Fr. David Sherry
District Superior of Canada

Dear Reader,

The problem with the Catholic religion—according to some of its critics—is that it’s too good to be true. A God who gave His creatures free will? And then this God, loving the creature so much and refusing to force its free will, became one of these creatures and died on a cross to save them? And this salvation actually does save them by forgiving sin and conferring the divine life, and this, if they are faithful, will bring about the impassibility and immortality of the body and open the gates of heaven? Well, if only… it were true. It must be a myth.

Dear despairing cynic, there are two kinds of things that we call myths. The first kind of myth is something which, while commonly believed, is not true. Among these types of myths are “the Society of Saint Pius X is in schism,” “Ireland is a Catholic country,” and “wine is bad for your health.” There may be superficial reasons to think so in each case, but they are false.

The other kind of myth is a work of imagination which seeks to explain reality. Before the coming of Christ and the entry of broad daylight into the world, a man would see reality and see that this reality was mysterious. The mystery caused wonder in him. How can this be? Where did it all come from? What does it mean? The wonder led to trying to explain what the meaning of life is. Aristotle put it best: “it is owing to their wonder that men now begin and first began to philosophise… whence even the lover of myths is in a sense a lover of wisdom for the myth is composed of wonders.” A myth is a story which explains reality—for better or for worse. A good myth—while literally false—will be fundamentally true. A bad myth—from the darker and more diabolical forms of paganism—will be fundamentally false because it explains reality in a perverse and diabolical way.

Mythology was an attempt to reach the divine reality through the imagination alone. It was both an explanation of reality and a search for a dream, and the dream was that God be united with man. Christianity is both literally true and the explanation of the riddle of life. It holds the key to all the mysteries of human life, and it is actually true. Christianity is not too good to be true, it is the dream come true.

Fr. David Sherry