Why the Culture Wars Don’t Evangelize Souls

Constance T. Hull

I recently started reading Bishop Robert Barron and John L. Allen Jr.’s book To Light a Fire on the Earth: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Secular Age. I’ve read quite a few of Bishop Barron’s more theological books and I own both the Catholicism series and the most recent Pivotal Players series. He approaches evangelization in a deeply human and intuitive way. Many of his experiences are similar to my own. He emphasizes the beauty, depth, and richness of our Catholic Faith.

As I’ve written here before, beauty has had a foundational and significant impact on not only my reversion, but my spiritual journey as a whole. All of these experiences of beauty are grounded in Christ, most especially through an encounter both body and soul with Him in the Holy Eucharist. Barron leads with the beauty of the Faith fully realized in an encounter with Jesus Christ. It is a message that is so desperately needed in a culture that largely does not know how to relate to the beautiful, the good, and the true.

For Catholics one of the biggest mistakes we make in evangelization is getting too caught up in the culture wars. I made this mistake for a few years after my reversion. I thought: “If only we could explain Theology of the Body to people, then people would stop contracepting, ignoring Church teaching, the young would come back to the Church, etc.” Theology of the Body did have a profound impact on both me and my husband, but it didn’t cause my reversion. It took me a while to understand what took place within me that led me to give my life over to Christ and fully accept what the Church teaches.

The answer quite simply is that I had a real and tangible encounter with Jesus Christ. I saw Him through the beauty of the Mass. I wanted to give my life to Him because He had pierced me utterly at the deepest levels of my soul. I fell in love with Him and His Church. Only then was I ready to say: “Here, Lord. I give everything to you, even my sexuality.” Far too often, we lead with the Church’s doctrine and it doesn’t work. People are not converted by great moral theology, they are converted because they fall in love with Jesus Christ. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI put it best in Deus Caritas Est:

Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and decisive direction.

Those of us who are actively following Christ as disciples did not become Christian or remain Christian because we fell in love with ethics and the moral law. Instead, we fell in love with Christ and came to understanding all the demands placed upon us through Love. When we love others, we seek to empty ourselves. In our relationship with Christ, we are not only turning to Him in self-emptying love, we are conforming ourselves to Him, we are becoming more like Him. It is this self-emptying and desire to be in conformation to Him that leads us to throw our birth control pills away, give up lying and cheating, seek chastity, stop stealing, turn away from materialism and the lies of the culture in order to repent.

The most common approach Catholics take today in evangelizing the culture is engaging in the culture wars. This is well and good as far as it goes. Certain voices are adept at engaging intellectually with the culture on issues related to human sexuality especially since these are the most prevalent issues of our day. We need those voices. Our culture is obsessed with sex and in turn we have allowed ourselves to become obsessed with it, so much so that people only see the Catholic Church as a list of rules limiting how people can engage and live their sexuality. We cannot effectively evangelize from this vantage point and it is an error we all seem to make across the board.

Bishop Barron’s approach to evangelization is the same approach used by the Apostles. It is to declare the Good News of Christ risen from the dead and to lead people to an encounter with Our Living God. Our Faith is about Jesus Christ. He is the center of our Faith. He is the reason for our Faith. He is the One we love even to the point of death. We must draw people into this dynamic relationship between God and humanity. To do so, we must introduce people to the beauty of our faith and we must show them Christ. We ourselves must be actively living holy lives and seeking day-in-and-day out to lay down our lives in love to God and our neighbor.

Our example is one of the most effective evangelical tools at our disposal. Joy is infectious and people will begin to be drawn in because they will see Jesus Christ alive within us.

In order to evangelize effectively we also need to make sure we understand the centrality of our faith: Christ. Have we become obsessed with sex, the Liturgy wars, politics, etc. to the point that we are a stumbling block to others? Are our own preferences or even destructive ideologies getting in the way of our ability to lead others to Christ? Social media is a cacophonous din of competing ideologies. We cannot possibly help people encounter Christ if all we are doing is screaming at one another about pieces of the puzzle that is Catholicism, a good part of which is merely our own preferences.

Are we leading with Christ? Not in a beating people over the head with morality sort of way, but rather, with the gift of salvation that He wants to offer to all peoples. We have far too little faith if we assume that people must understand the Church teaching on sexuality first. No. People need to know Christ first. Only then can they give up those disordered desires in love to the One Who made them. It is our job to plant seeds. The Holy Spirit tends the garden. We cannot possibly help people who are struggling with certain sins if we come at them in attack mode all of the time.

Yes, the moral teaching of the Church matters. We must proclaim it boldly in all of its truth, beauty, and depth. It is a gift and it helps lead us to the happiness we are made for: beatitudo. We must always remember, however, that the moral teaching of the Church comes from Christ Himself through an encounter with Him. It is a relationship. One that is dynamic, exciting, and life-giving. We ourselves must be living the great adventure of holiness and drawing people on the path, not because we primarily want people to submit on sexuality, but because we want people to live the joy they are made for. The joy that can only come from loving God and accepting the gratuitous love He pours out on us each day. A love that leads us to abandon our lives to Him, even our sexuality. Let’s put Him at the center of our evangelical mission so that the world can hear t

he Good News.

https://catholicexchange.com/culture-wars-dont-evangelize-souls

Constance T. Hull is a wife, mother, homeschooler, and a graduate with an M.A. in Theology with an emphasis in philosophy.  Her desire is to live the wonder so passionately preached in the works of G.K. Chesterton and to share that with her daughter and others. While you can frequently find her head inside of a great work of theology or philosophy, she considers her husband and daughter to be her greatest teachers. She is passionate about beauty, working towards holiness, the Sacraments, and all things Catholic. She is also published at The Federalist, Public Discourse, and blogs frequently at Swimming the Depths (www.swimmingthedepths.com).

God made you like that, (homosexual) and I do not care, said Pope Francis

God made you like that, and I do not care

In today's news story about a sex abuse victim's understanding of the personal counsel of Pope Francis (Chilean abuse victim: Pope said I should be happy as a homosexual), we have Juan Carlos Cruz quoting the pontiff as saying: "God made you like that and he loves you like that and I do not care." I do not intend to argue that this is what Pope Francis actually said, nor to clarify what Pope Francis must have meant if he said it.  We cannot know either of these things.

But I do want to use this now-famous sound bite as a teaching moment.  For by themselves, these assertions easily admit of a profoundly evil understanding, one all too common in our own time.  Without context and interpretation, assertions like this can stifle the awareness of the need for conversion (such as we see repeatedly in the letters of St.  Paul, for example).  And so they can do great harm.

In his book Why I don't Call Myself Gay, David Mattson reports that he could not find any sort of progress or peace until he recognized that his fundamental identity was that of a beloved son of God, not a bundle of desires.  We already know that Pope Francis places great emphasis on God's love as truly constitutive of who we are as persons.  We can see as well that there is a way to interpret the quotation in the previous paragraph that is absolutely true and good.  Consider the following understanding:

God loves you.  He has loved you into existence.  He knows that you are same-sex attracted, and He permits you to feel that attraction only because this particular suffering can help you to turn ever more to Him — to grow into an ever-greater bond of love with Him.  We do not know all of the causes of same-sex attraction.  But we do know that God permits us all to suffer and struggle in different ways because every form of suffering, with our own precious cooperation, can help us to turn to Him, to depend on Him, to confide our lives to Him.  This is a response of our own sacrificial love to God's sacrificial love.

In relying on Him, we will enable Him to increase His Presence in our lives, in our very selves.  And so God loves us even in and through whatever is broken in us, whatever needs healing, whatever needs to be perfected through grace.  In the name of God's Church, I too love you in this way, for I have God's sacramental life within me, and all who experience this life can love as God loves.  I love you in your experience of your own crosses, just as I love God in my experience of my own crosses.  For it is by accepting our crosses, and embracing again and again the will of God, that we grow into union with Him, and so into eternal life.

Now that is a long restatement of a central Catholic idea which is proper to the counseling of all sinners (that is to say every one of us).  But in the form reported by Juan Carlos Cruz, it is subject to a series of potentially deadly misunderstandings — misunderstandings which any good Christian will take great pains to avoid.  Here they are:

God made you like that

 This is true of our genuine imperfections only if we are speaking of God's permissive will.  The Jews in the Old Testament frequently speak in this way, as in "God hardened Pharaoh's heart."  But what this means is that, after the Fall, God permits all kinds of disorders to affect us, including fairly serious physical, intellectual, psychological, and affective disorders within our human nature, challenges to our integrity as persons that we experience more or less continually.

But this does not mean that the "way we are" is a license to sin.  The person who has anger management issues does not thereby have a license to fly into a rage, though his affective disorder may mitigate his guilt.  The person who suffers from what we call kleptomania does not have a license to steal, though his psychological disorder may also mitigate his guilt.  In the same way, the person who experiences same-sex attraction does not have a license to engage in sexual activity with a person of the same sex, although once again the disorder may mitigate the degree of guilt involved in his or her falls from grace.

When we say "God made you like that", we must not mean that God does not regard the disorders we suffer as disorders.  This expression must not be taken to mean that God creates, intends, or blesses our rage, our theft, our sexual sins.

God loves you like that

This statement is true only if we are acknowledging what should be a challenging Christian understanding of love.  God always loves us in His infinite desire that we might return that love, and so draw into union with Him.  But sin frustrates that love, because it directly opposes Who God is.  God's will is that we become perfect as He is perfect, fulfilling our lives in the only way we can be fulfilled, in Him.

Sadly, insofar as we refuse God's will, we choose evil.  Evil is the absence of good, and choosing it is to choose nothing over something.  It is to reject love.  It is to prefer our own radically proud isolation; it is to prefer the absence of God.  "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," cried Our Lord, "How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" (Mt 23:37; Lk 13:34)

When we say "God loves you like that", we must not imply that God actually loves "that", if "that" includes not just our suffering and our struggles but also our sins.

And I do not care

Clearly we ought not to love someone less because that person's particular faults are less congenial to our own personalities than some other faults would be.  It is a weakness of our nature to find it easier to love people who sin in ways we do not find "so bad", but it isn't part of the logic of Christ to succumb to this weakness.  In this sense, when it comes to loving another person, a good Catholic does not care in the least what particular habitual sins characterize that person's life.

We are all "poor sinners", yet we are all loved by God so much that He sacrificed His only begotten Son to free us from bondage to sin.  We are supposed to be astonished by this love, and to be startled into an unguarded movement of love in return.  But there is no room for complacency.  Too easily does the expression "I don't care that you are tempted by this particular sin" become an expression which is entirely different: "I don't care if you sin".  This is grotesque.  This is the word of Lucifer, the so-called Angel of Light, pretending that he knows what it means to love.

Therefore, when we say, "and I do not care", we must not mean "I do not care if you sin".  For when we truly love anyone, their sins must fill us with unspeakable sorrow.  This is the sorrow of the agony in the Garden, the sorrow of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It is the sorrow we are supposed to feel more than any other sorrow — the sorrow which cuts us more deeply than anything else in this weak and weary world.

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/religion-and-philosophy/other-topics/god-made-you-like-that-and-i-do-not-care.html

Screwtape: The road to heaven and hell

The Screwtape Letters is a book authored by C.S. Lewis. Released in 1942, Lewis incorporates his spiritual and theological insights into a correspondence between the Devil, who goes by the name of Screwtape, and his demon nephew named Wormwood. The “Enemy” Screwtape refers to time and time again is, of course, God. Although the book is technically fiction, it is, nevertheless, non-fiction in that it illustrates real spiritual principles based on a solid understanding of human nature. In fact, although C.S. Lewis was an Anglican, he drew inspiration from many Catholic sources and it is demonstrated by the uncanny tactics Screwtape advises Wormwood on. 

These tactics by the Devil are adapted to the many ironies of the spiritual life. To be sure, many principles of the supernatural order, much like the natural order, defy conventional wisdom. One such principle or truth is that the road to hell is paved by sins that are subtle and socially acceptable. In tempting humans, the Devil reminds his nephew of the following truth: “Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,...Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.” 

The road to hell is not paved primarily with dramatic crimes, genocide and earth-shattering events. It does include that, of course. Rather, it is more often the case that it begins with an uncontested thought or a desire that is seemingly harmless but ends up carrying us in a direction that is contrary to God’s will or what is morally wrong. As St. James wrote in his letter, “Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death.” 

To add to this, St. John the Apostle reminds us that there is such a thing as deadly sin; deadly because sin ruptures our relationship with Christ and hence kills the life of grace in the soul. Such a phenomenon is every bit as real as physical illness and death but unlike physical illness and death, spiritual and moral decline is ever so subtle. The reason for this is due to the fact that the effects of grace and the gifts God has given the sinner in the past can outlast the life of grace from within. But before you know it, life is not quite the same after a series of sinful choices has been committed. Although we are not quite conscious of it, the bad choices we make, the sins we commit, change us. Soon enough, we think differently, speak differently and act differently. In fact, there is a spiritual law that says that the more you sin, the less you know you are sinner. 

In the book The Screwtape Letters, the Devil, Screwtape, is mindful of another spiritual principle, one that defies conventional wisdom. He advises his nephew, Wormwood, that when a believer feels abandoned by God, this is by no means a victory for hell. It could be that the Lord has withdrawn all interior spiritual consolation and exterior supports in order to test that believer and hence make him greater than he once was. He writes: 

“Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” 

When you strip it down to its very essence, you find that the love of God is an act of the will. If everyone is running headlong towards the cliff and hence into the abyss, it will take an act of the will- motivated by love of God –to go in the opposite direction. Indeed, running against the current of friends, family members and society is a lonely business. It often involves the loss of friendships and strained relationships. And in so doing, one can feel even abandoned by God himself. But when one rises above this- even in his confusion and sense of abandonment –by doing the right thing and remaining loyal to the Lord, he (or she) has proven himself as a sincere lover of Christ…a true friend. 

Such a friend can accept all things from God, prosperity and adversity. In the book, The Dialogue, God the Father goes on to inform St. Catherine of Sienna that the faithful disciple of His Son "holds all thing in reverence, the left hand as well as the right, trouble as well as consolation, hunger and thirst as well as eating and drinking, cold and heat and nakedness as well as clothing, life as well as death, honor as well as disgrace, distress as well as comfort. In all things he remains solid, firm and stable, because his foundation is the living Rock." Such a disciple becomes quite useful to the Lord because his fidelity is not dependent on agreeable circumstances. 

What we learn from The Screwtape Letters and from the writings of the Saints is that the strong currents that lead to hell is quite subtle. And those who carried by it are not, at least initially, alarmed by it. Like those passengers on the Titanic who were unphased when the ship hit the iceberg, fatal blows to the life of grace can feel like a little jolt to those who are not paying attention. Yet, their ship is in danger of sinking, nevertheless. On the other hand, the road to heaven is can come is great subtly too. We can make the most spiritual progress when all seems lost. Indeed, when we feel abandoned by God and yet love him anyways- and although we may feel lost and even backsliding -this is a sign that our feet is firmly planted on the road to heaven.  

http://catholic-skyview-tremblay.blogspot.com/2013/12/screwtape-road-to-heaven-and-hell.html

PROTECTING GOD FROM SKY VIEW BLOG

THE HARDSHIPS OF PROTECTING GOD

Posted: 22 Dec 2011 09:40 PM PST

Preface:

If only Christians would anticipate hardship as a given, if only they were aware that God’s calling, by design, is not furnished with red carpets and smooth roads, I believe that the Gospel of Life would be accepted by more people. In recent years I have come across both priests and lay people who were inspired by a kind of boldness of faith at the outset of their ministry. Yet, when they encountered rejection and hardships they drew back and had second thoughts about their mission. Indeed, they even asked themselves: “Is this supposed to happen? Is it supposed to be this hard?”

Yes, the best of Catholics have been rattled to the core when it became clear to them that they might have to sit by themselves at lunch or be rebuffed by fellow Catholics or that they might lose some privileges. Sadly, the lives of the Saints and their multiple hardships escape them. Even the inspiration that came with hearing the words of Christ is a distant memory: “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:10-12)

If anyone’s vocation deserved to be free from the hardships it was St. Joseph’s. After all, he was given the exalted task of protecting God and the Blessed Virgin. Yet from the word “go!” he encountered one hardship after another that could have been easily been prevented by God. In fact, he was given four hardships that gave him great anguish of spirit. If we but seriously meditate on his life we will never approach the work God has for us with the expectation that it should be without hardships. Rejection by our own people, scorn from others, the disappointment of failures, waiting for long periods of time, detours and even the appearance that the Lord himself has abandoned us will not throw us for such a loop. These obstacles will cease to be an excuse not to act and do the right thing! Following the example of St. Joseph, we too can press on and fulfill the mission the Lord has called us to.


Estrangement from His Spouse:

As I mentioned, there are at least four hardships St. Joseph had to endure. As for the first one, here is a short excerpt from a previous Sky View post entitled, St. Joseph and the Sword of Conflict:

“Have you ever wondered why, after appearing to the Blessed Virgin to announce the coming of Christ, the angel Gabriel did not immediately appear to St. Joseph in order to inform him that the Messiah would be conceived of the Holy Spirit; that God would make it possible for Mary to be both virgin and mother?

Instead, there was an interim period of misunderstanding and anguish on the part of St. Joseph. God could have prevented this misunderstanding but he chose not to. And the reason he chose not to was due to some moral and spiritual benefit St. Joseph would gain. Certainly, a lot of tears could have been spared; but often tears can be every bit as redemptive as the blood of martyrs which, as the early Christian adage goes, is the “seed of the Church.”

In his temporary emotional estrangement, St. Joseph, when having the wrong impression about his betrothed, had to rely on God. Indeed, during this short period of time not even the Mother of God could help him because, after all, she was the object of his suspicion and doubt. Alone he stood, confounded over God’s plan and anguished in spirit.”

However, the angel appeared to St. Joseph in a dream in order to vindicate the virginal integrity of Mary’s pregnancy. At last, his anguish was relieved. With a sigh of relief St. Joseph concluded that in good conscience he could remain the Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And to be sure, his joy of doing so was revived. But in a matter of a few short months two things were to happen simultaneously that would make his calling as a protector and bread-winner of the Holy Family that much more difficult. Indeed, his hardships were only beginning. After he weathered the first hardship, the second one was soon to follow.


The Edict: Leaving Home

The census edict was issued by Caesar Augustus enjoining the head of each household to register in their hometown just when Mary was due to give birth. From a human point of view, the timing could not be worse. And as for St. Joseph, he probably hadn’t been to his hometown in Bethlehem, where he was to comply with this edict, in quite some time. After all, the traveling distance between Nazareth and Bethlehem was at least a two to three day walk, maybe even more. And because of the edict, traveling from one town to another would be like traveling on a busy holiday. Scores of people would be frequenting the roads and the inns. By the time the Holy Family would get to Bethlehem, St. Joseph’s innate instinct as a husband and father to provide for his Family would be greatly challenged.

St. Joseph's second hardship then was leaving the security of his work and the comforts of his home when his Spouse needed the best kind of care for the birth of her first born child. Such was God's will. But as Jesus would say some thirty years later, "No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God." This man of God would be forced to totally rely on Divine Providence. Once the Holy Family arrived in Bethlehem, another hardship awaited him.


Failure to Provide:

Certainly a man as good as St. Joseph would deserve the hospitality of Bethlehem, his hometown, and any accommodations it could afford to provide. Certainly a nice warm room or a spacious house would be made available to him. And certainly if he was called to make these sacrifices for the Son of God he would get a little cooperation from Divine Providence. God's ways are not our ways. The third hardship that was imposed on St. Joseph was certainly not to his liking. After all, there is no worse feeling for a man than to not be able to provide room and board for his family. A quick glance at this story and images of that cold Christmas night may give the average person warm feelings. But when one really sits down and meditates on the real historic details of that story, one cannot help but consider the angst and worry St. Joseph must have felt after having encountered one closed door after another. It is even conceivable that he was tempted to despair. What a failure he must have felt!

Regarding God’s chosen servants, Fr. Paul Marie de la Croix said that “sometimes they encounter a failure which he permits even though he has first assured victory; sometimes, for no apparent reason, they experience a reversal of God’s relationship to them. They seem to be permanently abandoned or even rejected, though divine favor and friendship had been theirs before. They have not been guilty of the slightest infidelity, but they must become fit for the final mystery of faith.” Indeed, in the eyes of the world being forced to seek shelter in a cave right outside of Bethlehem is not a blessing but a curse. However, it was the will of Jesus Christ himself, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, to be born in humble circumstances. It was fitting that the King of Kings be born in a grotto so that even the despised and yet humble shepherds would approach him and do him homage. Hence, little did St. Joseph know that what appeared to be a failure on his part was a great blessing for the world. The simplicity of the crèche and the manager was not only an invitation for the lowly but it would inspire virtues of detachment and a love of poverty among many Christians.


Off to a Foreign Land:

St. Joseph’s resignation to the designs of providence would pay off. Soon after Christmas night, the Magi brought with them gifts for the newborn Messiah. Among these gifts was gold. This would come in handy for yet another hardship St. Joseph would have to endure. Due to the three kings (the Magi) seeking the new born Messiah in Jerusalem, the jealousy of King Herod was provoked. He launched a military campaign to kill every last child under the age of two in the town of Bethlehem. However, God was one step ahead of this ruler. This is when St. Joseph’s fourth hardship kicked in. “The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.’"

“Wait a minute! Where are we going to stay? Just how long do we have to be in Egypt How am I going to provide for Mary and Jesus?” These were just a few of the unanswered questions St. Joseph could have asked. There was no indication as to how long they would have to stay. A short meditation of this episode will bring to our attention how difficult that must have been! Taking refuge in a foreign land amidst a foreign people for safety is one thing; but to do so without knowing for how long is a real test of faith. After six months in Egypt there was no dream telling him to go home; after several months- no dream; and after a year- again, no dream! Ancient tradition has it that the Holy Family lived in Egypt anywhere from two and half years to seven years. The Fathers of the Church differ on this point.

Nevertheless, in order for St. Joseph to fulfill his mission he had to have strength of character, the endurance of faith and a spirit of detachment. For a short period of time, he thought he would have to say good-bye to Mary, his Spouse. And Scripture indicates he was willing to do just that. He also was called to say good-bye to his work and home because of Caesar’s edict. And finally he was forced to say good-bye to his fatherland, namely, his country.

Yet, for all of his sacrifices the Lord blessed him with many years in Nazareth with Mary and Jesus as his companions. What a paradise that Nazareth home must have been! The family conversations, the love and the peace of that household had to be a microcosm of heaven. And just as important, he was blessed with Mary and Jesus at his side on his deathbed. Indeed, the Lord compensated for every hardship St. Joseph was willing to endure for his sake.

For us Christians who are called to protect and advance the causes of God how can we not expect hardships? But if we endure them faithfully and press forward as St. Joseph did, how can we not expect his blessings?