I enjoy listening to a local Protestant preacher on the
radio while on my way to Sunday Mass each week.
His sermons are better than my priest’s, and he sounds very
Catholic. In fact, he should be
Catholic, but then again, so should everyone!
I prayed a Rosary for his conversion this morning at adoration. Maybe someday, who knows?
Today, he was lamenting the realization his attempt to
expand his congregation to another nearby city had failed. His Christian community has a number of
churches in area towns that are very successful in attracting congregants. It occurred to me that he was not accustomed
to having an evangelization effort fail, while we Catholics are not accustomed
to success. Why are some of these
Protestant pastors so much better at attracting new members than we are?
For one thing, these small non-denominational communities do
not need to answer to a higher authority.
They can go wherever they want to set up shop. There is always room for one more
church. Non-denominational Protestants,
by their nature, can church hop. They
can go wherever they like the pastor and the message. For some, selecting a place to worship is
much like picking a restaurant.
For us Catholics, our territory is much more limiting. Chances are the neighboring community already
has a Catholic Church, and if it does not, we can’t just move in and start
one. After all, we need a priest, and
they tend to be in short supply. So, we
are pretty much limited to attracting new members from our own community where
people already know us or we have a reputation. Jesus said, "A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and in his own house." (Matt 13:57)
So, we Catholics
may start from a disadvantage in our evangelization efforts. The negative publicity the Catholic Church
often gets in the media, and the fact that we cannot choose our pastors based
on likability, makes our efforts more difficult than those of our Protestant brothers and sisters. Nonetheless, we have the truth, the saints,
the Fathers, the Sacraments, the Pope, the Bishops, and two thousand years of
history on our side. A tough sell in
these secular times? Yes, but all we
really need to do is live our faith to the fullest and let the Holy Spirit do
the rest.
