The radical witness of lived faith can transform opposition

Q. So often when I try to share the faith with others, I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall: either the person doesn’t care, or just refuses to listen. I try to avoid being obnoxious or overbearing, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Over the last few months, we have been considering this excellent question, one that is obviously of great relevance to our diocesan vision to build a culture of Lifelong Catholic Missionary Discipleship Through God’s Love. For, to be a missionary disciple means to both follow Jesus ourselves and to do whatever we are able to help others follow him, too, i.e., to enter into the work of evangelization. Yet, when we actually try to share the Gospel, we run into various difficulties, as indicated in our question.

In January, we focused on difficulties that have their origin in “us” (the person doing the evangelizing). Last month, we turned to two of the greatest difficulties that originate from the person we are trying to evangelize: indifferentism (not caring about or uninterested in a relationship with God) and disbelief (not believing that Catholicism is true).

This month, we’ll conclude our consideration of this question by looking at a third difficulty we face in evangelization: opposition (the person who does not want Catholicism to be true).

This is a neglected but important reality. We are very aware of the type of person who simply doesn’t care that much (indifferentism) and of the type of person who just doesn’t agree with Catholic doctrine (disbelief). But there is a third group that merits our attention: someone who is repulsed or even disgusted by the idea of Catholicism being true. Simply put, there are more and more Americans who vehemently reject various Catholic doctrines, not merely as a matter of intellectual disagreement, but as a matter of outright rejection. So, this response is akin to disbelief, but with greater intensity, and, therefore, it requires its own discussion.

In order to understand how to respond to this sort of opposition, we have to remember a few fundamental points, points that also apply with indifferentism and disbelief, but are especially worth noting now.

First, despite the fact that someone might be opposed to Catholicism in this way, the truth is, Catholic doctrine does in fact describe reality, and, therefore, their full and complete happiness entails the acceptance and embrace through that body of doctrine. As we seek to do whatever we can to help someone who is opposed to Catholicism to come to a point where they might accept and embrace it, we cannot forget that, because these teachings are true, they are the path to happiness, because authentic happiness is only found by recognizing and embracing the way things really are.

To put this in more of a personal perspective, these teachings are for everyone. The very reason we seek to share our faith with others is because our faith is salvific: the real and personal relationship with God that it entails and the embrace of the teachings and way of life that he revealed are the means to salvation both after death and now.

In other words, a response of opposition of the sort we are considering here to Catholic teaching is objectively the wrong response. Someone who finds Catholic doctrine repulsive therefore has a deep misunderstanding of what we believe and/or what it means.

For some of us, our inclination might be to turn to argument, in the truest sense of the word: to explain why and how Catholic teaching is not actually repulsive, but is, counterintuitively for the other person, actually beautiful, true and good.

But while that might work with some who disbelieve Catholicism, it often fails with the person who adamantly opposes Catholicism. They simply aren’t in a position in which they can yet be persuaded. Instead, we need to take a page from the response to indifferentism: the witness of a life radically transformed by Jesus Christ, whether it be the life of a saint or our own life.

When it comes to a person who rejects Catholicism in this way, before we show them that Catholicism is true, we need them to want Catholicism to be true. And perhaps the only way to get someone who doesn’t believe that something is true yet to want it to be so is by the power of radical witness.

This is why Pope Benedict XVI said that the greatest “argument” for Catholicism for the men and women of our time is beauty: the beauty of our art and, even more, the beauty of the lives of those who are consumed by God’s love and their own love of him.