March 13, 2005

This week my mail brought me a few responses to a recent television program I had on EWTN. I mentioned in my program that I thought people should follow the teachings of their own religion faithfully. Obviously if they are beginning to be drawn to the Catholic Church, they should listen to the Holy Spirit and face the facts of history about the origins of the church and its message. If they are not so drawn and they don’t have the grace of a call to the church, they should be what they are and be it well. I don’t think God is honored any more by bad Protestants than He is by bad Catholics.
The interesting fact is that a few people misunderstood what I was saying because they want me to take a very aggressive attitude toward telling people to become Catholics. I have a huge theological problem with that. It’s the teaching of the Catholic Church that God alone is the author of the grace of salvation; that we cannot save ourselves. We are required to do good works and to follow the teaching of the Gospel and to present the truth of Christ as affectively as we can, but we are not supposed to save ourselves because there is no way that we can do that. Christ alone is Our Savior. If someone has the gift of the Catholic faith or the gift of the Christian faith, they should be extremely grateful for this gift and receive it humbly and recognize that they could not give it to themselves. They must cherish the gift; preserve it by prayer and meditation and especially reading of the scriptures and the following of the teaching of the Church. Knowledge of the Catholic faith is easily arrived at now by the reading of the New Catechism. That’s what we can do and ought to do and if we do that then we will have worked hard for our own salvation and contributed to the salvation of others. You might wonder why Catholics don’t go around on Sunday morning banging on people’s doors or coming to spread the word. It’s because at the very foundation of Catholicism is an understanding of the fact that faith is a gift and a grace and when a person has it, all that we have to do is represent the church well and give a good example. Despite all the confusion and scandal of the last few years, it’s an amazing fact that last year over 200,000 people entered the Catholic Church as adult converts. That’s a very large number of people and in fact it’s larger than the membership of a number of Christian religious denominations. Why did they come in these difficult times? They came because the Holy Spirit inspired them and because other people gave them good example. We cannot tell the Holy Spirit what to do. We can pray and ask Him to help people, but we ourselves can give good example by loyal faith, kindness and a devout Christian life.

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