How to Address Doubts About Catholicism

Doubts make us feel uneasy and unsettled, but they also let us confront issues and beliefs. You can choose from a variety of methods to address your doubts about Catholicism, including historical research, Scriptural study, personal experience and common sense.

Instructions

1. Address your doubts instead of brushing them off. For the past 2000 years, the Catholic Church has examined doubt. Doubt begins the intellectual and spiritual process of debate, prayer and understanding, which may lead to truth.

2. Examine the historical origins of Christian belief in the New Testament. In the beginning, Catholics debated which books they should accept as the New Testament. By the end of the fourth century A.D., the Church had selected a definitive list of writings. Although Protestants later rejected a few books, most Christians agree on the majority.

3. Read the writings of the earliest Christians who learned faith from the disciples of Jesus. These first Christians followed the basic principles of the Catholic faith, including infant baptism, confession, Mass and Holy Communion. Their practices and beliefs would appear strange to many modern Christians, but are familiar to modern Catholics.

4. Search the Scriptures for advice about keeping the gift of faith. The New Testament tells us that faith is a gift and that living the gospel message will increase our faith, but we must know what that message is in order to practice it.

5. Realize that other people in the past also doubted Catholicism. Many groups, including Ethiopian, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Melkite, Chaldean, Syro-Malabarese, Malankarese, Syriac, Anglicans and other groups, have doubted and then returned to the Roman Catholic Church over the past 1000 years.

6. Determine if your doubts are based on emotional experiences or on facts. Many converts to Catholicism admit that they had an emotional barrier to Catholicism, but eventually historical facts and Scriptural study took them beyond their emotions, and they applied common sense to their beliefs and personal experience.