A reader writes:
How do you respond when someone says to you something like: "Country X is a predominantly Catholic country, but that country is rife with crime, violence, corruption, etc., etc. So being Catholic doesn’t seem to do anything for helping to produce morally upright people. This fact detracts from your claim that the Catholic Church is the true Church."
It does detract from the claim but does not neutralize it. Sin is a scandal, but looking at the perceived moral life of a nation does not tell one whether the majority religion of its inhabitants is true or not.
Look at the history of Israel prior to the time of Christ and all the sins that were committed in it. Did that stop Israel from being the chosen people? Did it stop Judaism from being the true religion? Yet the Old Testament is filled with condemnations of the Jewish people’s sins and even accuses them of sinning worse than the gentiles.
Further, look at countries today that have no experience of Christianity. They’re not exactly filled with moral goodness either. Neither are historically Protestant countries (like America) where abortion and stem cell research are legal and gay marriage is actually under discussion.
It’s simply impossible to establish the kind of correlations between different Christian religious affiliations and moral practice that the person wants to make.
Which is why Jesus didn’t propose this to us as a test of the true religion. He said we can spot false teachers by their bad behavior, but we can’t spot false religions by the behavior of there adherents.
When I was becoming a Catholic, I often reminded myself that I must not judge Catholicism by the behavior of Catholics. If I had, in pre-Christian times, judge Judaism by the behavior of Jews, I would have missed the true religion.
