Introduction — The need of Catholic loyalty, that is, the habit of fidelity to our Catholic Church in its teachings and precepts. This loyalty which is needed always, but especially now, is compacted of loyalty of life or living, loyalty of will, loyalty of reason.

1. Loyalty to the life enforced by Catholic principle is the best and only life worth living.
2. Loyalty of will — adhesion of our will to all God proposes to the Christian through the Church.
3. Loyalty of reason, which rounds off the whole loyalty of the Catholic.

Loyalty is fidelity. It may mean being true to friends, to country, to ourselves, to principles, to God. Fidelity to God is highest and most imperative. This loyalty is an adhesion to God in all His relations to man. God’s relation to us finds its most perfect expression in what He has taught us to believe and to do. In other words, it is the religion or the Church which He has established for our guidance in belief and conduct. This loyalty is always a duty, but in these times wherein so much opposition to the Church exists it is more than ever an obligation. The loyalty of the Catholic to his religion manifests itself in three ways. It is threefold devotion or loyalty of mind, of will, of life.

I. Loyalty of Life is living according to the dictates of religion. It is shaping our whole conduct according to the precepts of the Church. It is unnecessary to state that the Catholic Church is the oldest and the only Church. By the excellence of its notes and marks it should elicit devotion. It is the essential pattern of all living. It makes for the only life worth living. There are outside the Church beautiful lives, but they are beautiful only inasmuch as they approximate the teachings of the Church and are imperfect wherein they recede from those teachings. Among the reasons which call for this loyalty of life are the splendor of Catholic truth and Catholic ethics and all that the Church has it in her power to do for the individual here and hereafter, for the family and the country — loyalty during life and until and in death.

II. Loyalty of Will. This is adhesion of our will to the will of the Church. It is implied in life-loyalty, but it goes to the further length of not only strengthening exterior living, but of permeating the interior man with the beautifying and vivifying principles of Catholicity. The will must be loyally Catholic. It must, as it can, control the whole man. It must dictate loyalty to all the faculties and senses of man. It must command unquestioning faith and heroic, if necessary, charity. It is well to remember that our will is our own. We may do with it as we please. If inclined to doubt, the will may compel assent ; if disinclined to righteous conduct, the will may compel action. The life and the strength of the will are maintained by grace and the channels of grace — i. e., sacraments.

III. Loyalty of Reason . We have, perhaps, against all laws of sequence reserved this for the last place. This plan is introductory to a series which aims at showing the rational foundations of our faith and at presenting answers to the flippant, though dangerous, objections which are the cant words of the age. Reason-loyalty is the most needed. This loyalty is the subjecting our reason to everything taught by the Church. It means unconditional, though not servile, surrender. The first element of this devotion is found in humility of reason, in acknowledging its limitations, in an unwillingness to take for granted what is alleged against revelation, in a disposition of allegiance running through all discussion. The essential altitude of reason is one whereby it confesses that God and the Church can not be mistaken, but that it itself may and can be at fault. The province of reason will be examined hereinafter and its legitimate obligations established. Many are the advantages to be derived from this triple loyalty. Enough is it to enumerate peace of mind, loftiness of principle, happiness in this world and the next.

Apologetica:  Elementary Apologetics for Pulpit and Pew
by Halpin, P. A. (Patrick Albert), 1847-1920