Catholicism. Why It's Right For Me - 4/11/2026

I hope this is my shortest post ever. We're traveling for a couple weeks, and I want to make a post before we depart to clearly make the basis for my Catholic faith known. First a little housekeeping:

I don't "believe in" the Pope. I believe and accept he is Christ's vicar on earth based on Jesus's biblical assertion that Peter is the rock on which His Church was built. (Matthew 16:17-19) That doesn't make the Church perfect in every way, nor does it confer infallibility in ALL things on the Pope.

I don't think I'm any better off, as far as my eternal salvation goes, than any Jesus-loving, Bible-believing Protestant is. Read that again if you need to. I am NOT making a case against Protestantism. I am explaining why I choose to stay in the Catholic Church. I do assert, though, that Protestants miss out when it comes to the Eucharist. Period. Can and are Protestants saved without it? Yes. Any Catholic who say otherwise is ill-informed. But I do believe they're missing out. Which leads to the bottom line on this post:

Why is Catholicism right for me? Above all else, and first off, it is the Eucharist. I take John, Chapter 6, Verses  32-58 literally. I take Jesus at His word. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians, all relay the Lord's command to "Do this in memory of me." But it is in John 6 that Jesus teaches us the why, the meaning, the significance. Why do this? What's in it for me? "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day." I'm quoting Jesus there. I believe Him.

The Eucharist, that's the reason.
I know it is a hard teaching to accept. A lot about Jesus defies human understanding, whether it's walking on water, turning water into wine, raising the dead including Himself. Well, I believe all of those things. So for me, why not? After the Bread of Life discourse people walked away from Him. So difficult to grasp, His teaching on the Bread of Life must have had them walking away: "The guy's gone nuts! We're not cannibals. We can't eat his flesh or drink his blood. That's disgusting!"

I'm with Peter on this. Why am I still here then?

Where else am I to go? To whom else can I go?

I look at all the objections to Catholicism and some seem, at a minimum, to have some merit. Others, I say, not as much. But even if we were to stipulate that all or most of the objections are valid. It doesn't change a fundamental fact for me:

I'm Catholic. I believe the Holy Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ. The Pope and the Church are imperfect and have problems. True. At times certainly the Devil seems to have had a foot in the Catholic Church's door. I get that and I don't deny it. But Jesus promised me that the gates of hell wouldn't prevail against His Church. That's good enough for me. I have no place else to go.


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