1. The one and only true Church and the one and only true God.
Gilbert Chesterton once wrote that the whole world hates the Catholic Church because she claims that she is the only true Church and her God is the only true God. Yes, that’s enough to make the whole world hate her. The trouble is that she can prove it. That will all the more make the whole world rage at her which in fact is now happening. But she has not done anything wrong. Pope Benedict XVI explains this with that old-time classical response: her mere existence is more than ample proof that she is the only true Church and her God is the only true God and all the rest are false. This is why Catholics had been killed just for being Catholics. The proof for this truth is within each man.
2. When God created man He wanted to made sure this man can know Him and love Him. So God implanted into his soul a dormant seed that contains a desire to know and to love Him. The seed is dormant because God wants him to know and love Him with complete freedom. Man’s mind and free will must arouse this seed to life and to maturity. Man must have total freedom to make it grow. How can this happen when a man is alone in a dense forest amidst impassable mountains. Can he know that the Catholic Church is the true Church and the Blessed Trinity the true God? Yes!
3. Man has to be a little philosopher. He must use his highest faculty, the intellect, to study that seed to see what it contains. Seeing that it contains the desire to know and love God, the intellect will move and exert effort to, first, know God and afterwards to love God. He cannot love God unless he first knows Him. So he looks around for proofs on the existence of God to be able to know Him. His senses behold nature, the trees in the forest with the surrounding mountains, and his mind concludes that there must be someone who created all this. He continues to use his intellect to find out who could this be. Of course, the first conclusion his mind would make would be that this someone must be wise and good. Judging from what He had created God cannot be a killer. Man’s first knowledge would be simple from the first simple proofs he gets from nature. But as he continuous to view nature from the stars to the tiniest human cell these proofs further exhibit the wisdom and goodness of this Someone. While his knowledge grows, his attraction or love for this Someone likewise increases. The free will grows according to the growth of the intellect.
4. A point comes when he begins to think that this Someone who exhibits wisdom must have written something that is easier for man to study to know Him. He tries a few books and sees that most books do not confirm what the little seed tells him. Until one day he finds Scriptures wherein God reveals Himself to man and finds that Scriptures confirms what the little seed in his soul tells him. But his intellect believes not because Scriptures said so but because the little seed of innate desire said so. And this knowledge of who God is will continue to grow as long as the intellect thinks like a man. His knowledge will begin with a knowledge of the god of nature. And if he continues to think he will attain to the knowledge of a supernatural God and even a knowledge of the Blessed Trinity.
5. Even at the beginning of his quest on who is God, hid mind will suspect that this god had instituted a church which he could enter and further learn more about Him. And he will begin to wonder what is His Church. It must be a Church that should correspond to His nature as a wise and good God. It will slowly begin to be clear that only one church reflect the wisdom and goodness of God…the Catholic Church where reason and good works reign supreme.
6. This man alone in a forest in the middle of the many mountains has not attended a seminary, never read a book and never heard a homily. This man would know the true God and the true Church because he just acted according to God’s image and likeness, according to the human nature that his creator had given him. And even before he realizes it he has entered God’s Church without any human aid. Isn’t this what happened to Blessed John Newman. And he was not even alone in a forest amidst mountains. He was in the middle of an environment hostile to the Catholic Church. Yet he discovered the true God and the true Church.
7. Just by acting according to his created human nature using his intellect anyone can reach the knowledge of the true God and the true Church all by himself. God has enabled man to do this by creating him into His image and likeness. Man must only go inside himself to see the image and likeness and he will be beholding the god who created him. So all men can know the true Church, the Catholic Church and the true God, the God of the Catholics even if he were alone in a dense forest in the middle of mountain ranges. And this was the message of Pope Benedict at Regensburg :’If only we use our reason we would all be Catholics. And there will be peace in this world.’ Reason was made by God to think of spiritual realities. It becomes dull when used to think of natural realities. Dulled by the countless worldly concerns man had ceased to think.
8. We live in a world where thinking is nearly impossible because of TV, computers, radios, iPods,computer games………..etc…etc stimuli that bombard our senses glutting our minds with useless and forbidden knowledge. Faith is an act of the intellect. Is it any wonder why many do not believe in God? Even if man does not think, his ability to know the true God and the true religion remains within him. And he will suspect that it is always there. No matter how loud he blasphemes the Catholic Church and her God, deep down he knows He is yelling at the true Church and the true God. And this tiny seeds speaks loudest when a soul beholds a monastic community. Pope Benedict reminds us that when we behold a monastic community we see in concrete form the true religion and the true God in their midst. Sadly, however, most monasteries are too lax to project the image of God and of the Church. The ancients, like the Chinese, always looked for a king philosopher. Because this is the man who thinks and whose mind governs his whole personality. Hilaire Belloc however quipped, today we live in a society of beasts in coat and tie.
9. God had given man a mind that made him an image of God. The Holy Father is calling on all of us to use that mind so that we can all remain calm and sane. But nobody is listening because man have ceased to be man.
Without the mind man had ceased to be rational, unable to make an act of faith, unable to love God and neighbor, unable to save his soul.