I have a Systems Analysis degree and have been involved with computers in a professional capacity for almost 20 years now. In that time I have used all the major operating systems – Windows (all flavors since 3.0), Mac and Linux. I have my own opinions about each OS, but what I especially find interesting is the followers of each one, especially followers of Windows and Macs. What does this have to do with Christianity? Bear with me.

Windows supporters generally are corporate types who simply like Windows because everyone uses it and it is the most compatible with the software they want to use. But you rarely find a true fan of Windows who isn’t in the pay of Redmond. They just like being part of the System and are content with the status quo.

Mac fans, however, are almost extreme in their devotion to the Apple OS. They love both its underlying technical strengths as well as its aesthetic beauty. They will tell any who will listen (and many who won’t) how great Macs are and why everyone should buy one. They admit the price is steep for a Mac, but well worth it.

I was thinking recently that this is quite similar to the religious battles of the first centuries of Christianity. Windows represents the old pagan religion of the Empire: most people followed it, but few were devoted to it and most recognized its weaknesses unless they were in the pay of the Emperor.

Macs, on the other hand, represents Christianity: it had a small, but devoted, band of followers who recognized the high cost of following Christ, but sought to convert others to their faith nonetheless. They saw it as a beautiful faith with a rock-solid intellectual core underlying it.

(And I guess Linux fans are the Gnostics: an esoteric faith with few followers that is difficult to follow and no one really understands anyway. )

Oh, and I’ll give you one guess as to my own favorite OS.

Mark Shea has a wonderful article over at Catholic Exchange about the need for Catholics to evangelize like St. Paul. He begins by noting the Catholic attitude about evangelization:

Ask your average Catholic about evangelization and you get a mumble and a shrug. Evangelization? That’s what Evangelicals do, isn’t it?

It’s not that Catholics think it’s bad (though some are, in fact, actively hostile to it since it smacks to them of “imposing our values” on others). Rather, it is that most Catholics simply have no idea what to do. So we console ourselves with that saying of St. Francis that he never actually said: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary.”

That apocryphal Franciscanism would be great advice—if we really were preaching the gospel at all times by our lives. But for many of us, evangelizing is near the bottom of our “to do” list. We shift uncomfortably in our seats as we drive past the little fundamentalist church sign that says, “If you were charged with being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” We tell ourselves that our faith is “deeper” then mere talky Evangelical chatter.

My own experience is similar. After converting to Catholicism from Evangelicalism, I never once considered that I should stop evangelizing; now I just have the advantage of evangelizing about the fullness of the faith. Some Catholics, however, seem to think that my conversion won’t be complete until I drop that whole “evangelization” thing. Evangelization isn’t something that Catholics “do”. But in many cases, I think that this aversion to evangelization is due to fear: fear that we will be rejected, fear that we will fail, and also fear that we won’t know what to say. The first two fears are only overcome by a deeper interior life, but the third fear is one that should not even exist. As Mark notes:

Many Catholics wonder if there is some sort of technique they need to master in order to bear witness to their faith. They fear that if they have not taken some sort of course in evangelization, or studied theology for a decade, or otherwise jumped through various hoops, they cannot evangelize. For such folk, the Holy Father has liberating news. In his announcement of the Year of Paul on June 28, 2007, Benedict XVI said that Paul’s success was not due to some “refined strategy” of salesmanship or philosophical wrangling. Instead, the Holy Father essentially said that Paul’s achievement was due to his extraordinary personal involvement springing from his total dedication to Christ, despite all obstacles.

In short, Paul really believed this stuff. He acted exactly like a man who really had met the Risen Christ on the Road to Damascus and was now perfectly convinced that Jesus had conquered death, forgiven his sins, and laid upon him the charge to tell the world. Because he really believed, he was willing to “pay personally for [his] faith in Christ, in every situation.”

Today try to find a way to evangelize – invite a friend to Mass, tell someone something about your faith, recount a positive story about your large family – there are a thousands of ways to evangelize. Pick one and do it!

The Guardian has an interesting, if somewhat depressing, story about the rise of Evangelicalism in Brazil. If Brazil were an atheistic or Muslim country, the story would actually be uplifting, but since Brazil is a predominantly Catholic country, Evangelicalism’s rise has meant in many ways Catholicism’s fall.

In the past 20 years or so, Brazil, cited as the country with the biggest catholic population in the world, has witnessed a migration from Rome to the booming evangelical churches. According to IBGE (the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), the Catholic population in the country was 91.8% of the total in 1970. But the most recent survey, in 2000, revealed that the number of Catholics had fallen to 73. 8% with the number of evangelicals up from 5.2% to 15.6%.

Based on the article, it appears that most of the shift has come in the lower classes and has a definite Pentecostal flair. This seems to be the trend throughout Central and South America, as more and more people leave the Catholic Faith of their youth for an Evangelical community. Interestingly, it appears that very few are choosing to reject religion altogether, as is happening in America and Europe.

What is the cause of this shift? There are no simple answers, but I would be willing to bet that poor catechesis plays a strong part in the changes. People naturally desire an experience of Christ, who is the Way, the Truth and the Life. If someone believes that he can draw closer to Jesus in an Evangelical church than in a Catholic church, then he naturally will choose the former over the latter. But if this is the case, it means that he has not been properly formed; he does not understand that you cannot get any closer to Jesus than is possible in the Eucharist, which is not available in Protestant communities.

And this trend is not bound to South and Central American borders. Many immigrants to America from these countries are leaving the Catholic Church for Evangelical – especially Pentecostal – communities. Again, they believe they can draw closer to Jesus in those communities than they can in the Catholic Church. Let us re-double our efforts to catechize Catholics of the immense gift we have in the Eucharist, in which Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, comes to us directly, even physically, and we encounter him in a way not possible anywhere else.

This is a great story. A 92-year-old woman is held at gunpoint and ends up evangelizing her attacker and bringing him to tears of repentance:

Next time you think you can’t evangelize, remember Pauline Jacobi.

Thank you to all who prayed for Saturday’s door-to-door evangelization effort. I can’t emphasize enough how appreciative I am.

The effort went well. We had a smaller-than-usual crowd (due to numerous factors) so we were only able to visit about 200 homes. But it was worthwhile. We had a number of stories of positive encounters, and a few instances of real interest. Personally, I met a young father whose family moved to the area about a year ago; they are Catholic but have not been to Mass since they moved here. I understand the intimidation factor involved in going to a new parish, so I made every effort to know that we would love to have him at our parish and that we had a lot of young families there. Hopefully he will overcome his hesitation and start coming – say a prayer for him.

We will never know how our actions on Saturday impacted the people we met, but I feel that we gave the Holy Spirit instruments that He could use as He wills.

Make an effort today to share the Gospel with someone, either in words or in your actions; you could make an eternal difference!

St. Paul, pray for us!

Tomorrow I will be organizing a door-to-door campaign for my parish. It will be our 6th such event, and to date we have visited over 2,000 homes in the local neighborhood. (I posted about our last door-do-door effort here). Our message is simple: if you don’t currently belong to a church, or if you are a fallen-away Catholic, we would love for you to come to our parish. We specifically invite people to our RCIA classes, and let them know that coming to a class is no-obligation.

Please pray that our efforts are fruitful and that we might share the love of Christ with those we meet.

A few things I found around the Internet regarding Catholic evangelization:

• Sherry Weddell of the Siena Institute does a great job of crunching the RCIA numbers of the past decade. Unfortunately, the number of converts have been dropping over the past few years. I think a bigger problem is that so many people who go through RCIA (over half!) leave the Church after a year. This says to me that evangelization/catechesis is woefully inadequate in many parishes.

• In France, young Catholics are taking the Gospel to the streets. It seems to be yet another fruit of the World Youth Days.

• Marcel over at Aggie Catholics has a wonderful post about “Giving Your Testimony“. Many Catholics are unfamiliar or uncomfortable with this practice, which is quite popular in Evangelical circles. But if you read Acts, you will see that personal testimony was what brought thousands into the new Church.

• Aimee Cooper is teaching an Evangelization class in Denver this fall, which is available online for those in other areas. It looks to be quite good and worth the time and effort to attend.

Try to take some time today to evangelize someone – a co-worker, a friend, a family member. It doesn’t have to be an all-out presentation of the Gospel, just a sincere sharing of your faith in some small (or large) way to those around you.

The diocese of Sacramento is following in the footsteps of a number of other dioceses around the country by running an evangelistic campaign to encourage fallen-away Catholics to “come home” to the Church. Using the incredible “Catholics Come Home” materials (if you have not seen their videos, you MUST do so – they are simply the best evangelistic videos ever produced), the diocese is hoping to encourage at least 100,000 (!) Catholics to return to the practice of their faith.

Here are some more details:

The diocese has an estimated population of 950,000 Catholics, but only about 136,500 attend weekly Mass.

Msgr. Murphy said he was bothered to see so many Catholics filling fundamentalist churches.

“I’m glad they’re going to church … but we want them back,” he said.

According to the monsignor, parishes throughout the diocese are preparing to address questions and concerns by returning Catholics.

Mike Halloran, executive director of the Catholic Foundation, told the Sacramento Bee that nearly 60 percent of the money for the $380,000 campaign had been raised. The money will go to the commercials only.

The ads will run in the Sacramento market 1,200 times over the six weeks from December 18 to January 31. Officials hope they will encourage 100,000 Catholics to return to church…

Catholics Come Home, Inc. was recently awarded the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management’s 2009 Best Practices Award. Receiving the award, Peterson said his group was “blessed by God’s grace” and thankful to be recognized for its work.

He reported that the organization has now helped bring over 100,000 Catholics and converts back to the Church.
The “Catholics Come Home” ads first ran in the Diocese of Phoenix in 2008. During the campaign an estimated 90,000 Catholics returned to churchgoing. Ryan Hanning of the Diocese of Phoenix told the Sacramento Bee the diocese witnessed a 12 percent increase, the largest single year increase in the diocese’s history.

Hanning said that surveys of returning Catholics showed that most had left the Church because they had gotten too busy with daily life. A much smaller percentage cited church teachings on marriage and homosexuality as reasons for their absence.

Though Catholics make up an estimated 23 percent of the U.S. population, only 33 percent of them attend Mass on a weekly basis.

Based on the success of these campaigns in the past, I don’t see why every diocese in the country doesn’t use them.

St. Paul, pray for us!

In my work of evangelization, I have found that my greatest enemy is not hatred of the Catholic Faith, but apathy. I constantly encounter Catholics who may love their Faith, but they do not believe that it is in any way superior – or more true – than any other religion. They believe that just about any major religion will get you to heaven, as long as you practice it sincerely. Thus, what is the point of evangelization? If there is no bad news – i.e. everyone is not “okay” – there is no reason to preach the Good News. Why bother telling people about the Good News of Jesus Christ if they already have the “good news” of Muhammad or Buddha?

Newsweek recently ran an article which shows that my anecdotal evidence is all too accurate in getting the pulse of American Christians. Provocatively titled, “We Are All Hindus Now“, it states:

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: “Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names.” A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur’an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life”—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.

This is a serious problem. The underlying assumption of the entire Gospel is that we are lost without God. Thus, we need the medicine He gives us through His Son, Jesus Christ. If we do not believe that we – and our neighbors – are sick, we will never go to the Divine Physician, nor encourage others to do so.

St. Paul, pray for us!

What a great story: a group of six Franciscan Friars decide to walk from Raleigh to Washington DC. On the way, they are able to minister to many lost souls:

For six weeks, the brothers walked from Roanoke with only their brown robes, sandals and a belief in the kindness of strangers to feed and shelter them.

The sight of six men in flowing habits, trudging single file on the side of the road, prompted many to pull over and talk, even confess. People on their way to work described their loneliness. College students wanted help figuring out what to do with their lives. Children, mistaking them for the Shaolin monks in movies, ran up to ask the friars if they knew how to beat up bullies.

“Dressed like we are in our habits, it’s like a walking sign that says, ‘Tell us your life’s problems,’ ” explained Cliff Hennings, the youngest of the friars at 23.

In every instance, the friars made time for conversation. They shot the breeze with a gang of drunk bikers, dispensed relationship advice to the brokenhearted commuters and bore witness to one and all, yea, even to the Chik-fil-A employee dressed as a cow.

Of course, since the article was written for the Washington Post, most of the underlying reasons for their trek are ignored, but even in this secular paper the spiritual underpinnings of their journey comes across. It is amazing how St. Francis continues to inspire and motivate people to come to Christ, almost 800 years after his entrance into eternal life.

St. Francis, pray for us!

A deacon who organized a door-to-door campaign for his parish this past Saturday writes,

Our door to door this past Saturday was fantastic! I had the experience of my life! Of course it was a little different reaction for me, as I was wearing clerics I suppose. We had some children and youth with us, which turned out OK. (The youths were too shy to talk) We had some 4 teams, of 2s and 3s (with the kids). We handed out fliers about our Church with mass times, holy hour time, and RCIA contact information, we had the pillar of fire, OSV pamphlet, and a conversion story CD in each packet. The goal was not numbers but trying to have a long conversation which includes spreading the message of Jesus. We were somewhat successful, my partner and I had some long conversations and we were thrilled with the response, some of the other teams did not do as well. But a great experience and I preached about it today as well. I am hoping to go out a couple more times this summer.

May the Lord bless these people for stepping out in faith to search for lost souls!

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field – Luke 10:2

St. Paul, pray for us!

I have been a bit busy the past few weeks and I missed this when it happened, but Fr. Benedict Groeschel, one of the seven men who initiated the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal and a popular author and EWTN mainstay, recently celebrated his 50th anniversary of priestly service.

From the CFR’s recent newsletter:

It was the summer of 1959, Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the third year of his second term as President of the United States. The jovial Pope, John XXIII, reigned as Supreme Pontiff. The Second Vatican Council was announced as a mere year-long gathering of bishops expecting to discuss some minor changes to the liturgy. Seminaries and Religious Houses of Studies were bursting with vocations. The Catholic Church appeared triumphant to many.

It was in this era of prospective change that a young, slender, red-bearded Capuchin cleric approached the high altar of Sacred Heart Church, Yonkers, New York. He knelt before the Most Rev. James H. Griffiths, Titular Bishop of Gaza, Auxiliary Bishop of New York, to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest in the Order of Friars Minor, Capuchins. His name to his confreres was Brother Benedict Joseph; to his intimates, “BJ”; to his family, Peter; but to those who know the full story, Robert. (You will need to ask a family member to get the full story.) The day was June 20, 1959, when Fr. Benedict Groeschel began his ministry of selfless service to those most in need as a priest of Jesus Christ.

Anyone who has been touched by Fr. Benedict’s preaching, his books, or the work of the CFR’s (and we are legion) should be sure to send a prayer of thanksgiving to God for his faithful servant Fr. Benedict.

St. Francis and St. Benedict, pray for us!

Last Friday, the auxiliary bishop of Denver, James Conley, addressed the National Catholic Bible Conference. Bishop Conley is the one bishop to whom I have a personal connection: in the early 90s he was the chaplain for a prolife group I worked for. I remember him as a great priest (and strongly prolife), and I’m sure he is a wonderful bishop.

Bishop Conley had some great words for us to contemplate:

“Too few of us think of God’s Word as exciting or newsworthy enough to be sought out every day. And therefore too many of us miss the most newsworthy event in life – the experience of God, the creator of the universe, speaking to us through His Word.”

“This means that we can’t approach Scripture as if it were something that needs to be interpreted by us, but rather quite the opposite — we need to let Scripture interpret us, our lives, and our world. To read the world in light of Scripture, as opposed to Scripture in light of the world, is the hallmark of a Christian reading of the Word of God.”

“The best way to evangelize is to burn, like St. Francis did, for the love of God. To sustain that kind of zeal you need constant contact with the fire of God’s Word.”

We need to pray that Catholics will burn for the love of God, and that our zeal will lead us to evangelization. Reading the Scriptures is one of primary ways in which to inflame that burning love.

St. Francis, pray for us!

Due to the diversity of the participants at the Orientale Lumen conference, one of the first questions asked when you meet another participant is “What Church do you belong to?” I decided this year to ask a follow-up question: “In what tradition did you grow up?” Amazingly, I found only one person (a Roman Catholic) who has remained in the same tradition since birth. Here are some samples of those I met:

• A baptist who became Orthodox last year
• A Roman Catholic who became a Romanian Catholic priest-monk
• Someone who say she grew up “everything” who is now Orthodox
• A Roman Catholic who is now a Ruthenian Catholic seminarian

And of course, Metropolitan Jonah himself was baptized and raised Episcopal before becoming Orthodox in college (and I myself am a convert from Methodism to Roman Catholicism).

This anecdotal evidence is in keeping with larger statistical trends: a recent Pew Study showed that about half of all adult Americans are no longer in the same religious tradition in which they grew up. So the questions arises: Why all the converts?

Obviously, there are many factors, not least of which is the weakening of bonds of family and tradition within our culture. A hundred years ago, it was quite common for someone to live within a 10 mile radius their whole life, and to have contact with few people outside their own religious tradition. This fostered deep bonds in which it was unthinkable to leave the faith of one’s birth.

There is much to lament in regard to the loss of these bonds within our culture, but it is also an opportunity. Many who have not grown up Catholic are more than ever willing to consider Catholicism. Yes, we live in a “consumer” culture in which we pick and choose everything, including our religion. This can lead to a trivialization of sacred things, but it does not have to. As Catholics, we need to work to engage those around us and show them, in our words and deeds, the love that Christ has for them and how they can live and experience that divine love in the Church.

Scripture says that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Romans 8:28). The weakened bonds of our culture do not just have to mean people leaving the Catholic Church – through our efforts, fostered by grace, it can also mean a great influx of new members into the Church.

St. Paul, pray for us!

Speaking of converts to pray for, please keep Peter Athanasious from Egypt in your prayers:

An Egyptian court refused on Saturday, 6/13/2009 a request by Muslim-born Maher El-Gowhary, who converted to Christianity 34 years ago, to order the Civil Registry to alter his religious designation on his ID. The Civil registry had refused to amend his State identification documents to show his Christian name Peter Athanasious and his Christian affiliation, leading him to file a lawsuit against the Ministry of Interior.

According to the Court ruling, the religious conversion of a Muslim is against Islamic law and poses a threat to the “Public Order” in Egypt.

We in America cannot even conceive of the danger Peter Athanasious has put himself in to publicly declare his allegiance to Christ. We often complain when the Mass schedule on Sunday doesn’t fit our busy schedules, yet this man risks his life daily in order to follow our Lord.

St. Paul, pray for us!