Catholic writers like Chesterton, and speakers that i have heard like Father Spitzer, or reading posts here by Chaput inspire my walk with Christ. But while I have encountered many Protestants excited to introduce me to Christ both prior to and subsequent to my conversion to Christianity as a college student, I have never had a Roman Catholic even try to invite me to a service or Catholic event let alone share with me his faith in Christ. Even a Catholic priest did nothing to engage me when I was seeking and told him about the role Pascal's Pensees was playing in my life.

Protestants could learn much from the great .catholic intellectual tradition. But it seems to me that training the laity for engaging friends and neighbors in the claims of Christ and the Gospel is something Protestants do better. Many Catholics become Protestants because they did not hear the Gospel proclaimed in their own church and love the exegetical preaching of pastors who make Scripture come alive. Is there a Catholic N.T. Wright, or Spurgeon? Some return years later when they encounter the Gospel in the Catholic tradition. They are grateful for the role Protestantism played in their journey. But one wonders what might be if Catholic laity were as inspired as many Protestants are.

Chesteron Fan: Father Robert Barron might be just the man you are looking for.

CF: Unfortunately those Catholics you have encountered have not been catechized properly & neither have their children (because religious education starts with the parents). How can they possibly be excited if they do not know their faith? Fortunately the bishops have finally come to their senses & are starting to strengthen the catechesis programs at all levels from Pre-K to adulthood. It's taken them long enough!

Catholics are more likely to engage in discussions about their faith in God vis-a-vis their experience of beauty in art or the natural world. Catholics have long absorbed Scripture through art, and still do today. The Catholic faith is concrete, phenomenological, and sacramental. The written word has not occupied for long the exalted place in the Church it has now. (Case in point -- longer elevations of the Book of Gospels instead of the Host at the Consecration).

Protestants magnifying God through art?? Not so much. It probably violates a commandment or something.

Chesterton Fan -

I think you should become Catholic. ;)

Seriously though, I think I know what is going on and it isn't simply bad catechesis. Everything can be blamed on bad catechesis. Whats going on here, I think, is that the culture of leave me alone and I'll leave you alone pervades our way of thinking on this. We've been taught through the culture that simply asking somebody to come to our Church presumes that we disrespect their current Church or way of life, which is one of the worst 'sins' one can commit.

Second of all, a lot of more evangelically minded Catholics can be a little embarrased by the liturgy at their parish. I know I've felt that way before. Obviously, if you are from a well populated area, this is less of an excuse.

Those are the two biggest obstacles I see.

The Mass also feels less inclusive to one who is not of the faith than a Protestant service does. You really are made to feel an outsider once everyone goes up for the Eucharist. I do understand the importance of the Eucharist and of believing in it in order to partake, but it's the center piece of the Mass and so difficult to share with non-Catholics. Even those who are preparing to become Catholic have are asked to leave before the Eucharistic. So how do you bring someone into the fold in an atmosphere like that? Prayer meetings and bible studies might be a good way to open the way, but they aren't common occurrences in most parishes.

I think it's even more basic than that. Protestants have a good reason to invite non-Protestants to their services, because the main reason to attend a Protestant service - the sermon - is one that an unbeliever can appreciate, and many Protestant pastors do it well. In contrast, what possible natural motivation can a sincere Catholic propose for why a non-Catholic should attend the average Sunday Mass that we've seen in America during the past 30 or so years? He'd like to be able to say that the preaching is invigorating, or that the ceremony is beautiful, or that you can really feel the presence of the Spirit in the way that people worship, but the truth is that, if it weren't for his own belief in the Real Presence and his own duties under the Third Commandment, he wouldn't be going there himself. All the purely natural things that we're supposed to be able to use as lures simply haven't been in evidence for most of my lifetime.

Fortunately, this state of affairs does seem to be improving. I don't know about other dioceses, but the caliber of preaching up here in Gaylord seems to have improved dramatically since the new bishop was installed. (Sacred music is still a nightmare, but Rome wasn't built in a day.) Maybe, in a decade or so, we'll be in a position to make the offer seem worth the unbeliever's time. But, in the meantime, the intellectual approach - trying to persuade people that our claims about the Mass are objectively true, regardless of any appeal they might make to the emotions - would still seem to be our best bet.

Oh, and Chesterton Fan, make that two Catholics who have invited you home.

I have been insisting for over 25 years that lay formation must be a Trinitarian process, but regardless what approach we take in this new evangelization (which is exclusively academic) we exclude the Holy Spirit and a direct participation of the laity (which can only occur in an assembly life, something non-existent in the Catholic Church). In fact, the major flaw in this new evangelization is the major emphasis on Logos, which, separate from the Father and Holy Spirit becomes a Gnostic endeavor; in fact, the Logos separate from the Father and Holy Spirit is not the Son at all.

The first and fundamental flaw in the academic model has its origin in Kant who unintentionally turned Reason into an idol (and although he opposed Descartes’ unintentional centering the reality of the human person in the cognitive processes instead of the life of God [“I think, therefore I am”] he ended in affirming it, and Hegel took it to its logical end outside revelation. The most telling consequence of this for us today is the abortion license and euthanasia for those who have a seriously impaired cognitive ability, who are not able to “reason” properly and therefore have no value as persons).

The problem with this exclusively academic approach, an approach imprisoned in high abstraction that is now being universally promoted within the Catholic Church, is that it has an innate, impenetrable obstacle: it excludes the Holy Spirit and the laity. I have witnessed it in action on many occasions: classes on top of classes in catechesis, Bible study, gifts discernment, and instruction (and homilies!) on how we laity fail miserably in going out. And after completing these classes and receiving these castigations, we laity still don’t go out. Why? Because we have not joined with each other and the Holy Spirit in assembly life (the unity Christ prayed for and the only way anyone outside the Church will really know us, and precisely why beloved John was so hard on the great church at Ephesus when he criticizes it in “Revelations”). It’s that simple, and academics are blind to this simplicity as much as we laity that flounder around in our guilt at not evangelizing. The academics don’t flounder around in this guilt because they are convinced they have done their part in educating us, and to a large degree they are right. It is not their responsibility, but the bishops and pastors to take steps to unite us laity in assembly life, yet it is the one thing that is apparently anathema to every bishop and pastor I have talked to the last 25 years: they resist assembly life at all costs, and I suspect this has its origin in the radical mistrust of the laity that formed among clerics during the Counter Reformation.

In an assembly format (assembly being the organic, not abstract, Body of Christ in this particular place at this particular time in union with the whole of His Body) the laity could participate in the process of evangelization (for the Holy Spirit moves freely among all of us, and in that unity a gestalt actualization would emerge). In fact, assembly life is the ONLY way for laity to participate.

Even in a secular sense there is a universal flaw in a strictly academic model in any social movement that involves the desire to unite a group of persons in a common goal, and that flaw is the attempt to subsume the living, breathing, complex relational lives of the individuals that make up that group into an abstract formula that amounts to a notion of what is expected of them without in any way guiding them into a truly organic, interrelational movement that will actualize the ideal. They will learn how to talk the talk, but not walk the walk, and why in academia today there is endless talk that is always trying to catch up with the new thing to talk about; for it is the accumulation of information in the anxiety of perpetual career advancement, not the lives of persons, that becomes the singular concern. And in the case of lay formation, to escape the abstract prison of the academic model will require everyone being open to the Holy Spirit as the Body of Christ as a prerequisite to moving freely with the Spirit. This can be scary when one has spent a lifetime in the realm of high abstraction, a realm of squeaky clean and complex clinical language that matches the perfection of numbers, forgetting that the perfection of numbers is a sign, not the life, of the human person in the movement of the Holy Spirit. It is understandable that the leadership in every failed academic attempt at lay formation becomes cynical and convinced that the laity simply aren’t up to the task of evangelization (I’ve witnessed this, too). They simply don’t see what is clearly absent: assembly life.

I am not suggesting that we should jettison the academic model. Indeed, I am convinced it must stay just as it is, absent the castigations, but not to the exclusion of assembly life where the Holy Spirit will move freely among us, the Body of Christ, the only true hope for evangelization.

Hi, Chesterton Fan,

For "exegetical preaching" that makes "Scripture come alive" check out the writings of the Early Church Fathers. Although I must warn you that you will find them very Catholic.

I agree with you that Protestants are often much more warm and welcoming than Catholics, especially in terms of inviting people to attend their Church services. Many Catholics have been attending the same parish for years and still only know a handful of the people in the parish -- if that. So I can see how one who isn't all that confident he is welcome himself might be reluctant to invite others to Church. And the awful habit many Catholics have of taking their place at the outer edge of the pew instead of moving towards the center of it in order to make room for others doesn't help anything. (Why do Catholics do that?) Catholics could definitely take a lesson from the Protestants in making church members feel like part of a loving community and in inviting others to attend their services.

But keep in mind the truth in a remark often attributed to St. Francis: “Preach the Gospel every day and use words only when necessary." **Who we are** preaches much more forcefully than what we say. And yes, even with that in mind there are still those times Catholics remain silent when they really shouldn't:

"Simply proclaim the Lord Christ holy in your hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you have." – 1 Pet 3:15

Many Catholics do a great job of proclaiming Christ in their hearts by the way the live, but are not ready to answer people who ask them about them about their faith -- especially when the inquiry about their faith is in the context of controversial topics like abortion or the HHS mandate, as in “Why do Catholics think ...” Not having an answer ready then is due to either poor catechesis or cowardice.

"that we might go out from there to the ends of the earth, bringing the Gospel of God’s passionate love for humanity to a world yearning for truth." The pastoral Vatican II and "ecumenism" have quenched the missionary spirit of the Church, with many (most?) Catholics now taught that you can be saved without Christ. Let us pause to recall the de fide teaching of the Dogmatic Council of Trent: ".....For as in truth men, if they were not born propagated of the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust,-seeing that, by that propagation, they contract through him, when they are conceived, injustice as their own,-so, ***if they were not born again in Christ, they never would be justified***;...... the instrumental cause is the sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith,*** without which (faith) no man was ever justified;***"
Start teaching this again and then you will see a New Evangelization.

Harry said in passing : "And the awful habit many Catholics have of taking their place at the outer edge of the pew instead of moving towards the center of it in order to make room for others doesn't help anything. (Why do Catholics do that?)"

Given the sincerity of the author and of the bloggers, and the seriousness of the themes, what I'm about to say could be seen as cruel and heartless. I offer it in a spirit of playful cynicism. I'm no longer sure when playfulness becomes sinfulness. I know that giving in to hopelessness is wrong, though I'm not sure about cynicism. I console myself with the thought that if we don't try hard to laugh, we would cry. Or at least that's what I've been reduced to.

So, Harry, here follows merely one of many reasons why at least one Catholic in Brisbane, Australia hunts for the ends of pews. Let me first point out, however, that it's not all pews but only certain "strategic" ones (near the back of the church) that are in demand. Otherwise I prefer to stand at the back of the church.

I do it for two reasons : self-defense and consideration for others. My tactics allow me to bolt without disturbing others at the first sign that another dreadful Haugen or Foley song is afoot. I don't accept their dirges as hymns, so I don't feel bad about coming in late (to avoid the pain of listening to their noise ), leaving early ( again to avoid their noise ), and even leaving and returning during Mass.

We get the same three or four Haugen or Foley songs Sunday after Sunday, month after month, year after year. Almost always, we get the same song split up, half for for the entrance and half for the closing "slots". It's like being in a psychological war zone, so self-defence seems in order.

Nobody is willing to discuss it or change it - not the priest, deacon, pianist, choir mistress, or chairmen of the parish council and parish liturgy committee.

God bless us, every one !

Fr. Bryan-"Whats going on here, I think, is that the culture of leave me alone and I'll leave you alone pervades our way of thinking on this." I heartfully agree Fr. B.

Sydney- there are catholic charismatic prayer meetings that closely resemble protestant or born again worship services. Even some of the songs that are sung are from CCM. There are quite a number of parishes that hold these prayer meetings. Again, I believe that the Mass is where we seek "inclusion" from God through the eucharist. Once you are included by God through communion every thing else is secondary.

If the mass does not seem warm enough, I can tell you that you can't please everybody. We've had many charismatic priests come and go in our parish but they usually go with a critique that may be hard to bear, particularly from the older generation that "demand" a cut and dried mass celebration. You really can blame them though, they came from a generation where "reaching out" to the congregation went only as far as sharing the homily. The same can be said about the clergy. There are priests that will celebrate the mass, period. Whether you "get it" or not is mid-priority. Standing at the the "other side of the meter" are the priests whose personalities seem to dominate the mass and need to hear their congregations respond.

The "outward" community leadership of the catholics truly depends on the "shepherds" or the priests and bishops. A timid congregation somes from a timid parish priest and bishop. Having said that, I am reminded of pentecost where the apostles spoke and acted boldly. We didn't see that when the HHS was being railroaded.

Chesterton Fan (aren't we all?):
My experience tells me you are onto something. We Catholic laity have accepted too readily the idea that our faith is to be kept to ourselves. We figure our clergy will handle the outreach and evangelization. That is a mistake. By the way, since you are a fan, I hope you have read "The Thing: Why I Became a Catholic" by our shared mentor?

@Gil -- Please elaborate on what you mean by "assembly life."

Ex-madisonian,

Assembly life was the life lived in the early Church. For example, Paul and John's main interest was in forming communities that would have their life first in Eucharist and then—as a consequence of this being radically interconnected/united in body, mind and spirit in Christ—in assembly life, and they took it for granted that it would always be so, for only in unity, not abstract but physical/spiritual unity, will the life of Christ become visible to each other in assembly life and to the world outside the Church. John insisted that this lived unity in assembly life that was the heart of Christian communities was the only way peoples outside the Church would recognize us as Christians.

Psalm 133:1: "How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!" And 1 Corinthians 5:4: "So when you are assembled and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present..."

Christians in the early Church just did not have any notion of being Christian separate from community. Even when Paul and other disciples were on the road (remember that Jesus insisted that even these disciples going off to found Christian communities always travel in twos, for with two persons communing in Christ, it was assured that Christ would be present), their plan was always to found Christian communities, not to just build buildings where Christians could go to worship on Sundays. And Paul especially would write letters to the churches he was involved in founding and ones founded by other disciples precisely to be in communion with them and to insure in every way he could to keep those communities intact. For without that visible unity the members of Christ’s body would not know each other, and neither would the world know them.

In "Revelation" John's main emphasis is to restore the unity in Christ as community in the 7 churches he writes to. The greatest local church that John wrote to was the church at Ephesus, and the Christians of that church were close to perfect in every way except one:

" These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."

To remove the lampstand means to lose all initiative to go out, for in their doing great things with expansive parish activity, there was no love, no movement of the Holy Spirit, and thus no Christ. John is writing about the love lost when the members of Christ’s body do not commune. Think about it: gifts were discerned in assembly life, not through called and gifted workshops (although the latter can be useful at some level). When people gathered and communed in Christ through the Holy spirit, that's where gifts were revealed, and it was there that persons were assigned ministries, both within that local church and for those going out into the world. We thus, in our time, have no lampstand at any of our churches, and why there is no authentic lay initiative, not only no deep sense that one must go out, but no sense of being powerful enough in Christ to go out. This strength for the laity to go out comes from the activity of the Spirit moving freely in assembly life.

I have argued elsewhere that assembly life was almost totally destroyed during the Counter Reformation when a radical mistrust of the laity poisoned Christian communities everywhere and a radical clericalism took its place, and that we have not yet outgrown this clericalism (there’s no blame in recognizing this: it is simply the matrix we Christians move in). Then with the arrival of Descartes who established radical subjectivity as the course modern philosophy would take, and Kant solidifying that notion in exalting Reason above community life, the modern world of high abstraction and radical individuality was born, the individual who doesn't need anyone, but can stand on his own two feet and do all that needs to be done, for society and the Church! And the individual who works the hardest in all things that matter is the one that ascends, and why Nietzsche was correct when he looked at this and announced the Death of God, now displaced by the radical individual, and Nietzsche was essentially claiming that he could play that game, too, and be the highest of all, the Superman! This is what most contributed to the idolatry of work, what we call “the Protestant work ethic”, but we are all afflicted with a subjection to this idol (see Josef Pieper’s “Leisure: the Basis of Culture”). And the great irony is that the massive intellect of Hegel who tries to correct this radical individuality that cuts us off from the Holy Spirit leads us right into a Christian form of pantheism more heretical than the god of Reason! For HIS idea of radical community was everyone subsuming their minds into his massive mind! He thus becomes the ultimate radical individual for all of us!

And here we are today, all of us, trapped in the matrix of radical individuality. Hannah Arendt was correct in observing that no one, not even Christians, have yet found a way out of the Kantian dilemma of being trapped in the radical individuality that goes with the territory of Reason as thee god (fortunately, Hans Urs von Balthasar did find a way out, and frees us into a new millennium of Christian flourishing), for each one of us suspects that we are more capable than anyone else of coming up with the best reason for anything, which ironically defeats reasons itself!, and why man and woman and all of humanity are at some level always in opposition to one another. A Lutheran minister named it correctly: "oppositional self-imaging": we define our radical unique sense of ourselves based on who we oppose, not on who we love, which, as Christians, should be everyone, including our enemies.

Assembly life is a community of love, where the love that is Christ through the Holy Spirit moves freely among us. That’s where we will for the first time know ourselves and where others will know us as Christians. It just can’t be found anywhere else. How can a lay person go out when he/she doesn’t even know who he/she is?






1 Corinthians 5:4:


"I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first.

Ex-madisonian,

I would like to add that we must reflect on the extensive and all-encompassing damage done by Immanuel Kant. He more than any philosopher, including Nietzsche (for Nietzsche looked at what Kant and Hegel were saying and protested: "Why should I submit to your abstract God of Reason when I have my own Reason?”)

We must acknowledge first that presently within the Church the academic model of lay formation is being pushed by most bishops and priests who, ironically, are truly sincere in establishing lay formation. They simply are not aware that they are displacing the Holy Spirit, and thus Christ himself, in pushing their agenda wrapped up in high abstraction, the ground of worshipping the god of Reason. My point is that assembly life at every parish is the only way out of this self-defeating matrix.

How do we untangle ourselves from Kant’s god? As I alluded to above, Hannah Arendt was correct in stating that everyone, including every Christian, is held captive to this god. And it is this god who is promoting the destined-to-fail academic model for lay formation.

A good place to begin a deconstruction of the Kantian matrix is Josef Pieper's small book, "Leisure: the Basis of Culture". This for example:

"Ratio [the mind not of Christ who subsumes and affirms every human faculty into his mind, but of the god of Reason] is the power of discursive, logical thought, of searching and of examination, of abstraction, of definition and drawing conclusions. Intellectus [directly connected to, not separate from, and mingling in the mind of Christ], on the other hand, is the name for the understanding in so far as it is the capacity of simples intuitus, of that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye."

And from Pieper, if one chooses to commit, one can go on to the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar who will be our Aquinas for the next millennium.

Hannah Arendt is under fire at the Academy for good reasons. This Jewish writer abided in Intellectus, and why she is now an enemy of those holding chairs at the Academy, including Catholic universities, who reside exclusively in Ratio. I mention her to make the point that the Holy Spirit moves freely in the world, and even atheists have access to him via Intellectus (not claiming that Arendt was atheist, for I know not if she was religious or not, and anyhow, that’s not my point), and essentially why Christians need not fear going out into the world to preach the Gospel. There is nothing coincidental in Hannah Arendt titling her first book of essays, "Essays in Understanding". This book is a fine example of a brilliant mind centered in Intellectus, and I can't think a book that so clearly reveals the power of ideology to blind its adherents, which, for me, is so clearly visible today in this Age of Ideology in the ideology of the sexual revolution where truth not only has no value but is perceived as an ardent enemy, and why, as one example, at my Dominican parish with three highly intelligent, educated and pious Catholic priests a lay leader is affirmed and encouraged to teach that gay ideologues got it right and that the Church is not only wrong in opposing gay marriage, but that the magisterium is evil in its discriminatory and bigoted practice in this respect. Never in a homily will you hear any criticism of the sexual revolution and the evil inherent its ideological vision. Again, it is imperative that one recognize that these three priests are pious and truly called to the priesthood, but they have bowed to the Kantian God of Reason, and in the process abandoned their natural longing to adhere, as Dominicans, to their gift of intellectus.

In parish “life” throughout the world the second idol worshipped after Reason is Work. A pious lay person, as one example, will devote 2 or more hours a week feeding the hungry, or visiting the sick, or whatever. This is the “work” they do for the Church. And almost certainly there is another parishioner who has been ostracized in some fashion who is actually called to feed the hungry or visit the sick, but there is no way of meeting him/her without an assembly life. The problem with approaching ministry as work (unconsciously or consciously) is that is always centered in self-aggrandizement, and which makes it an idolatrous activity. Here, again, is what Pieper says:

“Work is the process of satisfying the ‘common need’—an expression that is by no means synonymous with the notion of ‘common good.’ The ‘common need’ is an essential part of the ‘common good’; but the notion of ‘common good’ is far more comprehensive…”

A Christian life in Christ is a comprehensive life, and I just don’t see how we can return to that life, to receive back our lampstands at our parishes, except through assembly life, what Jesus had arranged for us in advance, and why unity was not his suggestion, but his command.

I have submitted to many priests and bishops a detailed example of how we can proceed to establish assembly life at every parish in a simple fashion, a vision I received from the Holy Spirit, and every time it was rejected, rarely with an attempt at an explanation, and when given they were totally inadequate, for they did not address my points. At one point, standing utterly alone, I began to doubt that the Holy Spirit had inspired this vision at all, so I wrote to whom I believed at that time was America’s preeminent saintly theologian, Cardinal Avery Dulles, and he affirmed that vision.

Any bishop or priest interested in establishing a true model for lay formation I ask to contact me through my parish of more than 20 years, Blessed Sacrament Church in Seattle, Washington. God had some time ago called me to be homeless and why I have no stable address. Presently I have a room, but tomorrow I might be somewhere else.

There's no doubt that Cardinal is a man of the cloth, however, over the past two years, the cardinal has initiated an ongoing formation and renewal of the presbyterate. Additionally, over this time a renewed importance has been given to strengthening parish life and reviewing methods for evangelization and catechesis.

While valid, we need to go beyond the symptoms.

You know how we all laugh at China for trying to have capitalism without a free society? Same for us. We want an explosion of evangelization while we maintain an air tight lockdown on all levels of the Church.

Evangelization requires "ownership". We are clear that we do NOT give lay folks a say. So they (the ones who have stayed) tend to be passive and happily so.

They will never do evangelization. They culture must be changed if you want that.

I don't believe the hierarchy wants evangelization enough to do what is necessary to change the culture so that it would produce evangelization.
The hierarchy are not missioners. They are "chaplains"- and happily so. The 1971 Synod was a long time and several Popes ago. All these Popes have beat this drum. And...here we are. Chaplains who like their chapel as it is.
I pray the new Synod proves me wrong.