Teaching Myself How To Be Catholic
I recently had a conversation with my friend Gary about the joy of teaching. We discussed that, at least for the two of us, one of our favorite ways to learn is to put ourselves in situations where we’re charged with teaching others. In many cases, I’d argue that teaching is a much better way for a teacher to learn that it is for a student to learn, but that topic is for another blog post. While I’ve spent my whole life as a student of Catholicism, I don’t think I’ve been a very good student. I’ve learned enough to know that there’s a lot that I do not yet know. I now seek to become a teacher, my own teacher, so that I can truly learn my own faith.
There’s entire field known as apologetics which is the explanation and defense of the faith. If I do not know my faith well enough to explain and defend it in the midst of a debate or argument, do I truly know it? When I am personally equipped with such little understanding, will I be able to live it out with fidelity when tested? Perhaps most importantly, if the measure of success of a Catholic Christian is faith in Christ, to know about Jesus is one step on the way to knowing Jesus in the context of a personal relationship.
I hope to create a viable learning environment for myself through this process, which will come in the form of planning, researching, and writing a series of blog posts. I hope this will be a safe place to experiment, but also to fail and learn from those attempts. There will likely be many times in my studies that I will come across incomplete or incorrect information. I will make incorrect interpretations of the things I think I have discovered. And I hope to be called out and challenged by others more knowledgeable or with different perspectives than me throughout this process. If regular blog posts are my worksheets and homework assignments, then discussions and responses to inquiries are my quizzes and exams.
My intent with this endeavor is not to change the minds of others. It is only to change myself, and if others find my trail of learning to be useful, then that is God’s work indeed. I hope that this is one of many such endeavors in learning. It could become a repeatable process that later proves useful in teaching myself how to be a better husband, father, friend, and teammate. But I am choosing to start with the topic of how to be a faithful Catholic, as I believe this is not just some aspect of my life, but the purpose of life itself.
