Catholics Want To Grow

Something exciting is happening in the Catholic Church. As Catholic leaders call for Catholics to get more excited about their faith, the Faithful are indeed hungering to know more about their Catholic faith. In their 1990 document “Go and Make Disciples,” the US Catholic Bishops made one of their key goals to “bring about in all Catholics such an enthusiasm for their faith that, in living their faith in Jesus, they freely share it with others”...

Twelve years later, the US Catholic office for Family, Laity, Women and Youth released the results of a large survey of 59,000 lay Catholics, where they asked how parishes could better help them integrate their faith into their daily lives. By far, the top four responses by Catholics fell into the area of faith growth.

The number one response cited by close to 70% of Catholics was, “It is important to me that my parish improve it’s adult faith formation/adult education.” Second most frequent request, at 67% of Catholics was, “It is important to me that my parish improves how it supports parents in passing on their faith to their children.” A close third on the list, at 66% was, “It is important to me that my parish improves how it helps me to understand more about Catholic teaching…” Fourth on the list with 62% of Catholics was, “It is important to me that my parish improves how it helps me to deepen my understanding of the bible.”

It’s clear that Catholics are hungering to go deeper in the faith. The Bishops are hoping that as Catholics deepen in faith, they will start to live it out with such enthusiasm that they will automatically want to share it with others.

If you feel a certain sense of panic about the idea of sharing your Catholic faith with others, don’t worry, you’re not alone. The Church knows that sharing the faith is not something that comes naturally for Catholics. The Bishops say, “We are aware that many Catholics tend to keep their faith to themselves or to manifest it only around other Catholics. Perhaps our heritage as immigrants and our acknowledgment of religious pluralism make us shy in showing forth our faith. Certainly, there has also been a decline in the public practice of our faith in recent decades. For many, the fire of faith burns cooler than it should. Yet we have no reason to be shy about the heritage of our Catholic faith…”

Whatever the reason may be, the simple fact is that Catholics are plain shy about our faith. We would all have to agree that there has been a definite decline in the public practice of our faith in recent decades. For example, when was the last time you saw a Catholic making the sign of the cross over a meal in a public restaurant? What ever happened to the idea of saying grace before a meal? It used to be that you could pick a Catholic out of a crowd. Now, there is little that distinguishes Catholics from the crowd.

What has happened to the Catholic witness for our faith? We would all have to agree that most of us are a long way from the ideal when it comes to reconciling our Catholic faith with our personal lifestyle. Somehow we have managed to sever the practice of our faith from our day-to-day life experience. Other than going to Mass, is there anything that you do in your daily life that would indicate to others that you are a Catholic? To put it another way, if you were brought before a court of law, accused of being a Catholic, could they find sufficient evidence to convict you? For most of us, the evidence would be pretty thin. Could the same thing be said of the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses or Evangelical Protestants? It wouldn’t appear so, based on their visible presence in the marketplace.

A story; I was in a hurry to leave my home for an appointment a few years back, when two Jehovah’s Witnesses arrived at my door.(dread) In fact, I was open to talking to them, because I wanted to grill them on their practice of distorting Sacred Scripture to suit their own ends. I told them that I was a bible believing Catholic and I wanted to debate them, but I simply had to fly. When I told them this, they didn’t believe me; I guess they thought that I was just another in a long series of brush-off’s they’d received that day. So they got angry with me and said, “…We’re just doing what you guys are supposed to be doing.”  Wow, she was right. These JW’s are just picking up the slack for us lazy Christians; we who could not be bothered to go door to door to profess the faith. They may be wrong in their theology, but they certainly are not wrong in that observation. They are filling the vacuum left by us Catholics who have abandoned our  witness to the faith.

Another story; my wife and I were in the South Pacific island of Tonga a few years back, for our 25^th wedding anniversary. We couldn’t help but notice the large number of Mormon schools that were being built all over the nation. These freshly painted compounds stood out in contrast to the dilapidated buildings owned by the local Tongan communities. When I asked one local about these schools and the affect on their children, he said, “…yes, I know that not all of what they teach is true, but we send our children there for the quality of the education they’ll receive.” There’s no question that these impressionable children will be indoctrinated into the Mormon faith by attending these schools. The local Catholic Church cannot hope to compete for the souls of these children. And this scenario is being repeated all over the world in areas that have traditionally been served by Catholic schools. Again, where is the Catholic witness?

Here’s the thing, if we’re not excited enough about our faith to want to share it with others then really, what does that say about how good we feel about our faith? If you saw a really good movie, you wouldn't hesitate to share it with your friends, right? We do, because we feel that the experience was worth sharing with others. The logic is this, “I enjoyed it, so I know you’ll also enjoy it.” So, why doesn’t that apply to our Catholic faith? Is it possible that we get more pleasure from a two-hour multi-media entertainment experience than in practicing our faith? Frankly, we do. We really do. Let’s be honest, we get more pleasure from escaping into fantasyland for a couple of hours that we do going to Mass. And we have more fun talking about movies with friends than we would ever have discussing our faith over a coffee. Why is that? In reality, one is a temporary thrill with no long term redeeming value and the other is nothing short of redemption itself, with eternal consequences. Don’t we care? Don’t we want others to know? Could anything be more valuable to share with a friend then the gift of eternal happiness with God?

So why do we hesitate to share our Catholic faith in the same way that other denominations do? The Catholic bishops say that we will only become more enthusiastic about our Church and about our faith once we go deeper in our relationship with Jesus. They say that it is only after we deepen our relationship with Jesus that we can see the beauty of our Catholic faith and only then will we feel motivated enough to want to share our Catholic heritage with our family, friends and others. The Bishops say that it is a priority of theirs that we become renewed in our Catholic faith.

In my next article, I’ll delve a little deeper into the Bishop’s study.

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God Bless.