Why
Do Catholics Become Evangelicals?
By Gerald J. Mendoza (Roman Catholic Doctor
of Theology)
Posted 12/10/2006
In an article entitled, The Glory and Power of the Gospel, Fr.
Raniero Cantalamessa—He describes a retreat called: Preacher
to the Papal Household—which 1,500 priests and 70 bishops
Attended where they heard shocking descriptions of the state
of the Catholic Church in Latin America by noting that Catholics
there proclaim that, “When we need a labor union we go to
our parish priest; when we need the word of God we go to the
Protestant pastor,” and that, “In Latin America the Catholic Church has made an
option for the poor and the poor
have opted for the Protestant Churches.”[1] Ralph
Martin too, has noted that, in 1991, Pope John Paul II called
a consistory to examine what could only be described as a
hemorrhage of the Catholic faithful to Evangelical Protestantism.
Quote: |
The
cardinals had a lot to say about the spectacular growth
of the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, which,
in Latin America in particular, are attracting many
Catholics. Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo
of Managua, Nicaragua, told the Cardinals that a
“Protestant explosion” has seen the number of Protestants
in Latin America grow from 4 million in 1967 to 30 million
in 1985. Fully 10 percent of Latin Americans are now
Protestant. According to reliable estimates, only
15 percent of Latin Americans are active Catholics.
If the growth factors for each country of Latin America
are averaged, the Evangelical and Pentecostal percentage
of the population there tripled over a period of 25
years. If it triples again in the next 25 years, Evangelicals
and Pentecostals will comprise a third of the population
by the year 2010. (This
is only four years away) From 1960 to 1985, Evangelical and Protestant groups
have doubled their share of the population in Chile,
Paraguay, Venezuela, Panama, and Haiti; tripled their
share in Argentina, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic;
quadrupled their share in Brazil and Puerto Rico; quintupled
in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Peru, and Bolivia; and sextupled
in Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, and Colombia.[2] |
A cursory look at Hispanic flight from
the Catholic Church in the United States shows that the situation
here is just as serious. “A 1986 Gallup Poll revealed that in the preceding 10 years,
5 million Hispanics joined Evangelical and Pentecostal churches,
approximately 30 percent of the 17 million Hispanics in the
United States. Of these, 64 percent converted to these groups
from Catholicism.”[3] The situation is not limited
to Hispanics in or out of the U.S.
Quote: |
The
same trend is visible in the United States. American
Catholic leaders have also expressed a great concern
about the growth of Evangelical and Pentecostal churches
in this country, a growth that often comes through Catholics
leaving their churches. Here, statistics
are hard to come by. Much anecdotal evidence suggests
that many members of Pentecostal and independent charismatic
churches are former Catholics. This is especially true
of regions with a large Catholic population. One
researcher who did an informal survey estimates that
30 percent of the 35 million Evangelicals and Pentecostals
in the United States are first- or second-generation
former Catholics.[4] |
The problem of Catholic flight to Evangelical
Protestant denominations is exacerbated by the vast number of non-practicing Catholics who in raw numbers constitute
a group larger than—with the exception of Baptists—any other
Christian denomination in the United States.[5] As we shall
see, the abandonment of practicing one’s Catholic faith is
one of the greatest determinants as to whether one will leave
the Catholic Church for an Evangelical Protestant one, or
not. Catholic leaders often blame Protestants for proselytizing
Catholics and commend Catholicism for its “richness.” However,
the Catholic Church needs to face the embarrassing question of why so many millions of Catholics around the world are finding
a reality of Christian life in Evangelical and Pentecostal churches
that they did not find in their local Catholic church.
The current state of Catholic evangelization
In order to ascertain the current state
of the Catholic evangelistic mission as well as its successes
and failures, one needs to—at least briefly—survey the theologies
of evangelism in the New Testament Scriptures, the sub-apostolic
and apostolic period as well as the medieval, scholastic understanding
of the Christian/Catholic evangelical mission in and to the
world. It is the Biblical, patristic (Pastorial)
and medieval theologies of mission or missiology that primarily,
from a resourcement perspective, need to inform and critically
evaluate the contemporary, Catholic evangelistic project, in
tandem with contemporary documents and ecclesial exhortations.
With respect to the New Testament, the mission and purpose
of Jesus and his disciples, the nascent Church is, incontrovertibly
and unapologetically, missionary and evangelical. (Amazing
admission) It would seem that the almost exclusive
purpose and mission of the twelve apostles, as well as the many
other disciples that accompanied Jesus and his contemporaneous
followers during his (Jesus Christ’s) earthly ministry
was, ostensibly, an on-the-job-training program meant to disseminate
the Good News or evangelion, so that God, in his indefatigable
love and desire for a personal relationship with his creation,
might reconcile it to himself with it. (This
is absolutely unbelievable – this is a confession of what they
have read and known all along –but they belong to a church that
is not only willfully disobedient to any of this but openly
hostile to any within or without that would either speak such
things or practice such things.)
From the very
beginning of the New Testament, the witness and vocation of
John the Baptist—often referred to as John the Evangelizer—was
to call all who would listen, to repentance, conversion and
baptism into the Kingdom of God and in the One (Messiah) who
was to come (Luke 3:4,5). Jesus’ own evangelistic ministry begins—in
Luke 4:19, for example—in his own village where he unsuccessfully
went to, “…proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” In Luke 4:43—corralled
by the people who saw or heard of his miraculous healings, he
exclaimed, “I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of
God…and he continued to proclaim the message in the synagogues
of Judea.” Jesus’ mission is unmistakably evangelical and missionary
and those he called as his first disciples, he called as apprentices
to the same evangelical, missionary end that they might become,
“…fishers of men” (Luke 5:10). In Luke 9:1-12 Jesus sends his
disciples out to the various villages where—following his instructions—
they, “…departed …bringing the good news (evangelion) and curing
diseases everywhere.” This evangelical mission threads throughout
all of the Gospels and culminates in Christ’s ascension commandment
to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). The Gospels are clear, the mission of
Christ and of his disciples was unabashedly evangelical, and
it is clear that his disciples understood this mission given
the testimony of the foundation of the primitive Church in the
Book of Acts.
The very first homily, (Sermon that was preached) as it were, after the
descent of the Holy Spirit—the monumental and crucial event
in the establishment and development of the primitive Church, was an evangelistic
one, preached by Peter and heard by all present—through the
power of the Holy Spirit—in their own language. Peter’s
message was this: That God has made Jesus—with all certainty—Lord
and Messiah. (Acts 2:36). The evangelistic nature of this new branch of Judaism (Another astonishing admission – that Christianity was then
and still is a Jewish sect!) later to become a distinct
religion in its own right (No! Christianity
only became its own religion after it departed and fell from
its calling. – This only occurred when the bride of Christ
became haughty and wonton and switched from it mission to serve
to one that was to be served.)
and was exemplified by the various missions of Paul in
which he had preached and/or established Christian communities,
(Nowhere did Paul create Christian
communities or enclaves. – It was the teachings of asceticism
and monasticism as taught in the Talmud and carried into the
church by the Apostolic Fathers in the late 2nd century
such as Tertullian, which brought about a devastating transformation
to those who at one time lived as lights and witnesses in and
among those of the world.) “…throughout Asia Minor,
to Greece to Rome, and perhaps—according to a tradition that
cannot be confirmed—to Spain.”[6] (Here
now we see the writer’s utter hypocrisy and the whole of the
Roman Catholic Hierarchy in this passing over a period of twelve hundred years filled with the
departing of the faith that allowed the rise of what is now
recognized as the Roman Catholic Church
-- and the Roman Catholic Church them accruing honors,
titles, and powers, to itself and its priesthood over the Laity
– that Peter and the Apostles never understood as part of their
mission from Christ and honors titles and powers that they dared
not confer upon themselves or the men and women that they hand
picked to succeed themselves.) While
there seems to have been a decline
in the evangelical focus of the Church during the middle ages.
(And the Pharisees said among themselves we can not say that
the Catholic Church was founded upon the corruption and falling
away of the early church because: He will certainly ask why
then did not your fathers when they founded the Catholic Church
return to the commandments of Christ and the mission of the
Apostles? And we
can not say that the Catholic Church was in error from the beginning
as it followed after its own devices to glorify itself and its
priests before men. And then answer Him: We do not know, from
when the decline of evangelistic focus of the Church came from.
And then He answered Him neither then will I answer you
a word. And He departed from them as He hand done with their
fathers and their father’s fathers before them.)
The establishment of the mendicant orders (Monks like the Franciscans) in the 13th century
with their (Note here this was not
the Catholic churches doing but their doing these things on
their own) evangelical preaching missions among
the peoples of the cities and countryside combined with the
Church’s unequivocal support of them, is indicative of a course
correction that has endured to the present time. By the
time of the Council of Trent, (1545) the Catholic Church was—in the face of the
spreading and buffeting of the Protestant Reformation—of necessity,
defensively evangelistic as she attempted to disseminate the
results of the Tridentine Council, namely, the existence
and definition of the seven sacraments along with their efficacy
in the mediation of grace, transubstantiation, the existence
of purgatory, the necessity of the priesthood, Tradition as
a source of revelation, the veneration of the saints and Mary,
and justification by works as well as by faith. – (This
from the 1500’s on has been the mark of Roman Catholic orthodoxy.
And this is right from the horses mouth.)
In case there was any doubt about the
teleological, evangelistic nature and purpose of the Church,
in 1975, Pope Paul VI—one year after the Third General Assembly
of the Synod of Bishops which was devoted to evangelism and
on the tenth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council—promulgated
Evangelii Nuntiandi, the Apostolic Exhortation On Evangelization
In The Modern World. It noted, among other things, that:
Quote: |
The
Church knows this. (This is so perverted, that this priest at the behest of
hierarchy would speak of the Church in third person
as some disembodied entity that knows things and is
to act upon things that these priests and bishops and
cardinals and its popes taught not and did not and will
receive eternal punishment for not doing so. – While
in the statement implying that they are free immune
from any judgment now or ever on these very issues –
This self-righteousness is directly taught in the writings
of the Talmud.) This exalted view of ones self, and
immunity of the judgment of God is why Israel of old
was destroyed two times. – This is what the serpent
implied when he said Ye shall be as the God’s to which
God had the serpent cast down and for it he and his
angels (His messengers that carry his water ) shall
be utterly destroyed. And this is the basis of the doctrine
of predestination and eternal security.
That is that these are now untouchable even by
God himself.) She has a vivid awareness of the fact that the Savior’s words,
“I must proclaim the Good News of the kingdom of God,
“apply in all truth to herself: She willingly adds with
St. Paul: “Not that I boast of preaching the gospel,
since it is a duty that has been laid on me; I should
be punished if I did not preach it.” …with
joy and consolation…We wish to confirm once (Where
in the article this far have they declared this to be
the essential mission of the Church?) more that
the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the
essential mission (By essential
that they confess that all that do not so shall be eternally
damned – and they confess of the billions they have
sent to hell for following after them and their lying
words and traditions.
– This is the identical charge we have by the
word of the Lord made against Kenneth Hagin Kenneth
Copeland and other self proclaimed self righteous teachers
and preachers.) of the Church. It
is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes
of present-day society make all the more urgent. (They are speaking here of a great falling
away that is occurring
before their eyes in the entire hierarchy Roman Catholic
Church.) Evangelizing is in fact the grace (Charis
– gift) and vocation (Work of righteousness) proper to the Church, her
deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize,
(Just as the wife exists to produce earthy seed – the husband
and the men of the ministry are to sow in the field
as God commanded over and over again.) that
is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel
of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God,
(They have invoked Paul
here three times by my count and Peter only once. This
is extraordinary) and to perpetuate Christ’s
sacrifice in the Mass, (Which
Daniel and Christ declare shall cease by the Anti-Christ
– Here they are linking this great falling away
to the ceasing of the continual sacrifice of the mass --This article is incredibly prophetic and
confirms many things that Lord has repeatedly spoken
on this website) which is the memorial of
His death and glorious resurrection…. The intimate life
of this community—the life of listening to the Word
and the apostles’ teaching, charity lived in a fraternal
way, the sharing of bread, this intimate life only
acquires its full meaning when it (It’s hearer) becomes a witness, when it (Its Hearers by
the light of Christ shining forth from them)
erevokes admiration and conversion, and when it becomes
the preaching and proclamation of the Good News. Thus
it is the whole Church that receives the mission to
evangelize, and the work of each individual member is
important for the whole.[7] |
Thus, Evangelii (Good
News) Nuntiandi (Announce)
expresses a truth about the Church and her purpose, which
is not new, but rather exists since the evangelistic mission
of Christ himself and it is the continuing mission of the Church,
which he established through the apostles, and the power of
the Holy Spirit. That truth is
that the exclusive and primary
mission of the Church. (It is) the reason that she (The Church)
was founded and the reason why she continues to exist
is to evangelize. There are many Church documents that directly
or indirectly confirm this understanding of the Church. The
question becomes then, what exactly does the Church mean by
“evangelization?” (Here
now they will decide how to re-interpret or massage the meaning
of these biblical terms, to better fit with their agenda and
their current corrupt doctrine.) While the term is multivalent (Websters: Having many values, meanings, or appeals. So that we can and have translated
this to suit ourselves)
in terms of meaning and interpretation, The Church is clear in what it principally means: (What was just said was that the clergy, and catholic hierarchy
have routinely re-defined this term however they wanted – so
as to suit their own purposes. But the Laity in the Catholic
Church, are not so, for they interpret “Evangelism” in singular
clear terms – Terms that are not only ours, but in terms that
are evangelicals – hence they go to where they see what they
understand the bible to teach.)
Quote: |
During
the Synod, the bishops very frequently referred to this
truth: Jesus Himself, the Good News of God, was the
very first and the greatest evangelizer; He was so through
and through: to perfection and to the point of the sacrifice
of His earthly life. To evangelize: what meaning did
this imperative have for Christ? It is certainly not
easy to express in a complete synthesis the meaning,
the content and the modes of evangelization as
Jesus conceived it and put it into practice. In any
case the attempt to make such a synthesis will
never end. (They just said: We have no idea and are unable to concisely
in a sentence or two define this term.) Let it suffice for us to recall a few essential aspects.
As an evangelizer, (So instead
we will select a few actions that will not enrage the
powers that be) Christ first of all proclaims a kingdom, the kingdom of God;
(Here what they purport
Christ to have proclaimed is completely veiled and undefined.) and this is so important that, by comparison, everything
else becomes “the rest,” (This
is such a slap in the face of Christ and God.
So what ever Christ said thereafter was only
the dregs and leftovers – because of all Christ said
we can only equate the term The Kingdom of God – to
the activities of the Roman Catholic Church) which
is given in addition. Only
the kingdom therefore is absolute and it makes
everything else (Christ and
the apostles taught) relative. The Lord will
delight in describing in many ways the happiness of
belonging to this kingdom (a paradoxical happiness which
is made up of things that the world rejects), the demands
of the kingdom and its Magna Charta, the heralds of
the kingdom, its mysteries, its children, the vigilance
and fidelity demanded of whoever awaits its definitive
coming. (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 7 & 8) |
“The Lord will delight in describing in
many ways the happiness of belonging to this kingdom.” The happiness
of belonging to the kingdom of God is—according to St. Thomas
Aquinas—the teleological purpose of all human existence, a final
and perfect happiness that can consist in nothing else than
the beatific vision of the Divine Essence, that is the attainment
of that perfect blessedness which consists in the vision of
God. John Donne expressed this reality poetically:
Quote: |
Batter
my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock,
breathe, shine and seek to mend; That I may rise and
stand, o’erthrow me and bend Your force to break, blow,
burn and make me new…Take me to you, imprison me, for
I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, nor
even chaste, except you ravish me.[8] |
Or as St. Augustine so masterfully put
it, “Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee; for Thou hast
formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they
find rest in Thee.”[9] The primary task of evangelization then,
is the direct proclamation of the kingdom and reign of God,
in continuity of Christ’s own mission of proclaiming the salvific
message of the arrival of the kingdom and reign of God, in and
through the person of Jesus Christ his son: God incarnate, in
order to achieve perfect communion with God which alone can
create human happiness.
Unfortunately, this is all too often not
the operative understanding of the evangelical mission of the
Church and the echoes of Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa’s dictum,
“When we need a labor union we go to our parish priest; when
we need the word of God we go to the Protestant pastor,” resound
loudly and unfortunately true. He goes on to say—and his comments
merit extensive citation—that:
Quote: |
In
his letter to the Romans, St. Paul says, “I am not ashamed
of the Gospel; it is the power of God for salvation
for everyone who has faith.” (Rom. 1:16) Obviously even
in that time too there was the temptation to be ashamed
of the Gospel. For the Jews it was a scandal and for
the Greeks, stupidity. (1 Cor. 1:22-25) Paul writes
to the Galatians, “I am astonished that you are so quickly
deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ
and turning to a different gospel...”…I think we must
repeat this cry of the Apostle again in our times. I
have great esteem and respect for “liberation theology.”
However, like all good things there is always a danger
that it can fall short of the fullness of the gospel.
The danger, I believe, is not so much that it ends in
Marxist ideology, but the much greater danger of once
again trusting in works. This occurs when social and
political liberation is confused with liberation from
sin and evil, and material salvation with spiritual,
making both of them depend solely on the efforts of
man. When this happens, I believe one slips imperceptibly
into what Paul calls “another gospel,” a gospel, which
is no longer the “power of God.” Jesus is reduced to
an example of liberation rather that the “cause of salvation”
for all those who believe in him. This is not the only
way, however, that we can preach “another gospel”…[but
also through]…enneagrams, New Ager (sic) and other such
things. These are all “weak and poor elements of this
world” as Paul called them compared to the power of
the Gospel. …Today there is a new invasion of Christianity
from retreats and spiritual exercises and courses, all
inspired by this man-made gospel. These concentrate
on the “self”: self-knowledge, self-expression, self-acceptance,
self-justification, self-realization, in other words,
self-fulfillment instead of the self-denial and self-forgetfulness
that lies at the heart of Christianity. In this man-centered
gospel, salvation comes from within man himself and
Jesus becomes reduced to just one more ingredient in
the religious cocktail. This “other gospel” originates
in those countries, which are rich and sated, from people
who believe it is possible to go “beyond faith” and
“beyond Christ.” As if anything beyond faith could exist.
“Be he accursed (anathema)!” says Paul. This is a warning
full of love. It means, “Have nothing to do with these
people. Keep yourselves separate from them. It is an
apostasy from Christ.”[10] |
While there are some small groups that
are dedicated to a revived and authentic evangelism—the new
evangelism that Pope John Paul II had so tirelessly promoted—
Cantalamessa’s description of the spiritual, material, psychological
and economic reductionism of the authentic Gospel is unfortunately
a fair description of what has become the operative evangelistic
mission of the Catholic Church in practice. The practice of
her members, in contradiction to the traditional and historical
notion of evangelism from the time of Christ, to St. Paul, to
the contemporary documents that urge an evangelism that is not
self-help, pop-psychology, material, social or economic reductionism
or Christianized social service. Rather, it is a proclamation,
the apostolic kerygma, the Good News of the loving, self-gift
of God who provides for a reconciliation with him and with others
through his own sacrifice past, present and eternal; immanent
and yet transcendent, and perennially in imitation of Christ.
Take for example a recent gathering of
one of the largest gathering of women religious in the U.S.,
the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). In August
2003, they gathered in Detroit to conduct Conference business
and to elect a new leader. Their comments at the end of the
convocation, reported in the National Catholic Reporter (NCR)
included this:
Quote: |
We
women religious are living out of and growing more deeply
into an ecofeminism that is a communion of companionship,
responsibility and accountability to the whole web of
life…every act sourced in the power of genuine relatedness
subverts the power of hierarchy and patriarchy.[11]
|
While the LCWR does good work and strives
to unite women religious in common causes, the NCR coverage
is indicative of the what both men’s and women’s religious orders
are primarily concerned with and is axiomatic of this reductive,
“other Gospel.” It apparently is not—despite what one would
expect from women (and men) religious given the missionary mandate
of the Church and her members, especially her religious members—an
evangelically focused mission. In the entire report there was
nary a mention of God or Christ or the Holy Spirit or evangelism.
One would think that at a major conference or women (or men)
religious there would be some reportable mention of the source
of their evangelical vocation. Yet there was not. As the Jesuit
Patrick Brannan has noted:
Quote: |
If
so called inter-personal relationship on the human level
is the avatar of the religious experience, religious
vocation is not only unsupernatural: it is unnatural
and silly.[12] |
This is, of course, not to say that psychology,
social service, personal development, environmental awareness
and human relations are not important, they are eminently so.
However, when these become the operative and substantial Gospel
rather than tools that promote and assist it, this “new gospel”
becomes—to borrow a term from Dietrich Bonhoeffer—”cheap grace”
and a neo-pelagianism where human effort trumps divine grace
and the Church becomes merely an institution that people can
go to if they want to “establish a trade union.” Perhaps there
is something to Fr. Cantalamessa’s comment about people pursuing
the Protestant pastor for God’s word rather than to the Catholic
priest.
Evangelical Protestantism is growing at
a faster pace than the Catholic Church when one includes such
variables as the number of Catholics who do not practice their
faith, those who enter for other than religious motives (to
marry a Catholic, regularize an irregular unions or for cultural
reasons, for example) and those who are leaving the Catholic
Church for Protestant denominations. While The Evangelical Protestant
evangelistic project is far from perfect—especially in its most
fundamentalist strains—there is much that the Catholic Church
can model and learn from it in order to return to its core evangelistic
mission—a mission that is not lost on Evangelical denominations
whose growth could only be described as mercurial.
An Operative Theology of Exit: Why
Catholics Leave
Lack of active participation
Out of 60 million
Catholics in 1997 in the U.S., only 25% minimally practiced
their faith.[13] In 1999, the National Catholic Reporter
conducted a study that showed a general decline in Mass attendance,
while at the same time a trend toward more personal autonomy
regarding all morals.[14] Without question, the person that
does not know his or her (Non-biblically based) faith is unable to defend it
or to intelligibly critique it against (Biblically
based) challenges posed by fundamentalists, and a
person who does not actively participate in his or her faith,
at a minimum, with regular church attendance, cannot know his
or her faith.
Lack of scriptural and theological
sophistication
Although the Second Vatican Council did
much to restore a more scientific biblical theology, exegesis,
hermeneutics and interpretation in order to serve speculative
and pastoral theology, that restoration—in spite of encouraging
lectionary homiletics rather than non-scriptural, topical sermons—has
not trickled down to the average laymen or women in the pew.
As Peter Kreeft points out:
Quote: |
No
Christian group is growing faster than the fundamentalists.
And many of their converts are coming from the Catholic
Church-mainly, badly educated Catholics. To halt this “soul drain,”(This
relates to their doctrines on pergatory)
to answer the fundamentalist challenge and, most of
all, to understand our faith better, we need to look
at…major points of conflict [and the first is] the Bible.[15] |
In order to understand “major points
of conflict” between fundamentalists and Catholics, the Catholic
needs to know his or her Bible and the manner (Reinterpreted)
in which Catholic dogma and doctrines are drawn from and complement
the scriptures. I suggest—given my own experience in parish
ministry—that most Catholics in the pew would be hard-pressed
to intelligently distinguish between Gospels, Epistles, and/or
Psalms, other than being able to identify which follows which
in the Mass. That is, assuming that they regularly attend
Eucharistic liturgies, which given the aforementioned statistics
regarding Catholic Church attendance, is a huge assumption.
This is largely because the Second Vatican Council’s teachings
on the Bible, specifically in Verbum Dei, have not been pastorally
institutionalized. (No Pope has decreed
over the last 45 years the meaning of the “word of God” as to
how the Catholic Church should now interpret and use it as being
Catholics.)
Lack of appropriate and effective
Catholic catechesis
Related to the lack of Catholics practicing
their faith and their lack of scriptural and theological sophistication,
is the vacuous state of catechesis (Reading
their Catholic Catechisms in place of
the bible) in the Catholic Church today. In most parishes,
catechesis is limited to those preparing for juvenile or adult
initiatory sacraments of baptism, first communion and confirmation.
That means that outside of whatever catechesis may be disseminated
via the weekend homily (Sunday sermon)—which generally is more practical
than catechetical—Church members
who are not children or participants in the Rite of Christian
Initiation (RCIA) receive no significant catechesis. (They
are no longer receiving the traditional re-education of biblical
terms) As a result, most Catholics have a theological sophistication
that is stunted at the elementary or junior high school level.
(So that when they read the bible, they read it as small children
and it makes no sense to them in regards to what is done in
the mass or the seven sacraments etc.
And they begin to question what they see – and, well
we can’t have that because they are then voting with their feet
as to who is teaching the truth in the word of God.)
For
example, as a religious education teacher at a San Antonio parish
church, four fifths of the adult class participants in the class
did not know what the word, “liturgy” meant.
Anemic parishes and preaching
Evangelical Protestant churches tend to
be vibrant, affirming places where people can find good preaching,
ministries that feed the soul and warm fellowship and a sense
of mission that keeps them coming back. This unfortunately is
not happening in far too many Catholic parish churches. Fr.
Joseph Wilson of St. Luke Catholic Church in Queens, New York
opines that:
Quote: |
I’m
sure people drift away for all kinds of reasons, but
I think we ought to be especially concerned for people
who are turned off by the anemic parish life one finds
in so many places in our country. Here in New York City
I know of a good number of couples that travel over
parish and diocesan boundaries to a parish where they
find good worship and teaching. They know something
is missing and go out of their way to supply the need.
How many more there must be whose faith was simply never
nourished in their parishes, and how many there are
who end up in ‘Bible churches’ because they find fellowship,
scriptural preaching and teaching, and a sense of spirituality
they had been lacking.
As far as preaching goes, I hear a lot about the
abysmal state of Catholic homilies. Part of the problem
is that in this age a priest or deacon who teaches something
clearly and forthrightly will catch flak for it. Early
on in his ministry a homilist should be able to make
a few mistakes, find his own gifts as a preacher, learn
how to phrase an argument or an example and how to talk
about sin. Today, however, in the age where everyone
is an expert and all truth is subjective, many people
do not want to hear uncomfortable teachings expounded.
It becomes very easy to fall back on a feel-good approach
to the homily, light on content, long on uplifting anecdotes
and the power of positive thinking.[16] |
Unlike Evangelical Protestant denominations,
mainline Protestant churches in the United States have been
facing severe membership declines for the last four decades
While at the same time that many
Evangelical denominations are experiencing a meteoric growth
building mega-Churches, many with upwards of 15,000 members,
many of whom are former Catholics. Pastor Joel Olsteen’s Lakewood
Church with over 35,000 members in Houston (the church is housed
in the former, Houston Rockets arena) has a large percentage
of members—especially Hispanics—who are former Catholics. Southern
Baptist pastor Rick Warren started his Church in his living
room with one family in 1980. Today, that church, Saddleback
Church in southern California, enjoys a membership of upwards
of 12 million members. Warren, author of The Purpose Driven
Life, has been on the New York Times bestseller list for almost
two years. He has sold millions of copies in twenty languages.
As part of the spiritual purposes of life, Warren includes evangelism,
an area in which many of the Church’s members are involved;
many of them former Catholics who were evangelized themselves.
Saddleback’s eighteen-point Statement of Faith includes this:
Quote: |
We
believe in world evangelism and accept the commission
of Jesus Christ to make disciples of all nations, to
baptize them, and teach them to observe His commandments.
We join with all those believing in Him to accomplish
this urgent task, and accept this as a personal commission
as well as a command to the entire Church (Matt.
28:18-20; Mark 16:20 emphasis added). |
The Catholic Church continues to grow
despite the inroads made by Evangelicals, not because of its
evangelical zeal but because of births into the religion (This Again is a huge huge confirmation on the word of the Lord the
He has been speaking concerning Commandment 00001 – For had bible beleving churches over the last few hundred years
preached and sowed the seed of the Gospel with zeal in the say
and daily laid their hand to their wife at night – entire nations
today would have been disciples of Christ instead of what we
are looking at now.) and the large number of Catholic immigrant and refugees
entering the U.S. every year. Hispanics have surpassed African-Americans
as the largest ethnic minority group in the U.S. and the majority
of Hispanics are Catholic, often though, only nominally or culturally.
That is changing. Upwards of 100,000 Catholics leave the Church
in favor of Evangelical denominations each year.
These hundreds of thousands of Evangelical converts have
learned or are learning how to evangelize and they are recruiting
their friends, family and co-workers to Protestant Evangelicalism.
For the first time there is one historically Catholic country,
Guatemala—which only fifty years
ago was 90 % Catholic—that is now approaching a 50% membership
in Evangelical Protestant churches. This phenomenon
is occurring, not only in Guatemala, but throughout Latin America
and Africa as well. The majority of their converts are Catholic.
The Catholic Church has done practically
nothing to stem this trend, which if it continues, within several
generations will grow to cataclysmic proportions for the Church
given present conversion statistics. Something must be done
before the Church becomes a putative relic of times past rather
than the vibrant transforming body of Christ that she was founded
for and meant to be. In Western Europe
only three to five percent of Catholics regularly attend Mass.
In the U.S., Latin America and Africa, the Catholic Church is
still vibrant, but hemorrhaging members to Evangelical churches
on a daily basis. The Church must do something. This paper suggests
a three-pronged approach.
Firstly, the Church needs to counter the
Evangelical evangelistic project with her own, which is after
all, the primary purpose and reason for her existence. The evangelical
mission of the Church must be prioritized institutionally with
at least the same sense of urgency as the Charter for the Protection
of Children and Young People, which was conceived and institutionalized
within a period of only two years. Dioceses as well as individual
parish churches must establish evangelistic programs and the
evangelistic effort must be made a top priority from the Vatican
down to the national bishop’s conferences. A new, special consistory
should be called to strategize and establish a new office in
the curia to assist with Catholic evangelistic efforts or to
reform the existing Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
Existing, lay evangelistic movements and organizations should
be supported morally and financially and where the Catholic
Church expertise is deficient due to decades of evangelistic
neglect, it should look to successful Evangelical programs and
projects.
Secondly and related to the aforementioned,
an international movement to bring home lapsed Catholics and
reconcile them with the Church needs to be established. Lapsed
or non-practicing Catholics practically constitute a large denomination
due to their sheer numbers. A national plan for each country
should be established by each national conference of bishops
with the support of the Vatican, and each diocese should be
required to implement such a program. Such programs are already
in effect in several dioceses and parishes and may be used as
models for replication. The organization, Catholics Coming Home,
for example, describe their mission as:
Quote: |
A
program for returning Catholics. It is an evangelization
process that helps to welcome inactive Catholics wanting
to take another look at the Church. Are you searching?
Unsure where you fit in with the Catholic Church and
your faith? Have you been away for sometime and do not
know how to come back to the Church? The Catholics Coming
Home program can help you in your search. [17] |
Their purpose is to provide the teaching
of the Catholic Church on areas of interest, to provide a safe
environment to address questions in an honest, compassionate
manner that respects the dignity of the person and to provide
a welcoming atmosphere for those who wish to return to the Catholic
Church.[18]
Thirdly, Catholics need to establish in
each diocese and parish—with the support of the national bishop’s
conferences—an office or department for adult education and
catechesis. Catholics who discontinue studying about their faith
at the seventh grade carry this adolescent understanding of
their faith into adulthood and elder life. Most Evangelical
Protestant Churches provide weekend and mid-week, adult religious
and biblical education. Few Catholic churches have such programs
and until they do, they will be vulnerable to the sophisticated
evangelization programs and tactics for which Evangelicals are
so very well trained.
Watching a television program recently,
a Jewish character opining on the divorce of a Hasidic couple
in New Jersey remarked, “There is an old Jewish saying: ‘When
a Jewish couple divorces, even the altar cries.’” While this
project may not be received enthusiastically by some progressive
Catholics who view religion as a sort of spiritual smorgasbord
where one can choose from this or that religion, or with one’s
own, I submit that anytime a Catholic converts to a fundamentalist
Evangelical denomination, “Even the altar cries,” and so should
we.
Notes
1 Raniero Cantalamessa, “The Glory and
the Power of the Gospel,” The Newsletter of the International
Catholic Charismatic Renewal Service (ICCRS), (September-December
1995) 5.
2 Ralph Martin, “Sects Education,” Our
Sunday Visitor, 1991 accessed 28 May 2005; available from http://world.std.com/~pastoral/sectsedu.htm
3 Martin.
4 Martin
5 According to the 1999 Yearbook of American
and Canadian Churches (Abingdon Press) cited in María Ruiz Scaperlanda’s
article, “Back to Where You Once Belonged,” in U.S. Catholic
in January 2001, accessed 2 June 2005 available at http://www.uscatholic.org/2001/01/cov0101.htm,
in 1999 there were 17 million non-practicing Catholics in the
U.S. According to the online polling organization, Adherents.com,
http://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html there were 14.1. million
Methodists, in third place and 9.5 million Lutherans in fourth.
6 Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity
Vol. I, (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1984) 25.
7 Evangelii Nuntiandi, 14-15
8 Donnes, John. “Batter My Heart.” The
Complete Poems and Selected Prose of John Donne, ed. M.H. Abrams,
New York: Norton, 1979, 56.
9 St. Augustine, Confessions, New York:
Penguin, 1961, 21.
10 Cantalamessa. 5
11 Jeff Guntzel, “Sisters Spotlight Eco-Justice,”
National Catholic Reporter, 12 September 2003, 3.
12 Patrick T. Brannan, “Priestly and Religious
Vocations,” Homiletics and Pastoral Review, December 1981, 50.
C. John McCloskey, “Recovering Stray Catholics”, McCloskey’s
Perspectives, 1997 accessed 6 June 2005 available from http://www.catholic-pages.com/dir/link.asp?ref=16513
13 C. John McCloskey, “Recovering Stray
Catholics”, McCloskey’s Perspectives, 1997 accessed 6 June 2005
available from http://www.catholic-pages.com/dir/link.asp?ref=16513
14 Vincent V. D’Antonio, “The American
Catholic Laity in 1999,” National Catholic Reporter, 29 October
1999, accessed 2 June 2005 available from http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/102999/102999i.htm
15 Peter Kreeft, “Whose Bible is it Anyway,”
National Catholic Register accessed 9 may 2005 available from
http://www.christlife.org/library/articles/C_understand2.html
16 Kathryn Jean Lopez, “Why Young Catholics
Leave the Church and How to Bring Them Back,” Crisis, 2 December
2002, 8.
17 Catholics Coming Home advertisement
accessed 6 June 2005 available from ttp://www.respectlifeoffice.ca/cath.html
18 Catholics Coming Home.
Rev. Gerald Mendoza, O.P. is a Dominican
friar of the Province of St. Martin de Porres. He received his
Master of Divinity degree from Aquinas Institute of Theology
in St. Louis, MO. and his Master of arts in theology from the
Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. He is currently
assigned to the University of Houston and Texas Southern University
as a campus minister. This is first article for HPR.
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