Rather, the mystical faculty allows one to "see" God in a certain sense without the need for rational argument. Just like Peter and the other Apostles on the lake could "see" Christ was God even before He worked the miracle and their nets were full of fishes. So, the argument is that the mystical faculty allows one to "see" God working through the Church and therefore the Church must be from God, and therefore one converts to it.
The problem with this point, Quare my friend, is that God is working in every religion that has some good in it (which is every religion). God is, as you well know, the author of every good, and in every single context in which good is found. A muslim "sees", and rightly so, God working in the religion (either in the lives of individual muslims, or by appropriation of the several good teachings in the Quran). Heck, we all can see good outside of the confines of the Catholic religion, especially in the non-Catholic Christian faiths.
For example, the Quran teaches the following good: homosexual acts are evil. Thus, God is in some way, at least partly, the author of the Quran, since he is the source, or author, of every good. But then the Quran also contains many falsehoods. It therefore logically follows that zeroing in on the good of a religion, and recognizing it's source is from God, does not, in and of itself, prove that the religion, as such, is revealed by God.
What we need is knowledge of the
integral veracity of a religion.
But if I may get anecdotal for a second...I am intrigued that you used the word "see" in brackets, because that is exactly how I have described to others the two mystical experiences I had in my life informing me that the Catholic Church is of God. Without getting into the specifics, however, I have to conclude, nevertheless, that these mystical experience did not, in all honestly, give me absolute certitude that the Catholic religion is the true one. I do "know" from mystical experience that (a) one can become holy in the Catholic religion, including the conciliar religion; (b) the devil exists and works against the Catholic Church. This is what I "know", or rather,
know. But I am honest enough with myself to say that this does not give me absolute certitude that the Catholic religion is true. Nevertheless, I have chosen to continue to follow the religion, in the absence of epistemic certitude, since, among other reasons, the weight of evidence is compelling enough.
Do I have faith? I have been wrestling with this for months, ever since you made the case that certitude was required in order to have faith.
Thanks!
