BE GOOD. BE FAITHFUL. BE COMMITTED?! - WHEN SINCERITY REPLACES TRUTH.

Modernist indifferentism summed in few sentences…
A “good sign” of a thorough modernist seminary formation… 

PROLOGUE: PERSONALIZED PROPOSITION, THEREFORE TRUE?

The rhetorical effect of a perceived “quotable quote” coined by oneself and published alongside one’s own photograph as a pictographic thumbnail is difficult to miss.

We cannot presume the private motive behind such a presentation. But its rhetorical effect is nevertheless clear: the proposition becomes personalized. The reader is not merely invited to examine an idea; he is invited to associate the idea with the man pictured—his personality, credibility, reputation, and perceived authority. The photograph ceases to be mere decoration. It becomes a visual signature of the maxim.

One such pictographed personalized maxim from a Novus Ordo cleric recently appeared on my newsfeed, and I could neither unsee the photograph nor overlook the theological danger of the proposition attached to it.

The maxim reads:

“If you are Catholic, be a good Catholic. If you are Anglican, be a good Anglican. If you are Protestant, be a faithful Protestant. If you are Pentecostal, be a committed Pentecostal. If you belong to tradition, live faithfully within”

At first hearing, it sounds tolerant. Peaceful. Generous. Even religious.

But is it Catholic?

That is the question.

And given that its author presents himself under the title “Rev. Fr.,” the question assumes an even greater seriousness. Such a title naturally carries with it an expectation that what is publicly taught in its name will be measured not merely by religious sentiment, but by the truth and demands of the Catholic Faith.

Now observe what the statement appears to commend: sincerity, stability, and fidelity.

But beneath its apparently harmless surface lies a much more consequential premise:

Whatever religious body a man happens to belong to is an acceptable religious destination, provided that he is sincere and faithful within it.

And that premise changes everything.

For the Catholic, the first religious question cannot simply be:

“Am I a good Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, or Pentecostal?”

It must first be:

“What is true?”

And immediately thereafter:

“What has God revealed, and where has Christ established the authority to preserve, teach, and transmit that revelation?”

These are not academic questions.

The various religious bodies named in the maxim do not merely represent different styles of worship under one common doctrinal roof. They make conflicting claims concerning fundamental matters of Christianity: the nature and authority of the Church, the Sacraments, the Eucharist, the priesthood, justification, revelation, and the means of salvation.

Contradictory propositions cannot all be true simply because their adherents are equally sincere.

A man may be:

• sincere and mistaken;
• committed and mistaken;
• deeply attached to a tradition and mistaken;
• even sincerely convinced that a religious fellowship constructed according to his own understanding is correct.

Sincerity does not make error true. Commitment does not make error true. Personal conviction does not become divine revelation.

And here the reactions to such a maxim become revealing; not necessarily as evidence of the author’s intention, but as illustrations of where the principle can lead.

One commenter responds:

“Fada, please, tell them: You don’t have to leave rather cherry pick what you want.”

Another declares:

“Thus why I finally established my own fellowship based on my understanding and opinions. Truth told.”

There it is in practical form:

Keep what suits you. Reject what does not. Select what you prefer. And, if necessary, construct your own religious expression according to your personal understanding.

But if that principle is legitimate, what becomes of divine revelation?

If the individual is free to retain whichever doctrines please him and discard whichever do not, religion is no longer fundamentally something received from God. It becomes something constructed by man.

And once personal preference becomes the principle of religious belonging, another question inevitably follows:

Why should doctrine have authority over me at all?

The same difficulty appears when cultural identity becomes the controlling principle.

Another commenter says:

“We cannot abolish our African Traditions. We shall be a lost nation if we can’t practice our traditions.”

But Catholicism does not teach that a custom becomes true merely because it is ancient, ancestral, African, European, popular, or emotionally important.

What is good in a culture may be preserved, purified, and elevated. What contradicts divine truth must be rejected.

Christ judges culture; culture does not judge Christ.

Neither ancestry nor geography determines truth. A doctrine does not become true because our fathers held it, nor false because it came from another people.

And the same principle applies to religious identity.

The fundamental question is not simply:

“What religion am I?”

but:

“Is what I profess true?”

Fidelity, by itself, tells us nothing about the truth of its object. A man can be faithfully devoted to a false proposition, sincerely committed to a mistaken doctrine, or unwaveringly attached to a religious tradition containing error.

The virtue of fidelity cannot make its object true.

This is where the apparently charitable maxim places the cart before the horse. It asks a man to be faithful to his religious identity without first asking whether the object of that fidelity is true.

But the Catholic order is different.

We do not begin:

Choose your religion → belong to it → be faithful to it.

We begin:

Seek the truth → believe the truth → embrace the truth → belong to the truth → remain faithful to it.

That is not merely a difference of emphasis. It is a difference in the foundation of religious life.

We do not make a religion true by choosing it. We do not make error true by sincerely believing it. We do not transform personal opinion into revelation by attaching our name, reputation, photograph, or fellowship to it.

Truth is not created by our commitment to it. Our commitment is demanded by the truth.

And once that is understood, the maxim must be reconsidered.

The issue is not whether Catholics should be good Catholics. Of course they should.

The deeper question is whether the religious object to which one is being urged to remain faithful is true.

Only then does fidelity have its proper object.

Only then does commitment have its proper direction.

Only then does religious sincerity have its proper meaning.

Otherwise, “be faithful” becomes detached from “be true”; sincerity becomes detached from reality; religious identity becomes detached from divine revelation; and religion itself risks becoming whatever the individual, the community, or the culture wishes to make of it.

Truth first. Fidelity thereafter.

And that is precisely where we must begin.

I. “IF YOU ARE CATHOLIC…”

The first part is perfectly sound:

If you are Catholic, be a good Catholic.

Indeed, the Catholic should be more than nominally Catholic. He should believe the Faith, receive the Sacraments, obey God’s Commandments, attend Mass, pray, practise penance, avoid sin, and persevere in grace.

But “being a good Catholic” cannot be reduced to sincerity, religious identity, or personal devotion.

The Catholic must ask:

“What does the Catholic Faith teach, and do I believe it?”

That question cannot be bypassed.

Catholic fidelity has two sides: adherence to truth and rejection of error.

The Catholic does not make the Faith by his opinions. He receives it. Therefore, sincerity does not make an erroneous belief Catholic, nor does personal conviction give a Catholic liberty to contradict defined or certain teaching.

A Catholic must be prepared to say not only:

“This is true,”

but also:

“This is false because it contradicts the Faith.”

This is not hostility toward persons. It is fidelity to truth.

And precisely here, modernist indifferentism becomes dangerous. Once the Catholic loses the habit of distinguishing truth from error, Catholicism can be reduced to little more than a religious identity:

“I am Catholic, therefore whatever I sincerely hold must somehow fit within Catholicism.”

It does not.

Doctrinal boundaries become softened. Contradictory positions are treated as legitimate “perspectives.” Resistance to error is dismissed as intolerance. The Catholic identity remains, but the Catholic content becomes negotiable.

Thus when it is said:

“If you are Catholic, be a good Catholic,”

we must ask:

What kind of Catholic?

A Catholic who merely retains the name?

A Catholic who follows his own religious preferences?

A Catholic who refuses to call error by its name?

Or a Catholic whose mind is actually formed by the Catholic Faith?

If you are Catholic, then be Catholic all the way.

Know the Faith. Believe the Faith. Live the Faith. Defend the Faith. Reject what contradicts the Faith.

Do not ask merely:

“Is this sincere?”

Ask:

“Is this Catholic?”

And when the answer is no, the Catholic response is not to remodel the Faith until the error fits.

It is to reject the error and remain faithful to the truth.

For Catholicism is not a label attached to whatever we choose to believe.

The Catholic Faith is the standard by which the Catholic himself must be judged.

II. “IF YOU ARE ANGLICAN, BE A GOOD ANGLICAN”; “IF YOU ARE PROTESTANT, BE A FAITHFUL PROTESTANT”

Here the traditional Catholic must object.

An Anglican or Protestant may be sincere, morally serious, devoted to Scripture, prayerful, and genuinely convinced that he is following Christ. These qualities may be real.

But they do not, by themselves, establish Anglicanism or Protestantism as the Church founded by Christ.

The question therefore remains:

Faithful to what?

If a religious body rejects doctrines which the Catholic Church teaches as belonging to the Faith delivered by Christ and His Apostles, such as the sacrificial character of the Mass, the seven Sacraments, the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or the Catholic priesthood; greater sincerity does not resolve the doctrinal contradiction.

One does not make religious error true by holding it more sincerely.

Nor does charity require the Catholic to say:

“Remain where you are; simply become a better Anglican or a more faithful Protestant.”

If a person recognizes the truth of the Catholic Faith, the proper response is to embrace that truth.

At the same time, the Catholic must distinguish objective religious error from the subjective culpability of the individual.

God alone judges the interior dispositions and responsibility of each soul. We need not presume to know the full culpability of every Anglican or Protestant.

But uncertainty about a person’s culpability does not make doctrinal error true.

We may reject error without pretending to know the full subjective guilt of everyone who holds it.

The issue, therefore, is not whether an Anglican or Protestant can be sincere.

Certainly he can.

The issue is whether sincerity is enough.

It is not.

Truth must determine religious allegiance; not merely sincerity, inheritance, or personal conviction.

III. “IF YOU ARE PENTECOSTAL, BE A COMMITTED PENTECOSTAL”

The same principle applies.

A Pentecostal may sincerely seem to love Jesus Christ, pray fervently, and strive to live a morally serious life.

But Catholic theology distinguishes between subjective sincerity and objective truth.

A person can sincerely believe what is false.

Therefore, sincerity cannot be the criterion by which revealed religion is judged.

Again, we must distinguish error from personal culpability.

God alone judges the interior dispositions and culpability of individual souls. We need not, and must not; pretend to know the full subjective guilt of every person who holds religious error.

But this does not prevent us from judging a doctrine objectively.

We can condemn error without presuming to condemn the soul of every person who is in error.

The Catholic position therefore avoids two opposite errors:

• treating sincerity as though it made falsehood true;
• treating every person who holds error as though we knew the precise degree of his personal guilt.

Truth remains truth. Error remains error. Judgment of individual culpability belongs to God.

IV. “IF YOU BELONG TO TRADITION, LIVE FAITHFULLY WITHIN IT”

And then comes the appeal to “Tradition”; here meaning Traditional African Religion:

“If you belong to Tradition, live faithfully within Tradition.”

This sounds respectful of culture and ancestry.

But it still leaves the fundamental question unanswered:

Is the religion true?

To say that someone inherited a religious tradition from his ancestors does not establish that the tradition came from God.

Traditional African religious cultures may contain elements of natural morality, cultural wisdom, and belief in a Supreme Being. But such elements do not prove that every religious belief, ritual, sacrifice, spiritual practice, or supernatural claim associated with the tradition is divinely revealed.

The Catholic therefore does not ask merely:

“Are you faithful to the religion you inherited?”

He asks:

“Is what you believe true, and does it conform to what God has revealed?”

Christianity is not merely an ancestral inheritance or cultural tradition. It professes a divine revelation: God has revealed Himself to mankind, and this revelation reaches its fullness in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God.

Consequently, the Catholic cannot say:

“Traditional religion is sufficient because it is the religion of our ancestors.”

Nor does the Catholic claim:

“Catholicism is true simply because I inherited it.”

Truth is not determined by ancestry.

If two religions make contradictory claims about God, worship, revelation, sacrifice, salvation, or man’s relationship with the supernatural, sincerity cannot make both claims true.

Ancestry may explain why a person believes something. It cannot establish that what he believes is true.

V. THE RELIGION OF “YOUR PATH”

Here we encounter a characteristic feature of modernist religious thinking.

The Catholic question is:

“What is the true religion?”

The modernist question is:

“What religious path works for you?”

The first is objective.

The second is subjective.

The first asks what God has revealed.

The second asks what man prefers.

The first asks:

“What did Christ establish?”

The second asks:

“Where do I feel spiritually at home?”

But religion is not something man invents according to his spiritual preferences.

God reveals. Man receives.

The Christian Faith is not a self-designed spiritual programme. It is a revelation received from God.

Therefore, the decisive question cannot be:

“Which religious path suits me?”

It must be:

“What has God revealed, and what did Christ establish?”

VI. THE CHURCH IS NOT A SPIRITUAL BUFFET

The original sentiment against church-hopping contains something true: Christians should not treat churches as spiritual shopping centres, running after every preacher, prophecy, miracle, emotional experience, or novelty.

But the proposed solution remains inadequate.

It is not enough to say:

“Choose your church; and then stay there.”

The Catholic asks first:

“Is this the Church founded by Christ?”

Stability is a virtue.

But stability in error is not the Catholic ideal.

A man should not say:

“I have been Protestant for twenty years; therefore I must remain Protestant.”

Nor:

“My family has always been Anglican; therefore Anglicanism must be my permanent home.”

Nor:

“This Pentecostal congregation makes me feel spiritually alive; therefore it must be where God wants me.”

Nor:

“I have established my own fellowship according to my understanding; therefore I have found my religious home.”

The fundamental question comes first:

Where is the Church of Jesus Christ?

Religious permanence cannot substitute for religious truth.

VII. “WHAT MATTERS IS NOT THE NAME ON THE SIGN”

There is some truth in saying that a sign outside a building does not make its occupants holy.

But this truth can itself be misused.

The identity of the Church matters enormously.

The Catholic Church is not merely a collection of people seeking spiritual improvement. She is the Church founded by Jesus Christ.

She is not simply one denomination among many.

She is not merely one spiritual tradition alongside Anglicanism, Protestantism, and Pentecostalism.

Therefore, the question cannot be reduced to:

“Is this church helping me become a better person?”

It must first be:

“Is this the Church established by Christ?”

A church may possess attractive qualities, impressive personalities, sincere members, disciplined communities, and morally serious people. None of these things, by themselves, establish its divine foundation.

The question of identity and authority must be settled before the question of personal attachment.

VIII. THE FOUR MARKS OF THE TRUE CHURCH

The traditional Catechism teaches us to recognize the true Church by her four marks:

One. Holy. Catholic. Apostolic.

These are not decorative titles.

They identify the Church Christ founded.

Consequently, the Catholic does not determine the truth of a church by:

• emotional atmosphere;
• impressive preaching;
• alleged miracles;
• popularity;
• music;
• charismatic personalities;
• personal preference;
• psychological comfort;
• political influence;
• or the size of its congregation.

The Catholic asks whether the Church possesses the marks and characteristics Christ gave to His Church.

The true Church is not identified by whatever happens to attract us.

Truth is not measured by applause.

IX. THE MODERNIST SHIFT: FROM TRUTH TO EXPERIENCE

The slogan:

“If you are Catholic, be a good Catholic; if Anglican, be a good Anglican; if Protestant, be a faithful Protestant…”

illustrates a fundamental shift.

It replaces objective religious truth with subjective religious commitment.

In effect, it says:

“It is not necessary to settle which religious body possesses the fullness of truth; simply live sincerely within the tradition you have chosen.”

But that is not the traditional Catholic doctrine of the Church.

The Catholic does not tell the unbeliever:

“Find the spiritual community that suits you.”

He tells him:

“Seek the truth.”

And when the truth has been recognized:

“Embrace it.”

Religious experience has its proper place. But experience cannot become the judge of revelation.

A person may feel peaceful and be mistaken.

He may feel spiritually fulfilled and be mistaken.

He may experience powerful emotion and be mistaken.

He may even interpret extraordinary experiences as divine confirmation and still be mistaken.

Experience must be judged by truth—not truth by experience.

X. UNITY CANNOT BE BUILT ON RELIGIOUS INDIFFERENTISM

True Christian charity does not require us to pretend that doctrinal differences do not matter.

If Catholicism is true, then the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism matter.

If Christ founded one Church, then competing ecclesial bodies cannot simply be presented as equally valid “paths” to the truth.

Truth and error are not interchangeable.

Charity says:

“I respect you as a person.”

Faith says:

“I cannot call error truth.”

That is not hatred.

It is the elementary distinction between charity toward persons and fidelity to truth.

Catholic charity does not require doctrinal surrender.

Indeed, genuine charity toward a person cannot require us to mislead him about what we believe to be true.

XI. DO NOT CONFUSE SINCERITY WITH SANCTITY

A person can sincerely believe something false.

He can sincerely pray in a false religion.

He can sincerely desire God while being religiously mistaken.

God alone knows the degree of culpability of each individual conscience.

But invincible ignorance, where it exists, does not transform religious error into objective truth.

This distinction is essential.

We may say:

“That doctrine is false,”

without saying:

“Everyone who holds that doctrine is personally guilty in exactly the same way.”

The Catholic therefore maintains both truths:

Objective error must be rejected.

Subjective culpability belongs to God’s judgment.

This is not a contradiction. It is the proper distinction between judging a proposition and judging the interior state of a soul.

XII. THE TRUE ANSWER TO CHURCH-HOPPING

The modern religious world badly needs to hear:

Stop treating churches like spiritual shopping centres!

Do not run after every preacher.

Do not chase every alleged prophecy.

Do not move wherever the music is louder.

Do not seek a new altar whenever discipline becomes difficult.

Do not confuse novelty with grace.

Do not confuse emotional excitement with divine authority.

But there is a question that must come before settling down:

“Is this the true Church?”

The answer cannot simply be:

“I have found the church that suits me.”

The Catholic answer is:

“I have sought the truth, found the Church of Christ, and I will remain faithful to her.”

The goal is not merely to stop wandering.

It is to arrive at the truth.

XIII. ROOTED; BUT ROOTED IN TRUTH

A tree needs roots.

So does the Christian.

But where are your roots?

• It is possible to be deeply rooted in a false idea.
• It is possible to spend decades faithfully serving a religious community whose doctrines contain serious errors.
• It is possible to be extremely committed, and sincerely wrong.

Therefore:

Do not merely seek roots. Seek the truth in which you ought to be rooted.

The Catholic does not boast merely:

“I have found my religious identity.”

He boasts:

“I have found the truth revealed by God, and I desire to remain faithful to it.”

A root is valuable only when it anchors the tree in good soil.

Likewise, religious stability is valuable only when it anchors the soul in truth.

SUMMING UP: BE A GOOD CATHOLIC; NOT MERELY A GOOD RELIGIOUS PERSON

There is nothing wrong with telling Catholics to be good Catholics.

There is wisdom in condemning religious fickleness, spiritual consumerism, and the endless search for novelty.

But Catholic theology cannot stop there.

Catholicism, Anglicanism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism, and Traditional African Religion cannot simply be placed side by side with the instruction:

“Be faithful to whichever one you have chosen.”

That reduces religious truth to personal selection.

The Catholic Church does not claim to be merely one possible spiritual path among many.

She claims to be the Church founded by Jesus Christ because she is precisely nothing less.

Therefore, the question is not merely:

“Are you a good Catholic?”

It is first:

“Where is the Church founded by Christ, and what is the truth He entrusted to her?”

And once the truth has been found:

Believe the Faith.
 Live the Faith.
 Defend the Faith.
 Love the Church.
 Receive her Sacraments.
 Obey her legitimate pastors.
 Persevere in grace.

Do not merely choose a church and become committed to it.

Seek the truth.

Seek the Church Christ founded.

And, having found the truth, remain faithful to it.

For the Catholic:

Sincerity is not a substitute for truth.

Commitment is not a substitute for truth.

Culture is not a substitute for truth.

Personal opinion is not a substitute for truth.

And no amount of religious enthusiasm can make falsehood true.

So:

BE GOOD.
 BE FAITHFUL.
 BE COMMITTED.
 BUT FIRST, BE COMMITTED TO THE TRUTH.