Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion [1908]

[Stone]

Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


TWENTY-SECOND OBJECTION. AN HONEST MAN OUGHT NOT TO CHANGE HIS RELIGION. WE OUGHT TO REMAIN IN THE RELIGION IN WHICH WE WERE BORN.

Answer. Yes, when we are born in the true religion, which is the Catholic religion.

But when we have not had the happiness of being born a Catholic, and we come to discover the true faith, not only is it permitted, but absolutely necessary, under pain of committing otherwise a great sin, to quit the Protestant sect (or other), in which we were brought up.

This is not apostasy. An apostate is one who abandons truth for error.

To abandon error to return to truth, is to accomplish the will of God; is to perform an act supremely reasonable, legitimate, loyal; is to act according to one's conscience, to fulfil the most sacred of duties.

It is, besides, to perform an act of heroic virtue. For the person who thus becomes converted has nearly always to brave a terrible storm, reproaches, contempt, insult, tears, the supplications of his family, of friends, of all the members of the religion he is about to renounce, and of its ministers above all, wounded by this desertion.

Then should he call to mind those great words of the Saviour: "I am not come to bring peace, but the sword! For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. . . . And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household.

• "He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me.
  
• "And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me.
  
• "And you shall be hated by all men for My name's sake; but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved."
  

A celebrated Protestant, Madame de Staël, in a religious discussion, which she had herself provoked on the subject of a change of religion, had recourse to this very trite defence: "I wish to live and die in the religion of my fathers." "And I, Madam, in the religion of my grandfathers," replied her witty adversary. Because, as you know, previous to the sixteenth century, all Christians were Catholics.

All have heard the sensible reason which decided Henry IV., a Protestant, to become a Catholic. He was present at a conference between certain Catholic doctors and Protestant ministers. "Can I be saved in the Catholic Church?" he demanded of the Protestant ministers when the discussion was brought to a close. "Yes, Sire," they answered, "but you will be saved more easily by remaining in the reformed religion."

"And you, gentlemen," said the king to the Catholic doctors, "what is your opinion?" "We think, Sire, and we positively declare to you, that having once known which is the true Church, you are absolutely obliged to enter it, and that salvation is no longer possible for your soul in Protestantism."

"I go, then, for the most sure side," concluded the king, as he rose from his seat; "since all the world agrees that I can be saved as a Catholic, I shall become a Catholic."

And he abjured his errors.