Good News, Bad News: Evangelization, Conversion and the Crisis of Faith by Father C. John McCloskey III and Russell Shaw, Ignatius Press, 2007
Early Christians were evangelizers par excellence. As everyone knows, Christianity grew exponentially in the first centuries, despite persecution and martyrdom. What many people do not know is that Christianity was composed of the middle and upper classes, citizens of the Roman Empire. It was not composed primarily of slaves and the poor, but Christianity’s solidity and urbanity were effective in creating a network of social welfare for orphans, widows, and the elderly. Relatively early in its history, after the persecutions ended, Christians established cemeteries and places of worship.
Another appeal of Christianity was to women, because it saw women as equal to men, with the same birthright and ultimate destiny. The Christian moral code is also favorable to women, favoring faithful marriage and the right to life for all children. Plagues also helped the Church to grow. It provided meaning in the face of suffering and death. All in all, it was the way Christians lived and their treatment of other people that made converts. What lessons are here for today’s evangelists?
First of all, the Catholic evangelist needs to be informed about his or her own religion. The Catechism and the Bible are at the heart of his or her education. Other resources are Catholic literature and Catholic liturgy. One thing to remember is to persevere and to pray and receive the sacraments. This is your task and the task of any convert, and it is an ongoing one that never ends until the end.
What are some of the obstacles to conversion? One of the main ones is the individuality stressed by the secular West and the United States. If a man is determined that he and he alone can decide what his religion is composed of, then the Church with specific beliefs, will have a hard time getting to him.
McCloskey states:
“The crisis in American Catholicism hasn’t come about in a vacuum. The last forty years have brought a wide-ranging cultural crisis—a crisis of faith and morality, really—in the United States as well as in other Western countries, where secularization has gone even further and deeper. The crisis in the United States and in the Church here can be seen, in part at least, as one aspect of this larger crisis.
In our nation as in others, over these decades a process of moral decline set in and became institutionalized. Decadence acquired a constituency. The United States is in far worse shape as a result of what has happened, even though the people in universities and media and big secular foundations and courts and legislatures who did such a lot to produce this result are hardly about to admit it. On the contrary, these folks are much more likely to blame the “religious right” for the nation’s problems.”
But there is a positive side to this decadence and secularism. The blatant immorality of our society has backfired. People witnessing the results of the lack of a religious life have been repelled and have turned or returned to the Church.
Whose responsibility is it to help those who are lost in the mire of secular humanism? The answer is all faithful Catholics. Those Catholics who don’t think they know enough about the faith should think again. They obviously know more than those who are seeking faith and/or those who have lost faith, and they need to continue to learn in order to grow in their own faith and to help others.
McCloskey has a dream in which he sees a Church’s pastor preaching a sermon that in part, says this:
“Your job is to go out and to change the world—to do what it takes to place Christ at the summit of all human activity and to help more and more people know Him and accept Him and love and serve Him. That’s what it’s all about.”
There is a common misunderstanding about proselytism. It should be considered bad if it means manipulating or forcing someone to accept a belief system. Communists and Nazis did that. McCloskey tells us that today, “the secular humanism that pervades the elite secular culture of the United States and other Western countries proselytes energetically through the opinion-forming institutions it largely controls, including our universities and our media.”
But the benign aspect of proselytism is when members of an organization or group are happy with being Catholic and want others to share their happiness. For these people, there is an open invitation to others who might have an interest in the Catholic Church. They can help others by giving good reasons and explanations of the faith. Apologetics is not about excuses, but about faith and reason.
A prime example of the Catholic apologists is G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton discovered that Catholicism is the key that fits the lock. It was the only thing that was exactly configured to opening the door of the meaning of life. Other good apologists are C.S. Lewis, and currently, Peter Kreeft and Karl Keating. Cardinal Newman was an outstanding apologist and convert who said that the historical case for Catholicism couldn’t be refuted.
A big part of the problem, especially concerning the lack of faith of young people, is what McCloskey calls the “virtual collapse of catechesis during much of the period following Vatican II.” He says the price is still being paid for those mistakes today. And the payment is the religious indifference of many nominal Catholics who know little of their faith and the ongoing work of “progressives” to disseminate their disagreements with the Church.
Recent action by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI has been effective in countering these trends. Many now agree that the highest priority of the Church needs to be the return to the faith of the lapsed and lukewarm Catholics.
As for Protestants, they have been “busy, endlessly dividing and subdividing, ever since the Reformation.” So it is difficult to make generalizations about the many Protestant beliefs, though converts themselves can share important insights about their experiences. Often it is the historical facts that cause them to come to the Catholic Church.
There are many objections to the Catholic Church today, as there have been throughout the centuries. Often the Church is distorted by other churches or individuals. McCloskey says, “At the same time, we are entitled to insist that the critics of the Church get their facts straight. A lot of the crimes attributed to Catholics either were not as represented, didn’t occur at all, or look quite different when viewed in their historical and cultural context.
In any case, the relevant measure of the Church is not her sinners. Every institution, every group- every church- has plenty of those. The measure of the Church is her saints, the men and women who, with God’s grace, have lived up to the highest ideals of holiness as presented by Jesus in the Beatitudes.”
An often misunderstood aspect of the Catholic Church is the teaching of the infallibility of the Pope. When this doctrine is explained fully, potential converts can see that it makes much more sense than the alternatives. To summarize a complex issue, suffice it to say that the Pope acts for the Church in its entirety, in concert with the bishops.
Another stumbling block to possible converts is Catholics’ devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Those who are concerned about this need to be assured that Catholics do not worship the Blessed Virgin, but pray to her as a mother and an example of saintly goodness. Catholics also believe that Mary, being so close to Jesus, can intercede for us with Him.
Another objection to the Catholic faith is that a person does not need a church but can have a personal relationship with God on their own, that the Bible is all that they need. If one reads the Bible, one will see that Jesus wanted his disciples to form a community. St. Paul’s theology of church is also biblical confirmation for the necessity of a community of believers.
Other objections to the Catholic faith concern what is perceived as the sterile and hard to understand liturgy of the Catholic Church. First of all, the Catholic Mass is not meant to be entertainment. Its purpose is to worship God. That said, there are many summaries of the Mass in books and pamphlets, including the missalettes used in most churches, that will help explain what the Mass is all about. It is well to remember that each part of the Mass has a meaning and that the overall tone of the Mass is to elevate, to bring us closer to heaven.
Another perceived obstacle to practicing the Catholic faith is the messy marital situation of many lapsed Catholics. McCloskey tells us that he has never found a problem with the marriage that couldn’t eventually be taken care of “in a manner fully consistent with the teaching of the Church.” To those Catholics who have found themselves in a second or third legitimate marriage he has this advice:
“First of all, keep going to Mass every Sunday, without receiving Holy Communion. Participate in other parish worship as well. No matter what happens, don’t lose your faith.
Second, talk it over with your pastor [or another priest] and listen closely for his advice.
Third, bear in mind that, as the saying goes, ‘it ain’t over till it’s over.’ The Church wants you to return to full communion, even though it may not happen until near the end of your life.
Do everything you can to bring your present marriage partner back to the Church or into the Church, as the case may be.
Continue to acknowledge the validity and indissolubility of your first marriage. Make no excuses. Don’t look for any shortcuts. Keep praying and trust in God. If we truly wish to be saved, there are very few limits to God’s saving mercy.”
Some people would like to be Catholic but consider themselves too sinful to comply with the obligations of the Church. McCloskey tells us that Jesus came for the purpose of saving sinners. He didn’t take the supreme and extreme measure of dying on the Cross for those who forget to pray their evening prayers. We are all sinners who do not deserve the many gifts we have received.
One thing to remember is that conversion is only the beginning of the story. Every human being is somewhere along the path to sainthood. We can only arrive there when the earthly part of our lives is over. And the way to arrive at that destination is in McCloskey’s words, “embracing the Catholic faith, entering into the communion of the Catholic Church, becoming a Catholic Christian disciple of Jesus Christ, and living accordingly.”
Author Information
Father C. John McCloskey III is a Catholic priest who has helped many converts to enter the Catholic Church. Many of the stories in the book are ones that he experienced.
For more information on Father McCloskey see this Web site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._John_McCloskey_III
Russell Shaw is a Catholic writer who helped organize and write Fr. McCloskey’s stories. He has many articles published in journals, and Permanent Deacons and Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia are two of his books.