And this is, uh, Maxine of Arc...

This is just a clarification post which felt needed regarding something I said last post. It'll be super-short, I promise. Since I didn't post anything for seventeen days this month, this is my way of meeting some arbitrary quota, I guess.

Last post, I stated that Catholicism is appealing on an intellectual level. I did not mean that Catholics are all smart people, or that people with strong faith are always the well-educated. Each of us is called to Christ. While the intricacies of Christian theology and apologetics may attract the Chesterton-type, Catholicism is at its best a religion of the meek. Faith isn't about deciphering doctrine like a formula, it's about accepting them as a necessary truth from God. Some weaker men, like myself, need to be convinced through axiomatic reasoning that one religion is right. Others know it to be right, down to their very bones. The strongest faith is the one that is felt, not the one that is intellectually unraveled.

Take the great French saint, Jeanne d'Arc, a favorite of mine (in no small part, I have to admit, due to one of my favorite movies). St Joan was an illiterate peasant girl in the fifteenth century. If there had even been any internet or books for her to study her Catholic faith, she still wouldn't have been able to read. Anything she learned about God and the Christian faith, she would have learned from her family and priest. Could she have articulated her faith rationally like Chesterton, or recited doctrine and Canon Law like the Pope? Probably not, I'd guess. And yet, she believed. She believed so strongly that she followed God's will for her into uncertainty, into war, and eventually into martyrdom. For her compliant and humble faith in the Lord, she has been given her eternal reward.

Do you wanna pray?

Okay, point made. 'Til next post!