Mon 25 Feb 2008
Authenticity
Posted by Devman under Faith and Reason
Survey says: Americans are leaving or changing their religion more than ever, and more Americans are leaving the Catholic faith than any other.
My response: This is a good thing!
If you’re an atheist, be an atheist. If you’re a Christian, be a Christian. If you’re a Muslim, be a Muslim. Be hot or cold, not lukewarm.
In short, it is better to be an authentic believer in nothing than to say you believe in something untruthfully. Someone once said that if people really knew what the Catholic Church taught, most of the people in the pews would be scrambling to get out, while most of the people outside the church walls would be scrambling to get in! It is hyperbolic, but there is truth to it.
I have known many people, decent Americans, who say they are Christians but who never go to church, who use profanity every third sentence, who blaspheme daily, or who are ignorant of what their faith actual teaches. God bless them and may He convert them to the love of Christ, but it would do them more good to be honest with themselves and others and own up to the fact that they live their lives as practical atheists.
We in the Catholic Church are working hard with Christ in the New Evangelization called for by John Paul II. A big part of that is a re-evangelization of people who are culturally Catholic or who are Catholics weak in their faith. They can grow in their faith with God’s help and our encouragement and instruction!
Other communities and churches, too, are working hard to evangelize and reach out to people with the good news of Jesus Christ, and they are fighting the battle against the tides of the culture and concupiscence, which lead people toward selfishness and hedonism and not to love and the gift of self to others.
Europe has already shown us what a post-modern culture looks like: I have read that 5% of French people go to church on Sundays, yet the majority still claim they are Christians. They, too, need to be evangelized anew.
So this study is only indicating the reality that many people are casting off the facade of faith that they only weakly believed in. I hope it will help people discover, probably for the first time, the splendor of the love of God in Christ Jesus, when they realize that the atheism they follow ultimately offers no hope against the despair of meaninglessness.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Great reflection! You highlight the need for us to provide “encouragement and instruction” to our lapsed or weak-faithed Catholic friends/family. I have a few coworkers who I do not know well enough to challenge spiritually, but I will continue to pray that I rise to the occasion when an opportunity comes for me to share my own faith with them.
February 26th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Devin,
My wife and I have shared a view that the biggest problem with the Catholic Church is “Catholics.” [A la Braveheart, "the trouble with Scotland, is it's full of Scots!"] By “Catholic”, we mean the typical person we have known in our Protestant upbringings and adult lives who identifies himself as Catholic. Our impression is sheltered from those kids who went to Catohlic schools when we went to public. Largely having been schooled in New England, the “Catholic” has been an entirely different person in my mind than if I grew up in, say, Texas or Kansas. My impression has been that the Catholic is Christian only culturally so.
So, certainly with a little tree trimming, with slimming down of the disingenuous, it would be much easier for an outsider like me to grow up with a more fair view of what a “Catholic” is. Knowing people like you and your wife is therefore crucial in our having a fair view!
But then again, as is often said, Christ tells us that the wheat grows up with the tares, lest the former be improperly uprooted. So it’s important for a Catholic to hail the objective qualities and internal graces of your Church. In-or-out is more important than good-or-bad, the latter view relativizing church affiliation for the Christian.
Peace in Christ,
Thos.
February 26th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Hi Frances and Tom,
Thank you both for your replies. You bring up good points, and this post of mine probably needed to be more nuanced, as I have had Catholic friends with weak faith whose faith has come alive by God’s grace.
February 27th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Your post makes me think of a recent column in Newsweek. I wish I could find a link to it online, but a cursory search of their site didn’t turn it up. If you didn’t see it, the gist of it (as I’m managing to remember at least, I’ve already recycled the magazine it seems) was that the author is raising her daughter in the Catholic Church, but she’s lukewarm at best about the faith. She’s uncomfortable talking to her daughter about the faith, and she really doesn’t have a good grasp of it at all herself. She would much rather her daughter’s CCD class was less spiritually oriented, citing favorably a recent exercise where the children were to talk about the traits of a good mother. Now if that was a lead-up to talking about our most perfect Mother that would be one thing… but my impression from the article was that it was just fluff - trying to talk about what makes a good person completely outside of the context of God and his Church.
Part of me would rather she would just go and be a Unitarian because I’m sure she’d be a lot happier there and then she wouldn’t be lobbying to water down the children’s religious instruction, but I also wonder if because she is there, there is a greater chance of re-engaging someone like that with the truths of the Church. And if the instructors in her daughter’s CCD class stay strong and true to the faith (which is really the key here) perhaps her daughter might even become the instrument for evangelizing her mother.
An interesting post, I’ve been thinking about it for the past couple days. I do wish people would be more accurate with their own labels - I’m not sure why that level of introspection is so difficult for so many.