Motives of credibility and predispositions to faith

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 18, 2025

A couple of posts back I briefly mentioned “motives of credibility” that can draw a person to faith in Christ and entry into the Catholic Church. These “motives” operate at a potentially deeper or at least more personal level than the basic apologetical arguments which establish the necessity of God and the soul, the Divinity of Christ, and the role of the Catholic Church in continuing to make Christ present down through history.

A motive of credibility is not so much an argument as an attractive aspect of Christ or the Church or the Faith which engages the personality of those who find that aspect of things particularly attractive or even suggestive of the Divine. A good example is the power and attraction that many feel when encountering the Gothic architecture characteristic of so many medieval churches which appear to soar toward Heaven. The remarkable combination of beauty, power and (often) serenity in Catholic art and music is another good example of a motive of credibility. Still others include things like the striking consistency of Catholic teaching over a long period of history, the attractiveness of the saints, the superhuman courage of the martyrs, or the singular universality of the Church throughout the entire world, along with her marvelous stability and endurance over a great span of time.

These motives of credibility are just that: Not proofs but motives, that is, realities that attract us in ways that may induce us to look more carefully into the nature and claims of Christ and the Church. For most people, such motives—such movements of attraction—play an important role in stimulating interest and bridging the gap between vaguely knowing something about Catholicism and taking it seriously enough to look into it more deeply. By attracting along the lines of something to which a person is already somewhat receptive, these motives can overcome the habitual reluctance people often feel when it comes to spending time looking into the God question or the Christ question or the Church question.

In but not of the world

The world has always been “secular” in the root meaning of the word, which is “relating to a particular age or period”. By extension we apply the term to concern about temporal affairs (rather than eternity). The Catholic Church even distinguishes between “religious” and “secular” in a more particular sense, with members of “religious” orders typically more directly and constantly devoted to the things of God than are the “secular” clergy—the priests assigned to parishes and interactions with those “in the world” in every walk of life, rather than those set apart for a special form of service to God.

But living “in the world”, and being occupied with worldly or mundane tasks, carries the risk of being preoccupied with worldly affairs to the point of losing sight of what is owed to God, including our moral and spiritual obedience to His will for us. This is the point of the duty of Christians generally to be “in” but not “of” the world, a habit of mind and spirit which is difficult to maintain not only with respect to worldly temptations but to genuine worldly responsibilities. As people become caught up in the ebbs and flows, fashions and taboos of worldly affairs, they easily—perhaps even typically—either lose sight of transcendent realities or refuse to acknowledge them.

This loss of awareness afflicts nearly all of us, but it is particularly damaging when it is the result of temptations and sins which are incompatible with either the natural law or the Divinely-revealed laws of God. Worldly and even sinful attachments are ultimately rooted in pleasure, and we often instinctively close our minds and hearts to whatever whispers against our indulgence in the pleasures to which we are attracted. Generally these are associated with what we call the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. We find ourselves too proud to acknowledge God or too greedy to focus on anything other than worldly forms of wealth. Or we may refuse to let go of our envy of others, our lust, our gluttony or simply our laziness when it comes to looking beyond ourselves and exploring the things of God.

Motivation

When we are in the grip of these essentially selfish habits, we find it very difficult to exercise our wills rationally to choose and live as we should, even in terms of what objectively is most appropriate to the dignity of our human nature. Consequently, we may be generally uninterested or even cold to the “God question” or to the claims of Christ and His Church. In such a habitual frame of mind, we need particular interests that draw us out of our own selfishness and seem to place us on a higher plain, and it is precisely the particular Catholic attractions which draw us in the right direction that become the “motives of credibility” most of us so badly need.

This reality reminds us of something very important in the Christian life, namely that it is a noble and necessary Catholic service—indeed, a legitimate form of Catholic apostolate—for good Catholics to commit themselves to promoting Catholic-related things that have long been motives of credibility to others. In this sense, not every genuine apostolate needs to focus on, say, preaching the Gospel or feeding the hungry, or any of the particular Catholic spiritual or corporal works of mercy. By extension, it is also a work of mercy, and certainly a legitimate apostolate, to make better known those aspects of Catholicism which tend to be attractive, such as architecture and art, music, the lives of the saints, the consistency of Catholic teaching over time, the remarkable stories of the martyrs, and so on.

One may spend a lifetime doing very great service by fostering interest in any of these things and many others without necessarily always or even regularly attempting to move those interested on to the next step, as if graduation from this “course” means entry into the Catholic Church. Many opportunities may arise among those whose interest we may spark, but my point is that making the Church’s motives of credibility better known in and of themselves is a very legitimate form of Christian witness and apostolate.

To predispose others to faith by helping them to experience whatever has been genuinely and broadly attractive about Catholicism down through history is an extraordinarily valuable undertaking. Even more attractive may be the way we interact with others when engaging in this sort of mission. Positive interaction with our neighbors in a broader spiritual sense is also obviously extremely important, and of course there is no school of faith and holiness quite as good as the experience of a truly joyous and holy Catholic family life.

But Catholic family life is a special and uniquely privileged form of comprehensive witness to what is true, good, beautiful and Godly—and will be the focus of my next installment in this series.