Organized Religion

Have you ever heard someone express the view, “I don’t care for “organized religion.”?  What they are saying is that they want to be free to be who they want to be faith-wise, and don’t want to be “confined” by what they might call a set of rules for their spiritual life.  Such a person may or may not be an atheist.  If he/she is an atheist, a reasonable response would require arguments in favor of the existence of God, which would be arguments more basic to the question.  Rather, today I’m thinking about what a reasonable response would be for someone who does believe in God but, for whatever reason, does not believe that an established religion is the way to go.

The question comes down to who God is and what He has revealed to us.  God is the Supreme Being who is responsible for all things in existence.  As such, we would know nothing about Him, except for what He has chosen to reveal to us.  Christian and Jewish religions believe that God has revealed Himself to us through the centuries from ancient times via the writings by inspired writers.  So we have what has been called “the word of God” given to us through the Sacred Scriptures, the Bible.  The Jewish faith is an organized religion.  God chose this religion in ancient times for His revelations.  To us who believe in organized religion, this truth is important to remember.  It is a fundamental truth that God has revealed Himself through an organized religion. 

We regard as truth, then, revelations seen in the Bible, that God created all things, that man committed a serious sin early on and that God then chose to send us a Savior for the purpose of redemption. So thus God’s Son, Jesus Christ, was born and came among us to right the ship.  The next question is specifically, how did He do this.  He established and organized a new religion – Christianity, or, as a devoted Catholic such as myself would say, the Catholic Church.  Starting with a band of twelve apostles from which He chose a leader, St. Peter, the rock upon whom he built this church (Matt 16:18), he organized a religion.  This is a fundamental truth carried out so that man could have a path to eternal salvation.  And, since the time of Christ and the apostles, the work was carried on via St. Peter’s successors, the popes, and the apostles’ successors, the Catholic bishops.

So if someone doesn’t care for or follow this “organized religion,” the Catholic Church founded by the Son of God, it would make sense that his/her eternal salvation would be in jeopardy.  True, there are rules to follow, but these are necessary and dictated by God Himself or via the Church that He established.  Beginning with the Ten Commandments from ancient times and continuing with commandments and rules dictated by Christ’s Church, we have important and fundamental “rules” that need to be followed.

And how can we be sure that the Catholic Church is the one true organized religion that has come down to us and that we should obey her rules?  After Christ told St. Peter that he would be the rock upon whom he would build His church, He said, “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”  (Matt 16:18-19). 

So while believing that an organized religion, the Catholic Church, is the way to go does require an acceptance of God’s word through Sacred Scripture, it makes sense.  It is obvious that we are surrounded by evidence of Man’s sinfulness and it make sense to me that God would takes these steps to rectify the problem.