A Palace Built on a Slope: Why Coherence Is Not the Same as Truth
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- 6 min read
By David Straw
March 24, 2026
There is a profound irony at the heart of traditional Roman Catholic apologetics. Once you see it, it is hard to miss.
This is not an academic paper. I am not offering footnotes or exhaustive history. What follows is a pastoral observation based on conversations I have had over the years with a few who have converted to Roman Catholicism and on stories I have heard from parishioners.
Rome has spent decades investing in ecumenism. Not casually, but very seriously and deliberately. From the Second Vatican Council through the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Church has put real time, money, and serious theological energy into building bridges with other Christians.
And to be fair, that commitment on their part is very real.
But here is the problem.
The very approach some Roman Catholic apologists use to defend Rome works against that goal. Not indirectly. Directly.
It does not build bridges. It ends up burning them.
You walk away from certain conversations and you do not feel sharpened. You do not even feel disagreed with. You feel like nothing you said actually mattered.
Rome’s leadership says we need real dialogue. But the way these individuals’ arguments are constructed makes that almost impossible.
That tension needs to be named.
A certain kind of Roman Catholic convert keeps showing up in these conversations.
You have met them. Especially online. In parish life. Sometimes they are former Anglicans you know.
They are usually young. Very sharp and quick-witted. Sincere. All of the ones I have met in person really do want holiness. This is not about bad motives.
Although, I will say that interacting with these individuals on the internet tends to leave you less inclined toward Rome than when you started.
And to be clear, not every traditional Catholic argues this way. Some do not. Some are thoughtful, open, willing to wrestle.
But there is a pattern. Once you have seen it a few times, you recognize it right away.
People describe it almost the same way every time.
“He is smart, but it is like talking to a wall.”
“He has an answer for everything.”
“It feels like you are arguing with a computer program and not a person.”
Honestly, even those examples do not quite capture it. The computer program comes close.
In fact, it sounds a little too much like that line from The Terminator.
“It can’t be reasoned with. It can’t be bargained with. It feels no pity, remorse, or fear. And it will not stop until you are dead.”
Not you, of course. Just your theology.
That is what it feels like.
Until you realize it is not mainly a failure of charity or intelligence. It is the system itself.
1. The Mind Palace
The “mind palace” idea became popular through the BBC’s Sherlock.
Holmes builds this structure in his head where everything has a place. Every fact. Every memory. He does not search. He simply walks to the right room.
That is not a bad picture of what is going on here.
Over time, a theological world gets built. And it really is impressive.
Everything fits somewhere.
· Every doctrine has its place.
· Every Father gets a category.
· Every historical problem already has a file waiting for it.
Nothing is left loose.
From the inside, it feels like clarity. Like finally everything makes sense.
But listen to how the conversations actually go.
You raise a historical problem. The answer comes back immediately.
· Jerome submitted to the Church. So the argument is settled.
· The German bishops are being handled carefully.
· The SSPX situation is political, not doctrinal.
· When Rome appears to change, continuity is invoked. It was always doctrine. When that fails, discontinuity is invoked. It was only discipline. The escape hatch is always there.
· The Magisterium defines the faith, interprets Scripture, interprets Tradition, and interprets its own past decisions. The circle closes perfectly.
· Corruption does not touch indefectibility. Contradictory papal statements do not count. Liturgical chaos does not count. Only a formal ex cathedra definition could count, and those are exceedingly rare.
· Bishop Strickland is removed. Father James Martin keeps his platform. But the judgment of the Magisterium stands.
Notice what is happening.
Every difficulty is categorized. Every tension is managed. Every apparent rupture is explained. Nothing is allowed to stand outside the system and press on it.
The framework they are working in does not have a category for “we might be wrong.”
It is not just answering objections. It is absorbing them. The palace itself cannot be proven wrong.
I realize I am repeating myself. That is deliberate.
Every objection you raise gets repeated, absorbed, and folded back into the system again and again. I am simply modeling what these types of Roman Catholic apologists are doing.
2. The Kobayashi Maru
If the mind palace explains how it feels from the inside, the Kobayashi Maru explains how it feels from the outside.
The Kobayashi Maru is a training scenario from Star Trek that is intentionally unwinnable.
No strategy works. No choice succeeds. The outcome is fixed before you begin.
The only way anyone has ever “won” it is by changing the rules of the simulation itself.
That is what these conversations can feel like.
Every objection you raise has already been accounted for. Even the strong ones.
You bring up historical messiness. It becomes development.
You point to contradiction. It becomes clarification.
You raise serious discontinuity. It gets reframed as organic growth.
Even the most sophisticated versions of the argument follow this pattern. You see it clearly in John Henry Newman’s account of doctrinal development.
What looks like rupture is said to be continuity, rightly understood through the living authority of the Church.
And so everything fits.
Everything gets pulled back in. Everything is explained.
So the system never loses. It cannot.
And after a while, you start to realize something.
You are not just talking to a person.
You are talking to a closed loop that has already processed what you are about to say.
The answers come fast. Clean. Almost automatic.
And yet something is missing.
Because it feels convincing. It feels inevitable.
But that is not the same thing as being true.
3. Speaking to the Person, Not the Palace
This is where the Anglican instinct matters.
Anglicanism has always made a basic distinction. Coherence is not the same thing as truth.
A system can fit together beautifully and still rest on something unstable.
You can build a perfect palace and still have it sitting on a slope.
So the goal is not to argue room by room inside that system. That only strengthens it.
The goal is to step outside it, even briefly.
Look at the ground.
Because once you step outside, things are not so tidy anymore.
History does not behave.
The Fathers do not all say the same thing.
Scripture does not sit still and act like a set of proof texts.
And that is not a weakness. That is reality.
Now, Anglicanism is not groundless.
Anglicanism has always insisted that the Church’s authority is real, but it is not self-referential. It is accountable to something outside itself.
Scripture is final.
The Creeds draw the boundaries.
The early Church shows us how the faith was actually received and practiced before the medieval developments that the Reformation came to correct.
And the formularies matter.
The Thirty-Nine Articles are not decorations. They summarize what the English Reformation recovered from that ancient faith.
These are the foundations we test against.
We are not open to anything. We are open to what these foundations actually say, even when that is inconvenient.
We are willing to ask questions that do not always resolve cleanly.
· Is it true?
· Is it necessary?
· Is it apostolic?
· Is this actually what the Church did?
· Is this what Christ gave us?
Sometimes those questions do not fit neatly inside a closed system.
And right there, when the tension cannot immediately be explained away, something honest happens.
Not a win. Not a clever argument.
Just reality.
And often, that is where grace shows up.
4. The Slope Beneath the Palace
Some systems feel solid the moment you step into them.
Everything connects. Everything supports everything else. It is clean. It is reassuring.
And it is impressive.
But coherence is not the same as truth.
I have talked with people who have moved from Anglicanism into very tight, highly systematized forms of Roman Catholicism. You can feel it right away.
Every objection has an answer.
Every answer fits.
Nothing is allowed to remain open.
It is strong.
But it is also closed.
Because when everything gets pulled back in and explained, one question never quite gets asked.
What if the foundation itself needs to be examined?
That is the question Anglicanism keeps coming back to. Not because it enjoys uncertainty.
But because it refuses to confuse a well-built system with the truth of the Gospel.
Scripture, the Creeds, the early Church. That is the ground.
And if the ground shifts, it matters.
Closed systems struggle there. They need everything to stay level. They need the past to line up cleanly with the present.
But history is not that tidy.
And deep down, people know it.
That is why these conversations matter.
Not to win.
To reach the person still inside.
The palace may be impressive.
But the ground tells the truth.
The Rev. David Straw is Rector of Trinity Anglican Church and a lifelong Anglican, ordained in 2007. He graduated cum laude from the University of Southern Indiana and completed graduate work for ministry at Wesley Seminary in Marion, Indiana.