Catholic and Enjoying It!
A reader writes:
Dissenting Catholics and former Catholics fill Hollywood, the news media, political office, and judicial seats and they have fallen into grave sin. If your son had fallen on the concrete and knocked himself unconscious, you would run to him, try to rouse him, take him to the hospital, and treat his injuries. Too many Catholics leave our brothers and sisters in Christ unconscious and dead in their sin. We get distracted by arguments about homosexuality and abortion and fail to address the real problem: these people don’t know Christ.
We need to break through the insulation that surrounds them and through the guards they put up themselves. We need to go on the offensive against the spiritual attack against our culture and our Church. We need to bring Christ directly to people where they are at instead of waiting for them to come to us. There are a lot of people in this country that need to encounter Christ and I think the Holy Spirit has inspired me with an idea on how to evangelize more effectively.
My idea is this: Introduce Christ to everyone we can and let him work on their hearts. We need to inform our congressmen, the media, and Hollywood about the Catholic faith by mailing them cds, tracts, and books. We need to email them audio, youtube videos, and explanations about Catholic teaching. We should write a letter and put a cd or tract or SOMETHING in every gift we get for poor children at Christmas time, every food donation or care package, every bag that leaves a St Vincent De Paul’s store, and give one with every gift card we give to our kids’ teachers, mail carriers, and whoever else. Every willing Catholic doctor, dentist, or businessman should have Catholic material in their waiting rooms or by their registers. We need to bring Catholic magazines to hospital waiting rooms, and we should have kiosks in grocery stores and pharmacies and crisis pregnancy centers. We need to bring this information to the prisons and homeless shelters. We need to like the facebook pages of those that disagree with us and post Youtube videos about what the Church really teaches. If we give this information to them they might never read or listen to it, but if we never give it to them then they will never hear it or read it.
The Saints wrote letters, the apostles wrote letters, in fact much of what we know about our faith is because these people wrote down what it is all about. St Francis de Sales evangelized the Calvinists (who hated him so much they set their dogs on him) by writing tracts and slipping them under their doors at night. He won 60,000 converts in his life. If he did this writing tracts by hand, then what could we do with our cds, our home printers, and our books already made for us? If one man can do this, what can one hundred of us do by the grace of God, through prayer and perseverance?
There are already Jehovah’s Witness publications on the tables of the waiting rooms of my local hospital and Protestant kiosks in my local CVS and Catholic owned grocery store. The secularists are having their say in the media and universities. It is time for us to tell America the truth about Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church. I can’t do this alone. I’m not a Saint. I am lazy, I lack stamina, I am easily discouraged, I don’t communicate very well, and I am not a leader who can inspire others to action. Catholics like me want to change the culture instead of just complaining about it. Please help inspire other Catholics to evangelize our nation, from the White House to the prisons. I am rereading this and second guessing myself, maybe this doesn’t sound very exciting or brilliant. I have prayed about this and think that Catholics need to get more aggressive about evangelization in our country. I could be off the mark, but I feel we are being led to action and while we must pray always, we cannot pray and do nothing as our culture disintegrates.
The Holy Spirit is the one who converts people. As we study to make ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ, he is the one who takes the initiative to work through us to convert others. Focus on discipleship and God will make you an apostle in due course.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In