Note: Unless otherwise stated, all Biblical citations in the following article are from the NABRE.
Proverbs 22:26 tells us "Train the young in the way they should go; even when old, they will not swerve from it." The young are impressionable; what we learn in our youth tends to stay with us for a very long time. Maybe even for as long as we live. Sadly, this concept applies across the board.
This concept, I believe, is the main scientific reason behind the success of Roman Catholicism. Of course, I would suggest there is also a spiritual element to it, but scientifically, it seems the success of the Catholic Church can be traced back to both high birth rates within, and some very aggressive upbringing methods that lead many Catholics to literally say "I was born a Catholic, I will die a Catholic".
Just as this is the attitude of many still trapped in the clutches of the Roman Church, so also do many ex-Catholics come forward testifying that they, too, recited those words almost as if it was a creed. But the existence of the latter kind, even from among the Catholic clergy, shows that such indoctrination can, in fact, be broken.
Of course, the key to breaking one's own indoctrination is to first establish why you would even want to. As I showed in the beginning of the article, our own Bible tells us to train the young in the way they should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it. It's what we're supposed to do, and not even just with regard to faith. We teach our kids to read and write, we teach our kids to count, we teach our kids to prepare food safely etc. And for obvious reasons, we do not want them departing from this, nor should we, ourselves, wish to depart. So why should a Catholic want to depart from the faith they were trained in from their youth?
A simple question to ask here is "is it true?" Of course, at this point, a Catholic will immediately rush to "of course it is!" Why would they say otherwise? But when we look around the world, we note that literally everyone suffers this problem. A Muslim, raised Muslim, will likely remain Muslim. A Hindu, raised Hindu, will likely remain Hindu. An Evolutionist, raised Evolutionist, will likely remain an Evolutionist. Regardless of your religion, if you were raised in it, you will more than likely believe it is true.
But they can't all be true, and so most, if not all of them, must be false. Thus, we must all ask that painful question: Is it mine? So again, let us ask "is the Catholic religion true?" without immediately defaulting to "yes".
Of course, we could strip the faith down to its bare bones and start asking questions common to all who claim Christ as their God. Did Jesus really exist? But of course, as an author for a Christian ministry, I'm going to contend that He is risen, and as much as I partake in outreach to atheists, I'd like to simply skip this step and assume we all agree there. The next question would be whether or not Rome truly is His Church?
Due to the exclusive natures of both the Gospel, and of the Catholic Church, this is a yes or no question, and it determines whether one really should remain a Catholic until death. See, according to the Catholic Church, at least historically, there is no salvation outside of her. If you are not a faithful, practicing member of the Catholic Church, you are not even a Christian, and on the day of judgement, you will be cast off into the lake of fire. More modern developments have allowed for those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ or His Church, to be saved by just obeying the dictates of their conscience, and even "Protestants" have now been upgraded to "separated brethren", but the Catholic Church remains an exclusive religion that claims to be in sole possession of the whole truth of God.
Although less exclusive towards specific denominations, and indeed speaking very clearly against the whole concept of denominations, the Bible does make it quite clear that there is only one truth, and one way to be saved. In his epistle to the Galatians, Paul even condemns other gospels with the Catholic Church's favorite word: "anathema". On a standard account, this word means accursed, condemned, and cut off from Christ.
With that in mind, consider the words of Paul when he says "I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by [the] grace [of Christ] for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach [to you] a gospel other than the one that we preached to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, and now I say again, if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one that you received, let that one be accursed!" (Galatians 1:6-9, emphasis added).
That word "accursed" is "anathema". Paul, therefore, is not mincing his words. He is literally saying that anyone who preaches a different gospel than his Gospel, not only is it not actually preaching a real gospel, but the one preaching it should be considered Hell-bound. And he includes both himself, and his fellow Apostles, in this declaration, if indeed they should be the ones preaching another gospel.
This already gives us an indicator as to the truth of the Catholic Church. Paul here sets a limit on his own authority, and that of his fellow Apostles, to whom he is inferior in nothing (2 Corinthians 11:5; 12:11). According to Paul, whom we all agree is a legitimate Apostle sent by God, and writing by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, it is not the Apostles who judge the Gospel, it is the Gospel which judges the Apostles.
Yet, in the Catholic Church, this authority structure is aggressively reversed. A regular Catholic, and indeed, a regular anyone, has no authority to interpret Scripture. Rather, the Roman Catholic Church alone has this authority. You do not get to say to Rome "you are preaching a different gospel, you are anathema". Instead, they get to say to you, "you are in violation of our gospel, you are anathema".
But the good thing about having objective minds is that we need not accept any authority apart from God's. Thus, we can compare the actual words of Scripture to the teachings of the Catholic Church and simply ask, regardless of their alleged authority, do they actually line up? If they do, that at least legitimises the Church's claim to have authority, but if they do not, it invalidates it entirely.
To give an analogy, we can actually look at the U.S. Constitution. Although not exactly analogous, we can take the Constitution as "the Bible". The U.S. Constitution is a set of rules by which the government must abide. Not even the president has the legal right to violate the Constitution.
Currently in America, there is a culture war going on, with the Constitution being one of the few things providing any defence against tyranny. Does the First Amendment really protect the right to post "offensive" things on social media? Does the Second Amendment really allow a civilian to own a firearm? These are real questions being considered right now. But the answers are obvious! The full text of each amendment, and indeed the entire Constitution as a whole, is freely available online. When debates arise about what it says, it is extremely easy to just pull it up, look at the words, and say right, this is in there, this is not, therefore this side is right. Even when the Supreme Court disagrees!
Legally speaking, the Supreme Court has genuine authority to interpret the U.S. Constitution. When a law is passed, the Supreme Court can look at it and either say the Constitution permits it to remain in force, or the Constitution invalidates it. But as major examples like the recent overturn of Roe vs. Wade prove beyond all dispute, not only can the Supreme Court disagree, make mistakes, or change its mind, but even those who do not sit on the Court have the right to question its decisions.
When we apply the same logic to the Bible and the Catholic Church, what we find first of all is that the Catholic Church, while it effectively claims to be the Founding Fathers, the Supreme Court, and the Federal Government, doesn't even have a leg to stand on. Many Catholic doctrines are as alien to the Bible as an F-16 fighter jet would be to Benjamin Franklin. The Papacy itself is not found within its Holy pages. And the way the Catholic Church has treated Mary would have no doubt had her begging the Lord to expunge her very name from it. When we compare the Bible to the Roman Catholic faith, we find it sorely lacking.
Or perhaps, more accurately, it is not lacking enough. It has, thankfully, left many Christian truths intact, enough that one might actually consider many Catholics to be Christians by another name. They kept the virginity of Mary prior to Christ's birth. They kept Christ's divine nature, and indeed the Trinity as a whole. They kept the crucifixion and the resurrection. They even kept the divine inspiration of Scripture.
But then they added a bunch of nonsense. They invented a special class of priests to replace the Priesthood of all believers. They poached the Roman Pontiff from the Roman state religion. They absorbed the mythical realm of Purgatory from pagan mythology. They added what is effectively Jewish fan fiction to the very pages of Scripture. Perhaps most embarrassing of all is the overemphasis on Mary's sex life. According to the Roman Catholic Church, if you are a Christian, you have to believe that Mary remained a virgin for her entire life. The Catholic Church has added so much to the Christian faith that they have to flat out deny the Sufficiency of Scripture in order to justify themselves.
But by far the most unforgivable additions to Christianity by the Catholic Church is the addition of works to salvation. The Bible is clear on this issue, telling us, in as plain a way as possible, that salvation is by grace, through faith, not of works. This theme runs throughout Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. By contrast, there are a scant amount of verses which, when cited out of context, may seem to require works as an addition to faith. These are so scant that often, Catholics will not even leave James 2.
This is a Gospel issue. The Biblical Gospel teaches salvation by grace, through faith, not of works. The Roman Gospel teaches salvation by "grace", through faith and works. There is a major difference. And remembering what Paul said in Galatians 1:6-9, that difference is literally the difference between salvation and damnation. Thus, when Catholics say "I was born Catholic, I'll die a Catholic", what they're actually saying is "I was born anathema, I'll die anathema"!
And this is where the most terrifying commonality between Christianity and Catholicism comes in. Neither of us believe death is the end. There are, of course, variations on where we spend the time between death and resurrection, but we all believe "Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; Some to everlasting life, others to reproach and everlasting disgrace." (Daniel 12:2).
Upon death, your fate is sealed (Hebrews 9:27). When you rise again, you will be a Catholic no longer. You will stand before God, and He will call your every deed, your every word, even your every thought into account. And much like Job, you will say, if not by your mouth, at least in your heart "By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes." (Job 42:5-6).
But it will be too late. Seeing the Lord at last, you will have denied His Gospel, and in so doing, cheated yourself out of His reward. Your good deeds will be accounted filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6, or 5 in the NABRE), your sins will be meted back to you, and you will be forever punished for what you have done. And you will not be ignorant of why. You will remember every time you read, yet rejected His word. You will remember every witness who tried to spare you of this awful fate. You will even remember this article. And with every memory of the efforts made to spare you this fate, you will be fully aware that such escape is no longer possible. 10 trillion years will pass, and you will not be a second closer to the gates of Heaven.
But you are not there now.
While there is still breath in your lungs, there is still salvation in your reach. As a Catholic, you already have the right God. You already believe He exists, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). Therefore, do so! Open His word, study it with all prudence, obey it with all your might! Most critically, believe in the name of the Son of God, and you will know that you have eternal life! (1 John 5:13). But you become separated from Christ, and fall out of His grace the moment you work to earn it (Galatians 5:4), for grace is not grace when it is by works (Romans 11:6). To be saved, one must rely entirely on Christ, and not on the mythical "Treasury of Merit", not on the 7 Sacraments, not even on the Decalogue. Salvation is by grace, through faith, not of works. Therefore, even if you were raised Catholic, do not die a Catholic, for you will indeed die twice. Rather, repent, and receive the Kingdom of Heaven as a child receives a gift from his Father!