Leading an OCIA group can be a challenge. Our class began with only six attendees. Sounds simple enough, but all have varying Christian backgrounds. Ages range from 20 to 80. We have a lapsed Catholic and her Lutheran husband, a baptized Catholic who was never catechized in the faith, a grandmother who resents the strict Apostolic Christian household in which she was raised, a fundamentalist Baptist with some anti-Catholic ideas, and a young woman with no Christian upbringing at all. Designing a lesson plan that meets the needs of everyone can be somewhat difficult when those needs vary from person to person. A few are well versed in the Bible and others completely unfamiliar. It’s a bit like teaching arithmetic and calculus in the same class.
Complicating matters is the fact that we are now meeting two in our group remotely, not by Zoom or Facetime, but rather by cell phone on speaker audio. They are wintering some 1500 miles away for the next two months. Travel, foot surgery, and even a heart attack has limited attendance of others at times. Only the young woman with no Christian background has been faithfully present every class. She has been a blessing with her new-found enthusiasm for the Catholic faith.
Despite everything, our group has been doing great, or so I thought. Today, our fundamentalist woman sent me a text message right before class time saying she was dropping out. Her attendance has been spotty and I sensed she had reservations about the whole process. She said after reading the book on Catholicism, she could not bring herself to join. I assume she was referring to Trent Horn’s book, Why We’re Catholic, which we had given each participant on the first day.
I responded to her text, thanking her for her honesty. I also asked if she would mind listing a few of her objections to the Catholic faith to help me prepare my classes in the future. She gave me two main objections, those being praying to dead saints and confessing sins to a priest. Now we had covered both topics in our sessions, but she was not always present for those discussions. Both topics were also covered in Trent Horn’s book, which she either didn’t read or didn’t understand. Her response indicated she believed the priest determined the “wages or punishment” for sins by the amount of penance he assigned. She said, “Only God can forgive/punish not man.” Obviously, she has misconceptions about the sacrament.
Wanting to answer her objections in a friendly brief text, I sent her a link to an article by Father Mitch Pacwa titled The Bible supports praying to saints. Any hope of convincing her of Catholic belief would have to come from the Bible which she claims to read every day. I also asked her how she interprets John 20:23 where Jesus gives his apostles the authority to forgive and retain sins. She replied, “What john 20:23 says to me is that we are given the holy spirit from Jesus, and because we have the holy spirit, Jesus forgives us of our sins. We don't need a man of any cloth we only need Jesus.”
I am encouraged that we have a little discussion going now. I answered by saying, “But in speaking to his apostles, and this is after his resurrection, he says whose sins YOU forgive are forgiven, and whose sins YOU retain are retained. Jesus has given this ministry to his earthly representatives (or men of the cloth!). How would they know what those sins are if they were not told? And how would anyone know whether his sin was forgiven or retained unless his sin was absolved by a minister acting under the authority of Jesus?”
It has been a couple of days, and I have not received another response from her. I am hoping she will give it some thought. Some folks are so ingrained with their beliefs that any challenges to those beliefs are blindly rejected. No evidence is convincing enough to change minds when those minds are not open to change. If I were in her position, I might act the same way. She at least had the courage to approach a Catholic Church and begin an exploration. I will keep praying for her and allow the Holy Spirit to take the lead.
