God is outside of time, yet active in it, the Creator of the universe, and the origin of good. Moreover, he is kind, merciful, and loving.<\/p>\n
Instead of taking a leap of faith and accepting the power of God’s love, Catholicism takes a faltering step onto the bridge of\u00a0man-made traditions. By instituting\u00a0an atonement sacrifice once a week, it\u00a0clamors for a return to pre-Christian tradition just as the Jews clamored for a return to slavery in Egypt.<\/p>\n
Much\u00a0of Roman Catholicism’s failure is due to lack of faith in its doctrine. It\u00a0holds to transubstantiation, the belief that\u00a0the bread and wine of the Lord’s supper literally transform\u00a0into Jesus’ body and blood. This reflects an inner belief that Christ’s sacrifice must\u00a0reoccur as long as Christians keep on sinning.<\/p>\n
The belief is natural enough. Reading the Bible\u00a0does not make the\u00a0Christian perfect, but rather causes him to see more clearly the depth\u00a0of his depravity. Therefore, it\u00a0is difficult for him to believe\u00a0that Jesus could extract all the embedded dirt free of charge and even more difficult to believe that he wiped away the filth in every human heart, past, present, and future, in one event. Unconditional love and unlimited freedom are both utterly foreign to us, so we limit God to what we can observe in this eye-for-an-eye, corrupted, capitalist world.<\/p>\n
As limited, sinful beings, we all subordinate truth to our sense of security. We follow what we can see, what we can touch, and what we can comprehend. We may long to follow God, but we also long for control. As one\u00a0philosopher puts it,<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs\u2014whatever\u2014just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game’s outcome.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n