CATHOLIC DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS: Lesson Four: ALL RELIGIONS BELIEVE IN GOD, THEREFORE, ALL RELIGIONS ARE TRUE.

I can remember growing up in Vincennes, Indiana (On the banks of the Wabash) and hearing what I considered to be an intelligent discussion of my Catholic Faith go something like this. “It doesn’t matter what you believe about Jesus; all religions are the same.”

The Devil has fun with this deception, especially among Catholics whose notion of their Faith is to grudgingly spend 60 + minutes each Sunday (if they feel good) going to Eucharist. This is not to say Catholics are somehow bad, as much as to say they might miss the point of their Faith if they consign Catholicism just to a Church building on Sunday. Eucharist seems boring because it is the same prayers over and over again. That is not saying that Catholics are bad morally or even spiritually, as much as they have stopped growing, and the Eucharist is like eating Jell-O every time they go to Holy Mass.

The Devil never confronts us directly, where we can see what is coming and have a better chance of rejecting any obvious sins. Satan and his minions always use the back door, not to enter your house, but to stand on the back porch and whisper things like: “What am I doing in a place where I don’t feel like it means much to my life?, or, “All religions believe in God, so I can go to any Church that I want and God will okay that.”

The Devil only suggests that to every Catholic. Some realize what is going on and reconvert themselves to a very strict interpretation of what being a Catholic is (the popular political notion of liberal or conservative is outdated and does not begin to look at Catholic Faith as degrees of truth, but only in opposing positions that vary from individual to individual). The Devil laughs at the pusillanimous (weak Faith) individuals who fall into the trap of just begrudgingly giving up their time to God in the hopes of making Jesus happy with that minimum attention they think He wants.

Jesus tells us in both the Old and New Testaments that He seeks mercy, not sacrifice. Something must happen within each Catholic (and again, it happens in degrees depending on how aggressively each individual seeks to make Jesus the Center of their being). To me, and I say this because it is my “thorn of the flesh” that St. Paul mentions, sloth or spiritual laziness is the most insidious of the Seven Deadly Sins, and one that has seduced me with its diabolical innocence. It is rendering all religions as equal, so that my Catholicism becomes like warm Jell-O.

YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE ANY RELIGION OR NONE AT ALL, BUT WHAT YOU CHOOSE MAY NOT BE RIGHT.

This saying is one of my favorites whenever I drift into relativism (all religions end up in the same place, so it doesn’t matter what you believe to get there). For a time, I did not want to say that I am better than anyone who believes in Jesus or does not. Every person, because they are human, has two tools to help them navigate the rapids of life: reason and the freedom to choose what they think is good or evil (bad) for them. It is how I use those tools as I interact with the seventy or eighty years I have on this earth to answer the six questions posed by The Divine Equation.

1. What is the purpose of life?
2. What is the purpose of my life within that purpose of life?
3. What does reality look like for me?
4. How does that reality fit together?
5. How can I love fiercely?
6. I know I am going to die: now what?

The Divine Equation has nothing to do with proving who God is, which is a colossal waste of time and the distraction that Satan gladly strokes to lead us from seeking who we are, based on the Center that we must place as the ground of our being.

The Divine Equation is what I answer to unlock the dissonance between my ordinary self (the world). The only way that Jesus told us is the WAY is to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. There is only one correct way that has preserved the Way, the Truth, and the Life so that I, as an individual, can take that same Jesus into my self, and, using the unique experiences of my life, which is like no other, to name a New Catholic Church. Not one torn down and replaced with my powerless bricks, but one using the stone which is the cornerstone and the bricklayers that have passed down through the centuries, what they used to “Have in them the mind of Christ Jesus.”

God is so magnificent that Jesus became one of us (Philippians 2:5-12) to tell us and show us HOW to lead a life that seems full of contradictions and that imposes boundaries on the human condition (The Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes). To respond, I must do more than think I am God’s gift to the Catholic Church by attending Mass on Sunday, suffering through a sermon that I can’t assimilate into my daily behavior, grudgingly give a few dollars in the collection and have no idea that what I am priviledged to attend is that same Last Supper where the Master broke break (The Passover Fulfilled) as a sign that the Catholic Church is free from the boundaries of Satan. If we choose to believe that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, “my body is real food,” and “my blood is real drink,” our believing does not make Jesus physically present (only the words of the priest can confect the Transubstantiation. Only the foolish think Jesus means we must be cannibals. What is deeper in meaning, available only through, with, and in Jesus the Christ, is that this bread that I see every time I attend Eucharist is “real food, and the blood nourishes my spiritual universes.

Satan uses our freedom to choose, plus, and this is important, all the other temptations together in an amalgam of silent predators, stalking its enemy, the lion seeking whom he may devour. Don’t mess with the Devil.

Like St. Paul, we wake up as Catholics to see what is really going on in our society. The battle is not republican or democrat, rich or poor, female or male, but rather one involving the existential core not only of humanity but also of my personal choice between good and evil. It is solved by the Catholic Church, but also by each Catholic, who must make their Faith new, as in new wine skins. It takes a constant desire for Christ to increase while you decrease (The Seven Deadly Sins). It means choosing what is right, not what is easy, each day. It means boring is only the sign that you have failed to take advantage of the immense treasure within the Body of Christ right now, so astounding that you won’t see it unless you die to self each day and strive.
“to prefer nothing to the love of Christ.”

The Devil does not want you to dig for heavenly gold, getting at the heart of what the Catholic Church is: to know, love, and serve God through others in this life so that I can be happy in the next.

The temptation of the Devil here is the suggestion to our idle minds that believing in God is okay, no matter what individuals say is right. I call that The Prosestant Principle, not to downgrade anyone’s belief, but to state that, when dealing with Absolute Truths (existing only in the Divine Nature), factioning, human reasoning, and the ability to choose are all natural ways for Satan to use our humanity against us.

I believe in the saying that “The Catholic Church is the one, true Church, founded by Jesus Christ, to give us grace (energy). Because energy is from God’s nature, transformed by the death of Jesus Christ, I can participate in that source of grace by willing myself to deny my false self (Seven Deadly Sins) to put on the white garment of salvation. Eucharist and Penance are not just rituals, repetitive rituals, I might add. They are the energy of an umbilical cord from God through Christ, with the energy of the Holy Spirit, to touch humanity through the Catholic Church and allow each of us to immerse ourselves in a source of power that human nature alone can never access. We are literally lifted by the power of the Resurrection to that new level in Baptism, sustained by Eucharist and the Forgiveness of Sins, to be able to share that undefinable but euphoric Faith as adopted sons and daughters with those around us.

Catholic spirituality (The Way of the Cross) is not the easy route to salvation because life itself throws hand grenades in our paths constantly. Still, neither was Christ’s heroic life from Birth to Death, nor from Resurrection to Ascension. We can either be pioneer while we live out each day, living out whatever comes our way and sanctifyig it through the blood of the Lamb, or we can be a settler, who knows the way because someone before them suffered the cold and wrong detours so that, eventually humanity finds a way to walk what is rocky, knowing that at its end is our Omega, not the Omega of our death, but one at the highest level of our evolution. It is possible only through Jesus. It is available as an umbilical cord of grace from Jesus, the Son of God and Savior, through the Catholic Church.

I must put in a caveat to my seemingly pompous claim. I am not saying that the Catholic Church is the only sheep to hear the Good News of Christ, but rather that those in the flock know that the good shepherds down through the centuries (Popes and Bishops) are linked directly to the heart of Christ. Anyone who converts to Catholic Spirituality is actually putting back into place what was taken away by heretics and reformers of what they thought was the truth.

All of this to allow me, first of all, in the silence and solitude of the upper room of my inner self, to place myself in the presence of Christ and to wait in peace and with the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit for resonance to my humanity. But that is not the whole story. Next, I have a way to measure if I am doing what I should as a practicing Catholic. G.K. Chesterton, noted author and apologist, has a saying I think of whenever I consider the martyrdom of ordinary living in my Catholic Faith. He said, “I don’t want a Church to tell me what I am doing wrong that I know I’m doing wrong. I want a Church to tell me what I am doing right that is wrong.”

ACTIO

Respect the beliefs of others about Christ while holding onto the way, truth, and life that Christ gave to Peter to be safeguarded down through the ages.

Respect the Holy Father, a sinner like all of us, but one whom the Holy Spirit has designated as the rock, a continuity forward in time, not backward.

Don’t play in the Devil’s sandbox if you want to join Christ in the heavenly playground.

Just because your road is rocky doesn’t mean you are on the wrong road.

Be aware of the energy and gold hidden right beneath your feet. All you have to do is dig.

Become silent like God, silent yet dynamic and resonant with all reality.

Being a Catholic is free, but it will cost you every THING you own.

Be aware that you are aware of your calling as adopted son or daughter of the Father.

Resist the whispers of Satan by saying, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, help me.” A prayer recommended by St. Father Pio.

Like Henry VIII, you are a defender of the Faith; make sure that Faith comes from God, not the Seven Deadly Sins.

Do what He tells you.

Copyright 2026, Michael F. Conrad, Ed, D,, The Center for Contemplative Practice. All Rights Reserved.

CATHOLIC DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARK ARTS: Lesson Three: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS CORRUPT AND BORING. — Sticky