.
The Catholic Church has also been publicly stained by the acts and behaviours of some priests. So, the question for me became, how could I believe in a religion that had leaders act in this way preaching the teachings of God?
What Christopher Sparks’ book explained was God’s love in spite of what religious leaders, and what events in history on behalf of the Church has done. It reminded me about God’s love and the importance of some of the sacraments like confession and what it was meant to do, how it was meant to be used.
If I had to recommend a book for Catholic/ Christian education, it would be a book like this when the word of God is muffled and forgotten and questioned based on the acts and behaviours of religious leaders and bad people or bad events in general.
I sometimes felt the arguments weren’t really well formed and defaulted to a basic truth about God’s love, but nonetheless, Sparks wasn’t afraid to research and present his point of view whilst returning always to the fundamental truth of God’s love.
Through my re-examination off the faith, I realized how important faith can be to a person. We all default to any belief we have in our own actions such as deciding where and to whom we give charity to (to the poor or to anyone), how we behave with people (through kindness or another behaviour - for example, should we treat another with kindness when they have clearly hurt us terribly?), etc. Our decisions (including our actions) are guided by our beliefs. I find that who I am fundamentally, is driven by my belief system. If it was strongly rooted in values that God hold’s dear, I would let love and kindness be the driving force for everything and with extreme faith, I wouldn’t find myself reacting to the behaviour of others, rather reflecting on how I would like to respond, understanding that in our darkest moments, we don’t do or say the greatest things.
I love that through the sacrament of confession, it is as though anything you have been or found yourself sinning against and understand you have sinned, allows you to be absolved of those sins, to begin anew. Our sins are our mistakes that don’t align with the teachings of God’s love, we have been making them for a long time, biblically, since the time of Adam and Eve. We’re human.
The book tackles some hard questions like how and why the Catholic Church has stances or how the Church truly views subjects like abortion, masturbation, the Church’s history, priest’s behaviour, homosexuality, science and technology, etc. It’s a hard look at the Catholic religion. Although you can go to school for the education, or to mass for the teachings, I find that the Catholic/Christian religion is still very much misunderstood and a reason why so many people walk away from a life of faith in general.
December 24, 2023
My thanks to Christopher Sparks for taking the time to organize these answers into such a convenient package! I’ll be recommending this book to everyone I can get to read it, if only so they can stop viewing the Church through the distorted lens so many have accepted second hand, and perhaps come to the Truth in the light of His Church.
On the work itself, it writes clearly as Mr. Sparks’s answers to the questions, but stays grounded in doctrine. Some of the answers appear dogmatic from this doctrinal perspective, but the author does a good job going further into the questions and even addressing hypotheticals within the context of each question. My only improve for the book would be less similar questions, though this only applies in a few cases. I don’t know the process the author took to selecting the questions, so perhaps this was unavoidable given a rule he was following. Overall, excellent.
On the work itself, it writes clearly as Mr. Sparks’s answers to the questions, but stays grounded in doctrine. Some of the answers appear dogmatic from this doctrinal perspective, but the author does a good job going further into the questions and even addressing hypotheticals within the context of each question. My only improve for the book would be less similar questions, though this only applies in a few cases. I don’t know the process the author took to selecting the questions, so perhaps this was unavoidable given a rule he was following. Overall, excellent.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews