Catholicism – Page 2 – Jill Domschot

How to Evangelize to Catholics

Don’t. That’s the simplest possible answer. This subject came up the other night at the adult education class held in the library of my parish. We were discussing the story of Clovis, a Frankish king, who famously promised God that he would convert to his wife’s Catholic faith if he was victorious in battle against the Alemanni army. God granted him this petition, and Clovis followed through by being baptized. In response, several thousand of his troops followed him in baptism.

One of the class’s skeptics asked how real the conversions were for these several thousand men. Did they understand Christianity? Were they given any kind of catechesis? These are worthy questions, as even Billy Graham stated that only a certain percentage of people who went to the “altar” to be saved at his revivals retained the faith they’d experienced that day. There is a shared social contagion at such events, and if you add in the loyal nature of military men to their leaders, the social contagion might very well be even stronger than the average group emotional response.

The day before, I had watched (through a YouTube prompt) a Ray Comfort video, in which he preaches the gospel to Catholics and, in fact, I believe the video is called How to Evangelize to Catholics. I brought this up and got a few snorts of derision from the room full of cradle Catholics. But I gave them the sad truth: the Catholics whom Ray Comfort had evangelized seemed to know nothing of their faith. They couldn’t even tell him the meaning of the word Gospel. To this ignorant Catholic couple, the Gospel was something read at Mass. While this is true–the reading of one of the four testaments to the gospel happens at every Mass–the word means “good news.” This good news, obviously, refers to Christ coming to the world and laying down his life for mankind, and subsequently defeating death by rising again.

“Many Catholics are ignorant of their faith, even with ‘good catechesis’,” I said, as that was my only point in bringing up the video.

Several hands shot up around the room. At least three of these cradle Catholics had experienced the same kind of ignorance before they’d made the effort to defeat it through education they’d chosen to pursue of their own free will. While I’ve long honored the notion of catechism, as its aim is to ensure that young people (or old people) understand what it is they are saying “yes” to at their confirmation, too often it is done simply because parents or grandparents are putting the pressure on. I would guess that the vast majority of Catholic young people don’t attend religious education classes because they want to; they are going because their families expect them to. This leads to a situation where whatever education gained is lost through disinterest and no further seeking out of knowledge…until faced with a charismatic Protestant force like Ray Comfort.

On the other hand, it must be remembered that Protestants and Catholics speak a different language, and I don’t mean Latin vs English. I mean that they understand the gospel in a different way. You don’t have to understand that the word “gospel” is the good news of Christ coming to earth to save mankind; you simply have to understand that Christ did this. And I’m still willing to bet that most Catholics do indeed understand this. It’s hard to tell what Catholics do or don’t understand due to the fact that the Catholic spirit is so very different from the Protestant spirit. Protestants will wrangle over doctrine and argue every last syllable in their Bibles; most Catholics won’t do this. They are taught to respect their church authorities, and even if they do at some point decide to engage in their own studies of the Bible, learning about the apologists, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic (e.g., the students in this adult education class), they will most likely still not argue with you. Therefore, when faced with a man such as Ray Comfort who has his own script down to a T, Catholics might appear ignorant and in need of true salvation. The way he talks to people reminds me of a lawyer in court who wants specific answers so that he can then continue with his script. In a courtroom, this is to subvert actual truth from emerging because it might interfere with the goal (conviction or acquittal). That might not be Mr. Comfort’s goal, but it is the inevitable result. Nobody watching the video will ever know what those Catholics actually know because they aren’t allowed to speak using their own language and understanding of Christianity. They are only allowed to answer Ray’s pointed questions.

The responses in the comments section revealed what Protestants believe about Catholics. I do shared ministry with Catholics, and it’s as if they don’t even open their Bibles… The comments like this are rife under Comfort’s videos when they are of his evangelizing Catholics. Of course, it might never occur to these people that Catholics are involved in ministries because they actually take their faith very seriously, but it’s a faith invested in ministry instead of arguments. And they might very well be trying to keep the peace with the Protestants they work alongside. They also might very well might be telling you in a nonconfrontational way to leave them alone. Truth be told, it’s actually galling to be literally living out your Christianity in the world and then to have other Christians try to evangelize you as if you weren’t.

That’s a real gripe, though, isn’t it–that Protestants believe they own the term “Christian”? It’s gotten to the point where Catholics won’t use the term at all, as they might come across as being Protestant instead of Catholic. The other week, we had a confirmation retreat in our parish hall. One of our volunteers, who has a learning disability but is always curious and earnest, reported to me that one of the young teenage students at the confirmation retreat had written on the question board: “What is the difference between a Catholic and a Christian?”

This volunteer asked me, “So what is the difference, she who knows everything?” (Yes, he does call me that. I’m good at fooling people.)

However, I did have an answer for him: “None. There is no difference. Catholics are the original Christians.” You might argue with that, and I encourage you to go right ahead. At the very least, I hope you’ll admit that Catholics called themselves Christians long, long before the Protestant Reformation came around.

I stick to my original answer above. It’s arrogance to believe that Catholics aren’t Christians and need to be evangelized. So, if you were looking for the simple answer to that question, you’ve come to the wrong place. As with any group of people who grow up in a traditional faith, there will be those who will reject their faith when they are at an age of accountability. It’s the reality of the seeds of the gospel scattered on different soils and landing places. Some fall on rocky ground. Some, surprisingly, lay fallow for years before the soil is ready for a little bud to emerge from the dirt. For the soil that is simply lying fallow, God will provide the means for its new growth. You might very well be the means for another person, whether they grew up Lutheran, Catholic, Quaker, or Southern Baptist, or even outside the church entirely. But I would encourage you not to assume without any knowledge that Catholics aren’t Christians and need you to bring them the Gospel. After all, they do indeed hear it weekly at Mass, and I don’t just mean the reading from one of the four testaments about Jesus. I mean they hear the entire gospel message spoken through the liturgy at every Mass.

Spanish, Dalí, & a Little Lorca

Imitations or reproductions of Dalí’s famous painting are rife in the Catholic world, with an imitation in the office where I work. It takes me back to high school, when I loved Dalí’s artwork. Also, I had just started taking Spanish in school and therefore believed I could read my dad’s battered paperback of Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetry. These are related subjects, I promise, and not simply because I’m discussing Spaniards who, obviously, spoke Spanish.

We had to study a language; it was mandatory in high school. It doesn’t make much sense at that point, however. Learning a second language should have been mandatory from kindergarten onwards. I have an elderly friend at my parish who attended a private American school where they spoke Polish in classes. She still understands and speaks Polish to this day because of her early exposure to it, despite living in an English-only culture. I will never understand the English-only cultural philosophy. It’s not just xenophobic; it’s an example of my least favorite personality trait in individuals, let alone entire cultures: proud ignorance. Generally, I call this the Cult of Stupid. You can spot members because they roll their eyes and complain if you use words with more than two syllables. They think it’s snooty or some such, without recognizing the irony that syllables has three.

Could I actually read the Lorca book? Sure. It had English translations on the right hand-pages. My dad is not a Spanish speaker, after all. I loved learning the pretty vocabulary in the book, as it set me apart from other first-year learners of Spanish. I’ve always had a big vocabulary, and even though I failed pretty badly at English classes in school, I do have the ability to dissect words to determine what they mean. This gives me an even further edge regarding an intellectual grasp of a second language. It’s too bad this process often confuses words for me rather than making them clear. I ran into a funny example this morning. The word equivocarse and its various forms are related to the verb in English to equivocate. By the way, this might not be a commonly used word in English, but it is a common word in Spanish — like so many Latin words that have more than two syllables. In English, this word takes on the meaning of obscuring the truth. To equivocate is either for the purpose of being circumspect or being deceptive. In Spanish, it has the connotation of simply being wrong. I came across a video with the title, Estos policias se metieron con la chica equivocada… It took me a pretty minute, being in an English frame of mind, to realize a correct translation would be “The police messed with the wrong girl…!” My mind wanted it to be deceptive instead of wrong, but it was clear from the context of the video that the girl was innocent, and the police were the deceptive ones. Context is the best guide to learning a language, and so much for my intellectual, dissecting approach. In fact, although this is a bit of a digression, the only way to understand someone speaking Spanish to me is not to be myself, and to listen without focusing on any one word, picking up the sense from the context. If I stop to pick apart words, I have already lost the rest of the conversation. And unlike a language test in school, I’m not going to earn points for translating a few words correctly.

Lorca and Dalí were close friends, albeit I didn’t know this when I was in high school. I only knew I liked reading through my dad’s books, which also included art books featuring Dalí. I’ve loved Spanish ever since I was first introduced to it; that’s all I want to say about that. This post was meant to be about Dalí. But there is a point of overlap with my previous discussion that is much greater than my dad’s bookcases, as it’s clear from reading about Dalí and studying his artwork that he also took the analytical approach to life. He studied the master artists and picked apart the elements in them in order to understand them, and then he spent some time imitating them. Because of this, he’s known as a master of craft. When he created surreal art, he was playing with ideas that intrigued him. For much of his young years, Freudian psychoanalysis was a large part of what intrigued him. He met Freud; Freud didn’t like the surrealists and couldn’t understand why they were fascinated with him. He liked Dalí, though. He liked his genuine fanaticism.

Dalí was also intrigued by the physics of time and space. This in turn intrigued me as a young person. Beauty is timeless, and I will never cease to appreciate landscapes and portraits that capture the personalities inherent to people and places. But playing with ideas perhaps appeals to me even more. Another artist I appreciate for this is M.C. Escher. They both clearly loved playing with what is possible in flat geometric spaces. These two artists have a number of similarities in thinking, to be honest. They both loved the ideas they were representing and loathed politics. Neither wished to be pinned down politically, during a time when being a surrealist artist meant something political. Dalí was actually voted out of the surrealists because he eschewed Marxism and, especially as he grew older, defended Catholicism, eventually returning to his nation’s historical faith (he even had his longtime civil marriage “convalidated” in the church.) Escher was apparently part of a Christian religious order, as well, but he was as quiet about that subject as he was about politics. Dalí enjoyed creating controversy; Escher did not. There are other artists I love because they have an absurdist, intellectual approach — William Hogarth is one that long predates surrealism.

What about Lorca, though? I don’t know; for me, he was simply the first Spanish poet I read. He and Dalí were artistic friends, but Lorca’s approach was different than Dalí’s. He was a gay socialist, fitting neatly into the world of the avant garde. Dalí never fit in, and nor did he want to. He lived to a ripe old age, changing his psychoanalytic approach over the years to bizarre perspectives of Jesus on the cross. Meanwhile, Lorca was assassinated under a fascist regime (though there is some controversy regarding why and by whom).

Like Dalí, ideas are really what drive me forward. Because of that, I will probably never arrive at a place where I’m an artist at storytelling or making music, or a natural with language and communication. But every time I see Dalí’s crosses in my environment, I’m reminded that there are famous artists who don’t approach the world with a traditional artistic temperament. So, perhaps, I still have a fighting chance. By the way, I have tried to subvert the intellectual approach in learning the accordion, but mostly because I don’t have time to give it an extensive study. I want to live in the magic of the instrument and play the songs I love. However, I’ve determined that taking a more intellectual approach will work better for me, having the emotional artistic state of a gnat. So, I’ve stepped back to think through music theory. In Spanish. The problem with my accordion playing is that it’s always been in Spanish. Switching to English would not be a great idea now that I’m used to Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Si, mi acordeon en tono de Fa, and hearing ahora, tocamos la escala de Sibemol en terceras. I know what that is and can play it. If someone switched to now we’ll play the scale of B flat in thirds, I’d probably panic. Intellectuals just do not switch gears with ease, I’m sorry to say. That’s why we’re often labelled fanatics (see Freud on Dalí above). We get obsessed and taken with an idea and must hammer it out to its conclusion.

Always Seeking Goodness

I’ve been attending the 8 a.m. Mass at another parish in town; the earliest Mass at my parish is 9. When you are an early waker, as I am, you tend to get impatient before 9 a.m. Mass. I wait until after Mass to drink my coffee and eat my breakfast. This is certainly not required by the church; I simply prefer it. Also, there is the ever-present problem of being a parish secretary who is already at my parish forty-plus hours a week. Sometimes, I need a break. Maybe next Sunday, I will go to 7:15 a.m. at the Poor Clare’s.

What can I do before Mass if I wait until 9? Read? I suppose. Recently, I discovered an author, Veronica Heley, whose books I would read any time because they are my special crack: they are cozy mysteries that don’t shy away from the darkness of evil. I’m partial to mysteries; most are cerebral and character-focused and use detection to bring about justice. Yet so many have sleazy main characters who are essentially nihilists hopping into bed with whomever, who don’t understand their own drive for godly justice. Heley’s books, while not having an American preachy quality (the author is English), feature protags who aren’t nihilists, albeit they aren’t perfect, either. The author clearly has Christian faith. That was a long diatribe to say that most books I have no desire to read before Mass. So, yes, the earlier the Mass, the better — before I’m distracted by worldly thoughts and cares. By the way, when I say they are crack, I mean it. I read the first four in her Abbot series back to back in about a week’s time. Then I gave myself a break. I will come back to them soon and read more.

Now it’s noon, and I’ve been to Mass and eaten and had my coffee and….watched a Lawrence Welk documentary that Color Storm linked to in my previous post’s comments. It’s an A&E Biography, and it’s worth an hour of your time (less, if you pay for YouTube and don’t have to watch the ads.) Aside from British mysteries and Mexican music, I have a general affinity for all accordion music except perhaps Tango. Tango* is just too pretentious for me. I’m like Lawrence Welk: I like to keep things light, goofy, and joyful. Life is full of darkness and evil with war and rumors of war — the evil one is always crouching at the door. But you know what? Goodness is also part of reality. It is True reality with a capital T, as that is what God represents. If anything, it is the evil one who usurped reality and turned it into a dark and terrible place, right outside the Garden where weeds consume healthy plants and blot out the fruit. And we humans fall for it. We’ve been falling for this illusory reality from the beginning. Yes, of course, I understand that weeds are very real in our world, but the purer reality is that when a garden is nurtured properly, it will produce fruit. And that is a true metaphor, both for inside our souls and outside in the physical world we must currently live in.

Lawrence Welk represents goodness to me, as far as humans can. He had a very public image and no real controversies that I’m aware of. Even his widow said he was an honest man of integrity, and she was the one who had to suffer for his music career that kept him away from his family for great lengths of time. She could have had mixed feelings or bitterness towards him, done a “tell-all, nitty-gritty, shocking bio” about living with a musician, but she did not. Yes, I’m obsessed with the accordion and want to make the case that the accordion is part and parcel with Welk’s desire for goodness. That’s not it, though, is it? If you want to like Mr. Welk, watch the biography, but please be aware that the A&E producers completely left out the reason for Welk’s staunchness about who he was and what his show would be pushing. That doesn’t surprise me — does it you? Lawrence Welk was a very devout Catholic Christian, who grew up in a German settlement of Catholic Christians. The ever-popular Lennon sisters were also from a devout Catholic Christian family. The intriguing part about the Lennon sisters is they are quintessentially American, with a genetic makeup of German, Irish, and Mexican. I understand that in many cases wholesomeness is just a put-on for the camera, especially if it comes from Hollywood. This show was not Hollywood, though. It was Lawrence Welk to a T. He wouldn’t do the show the way the network wanted to, and by God’s grace the network capitulated to him.

*Ja ja ja, sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Tango is dark and evil. I don’t like it because it’s too serious for my tastes. The accordion is romantic and happy and magical to me, and I play it with all seriousness, but I want it to remain light to my soul…like bubbles in wine.

Un Rinconcito Soleado

This weekend I took my coffee out to the back porch and sat in the orange school-style chair that’s been sitting there since we moved to this house. It makes a good outdoor chair after all the nicer ones have been stored away for the winter. New Mexico is not easy on outdoor furniture. The sun is brighter here than, say, the Pacific Northwest — literally. It’s the elevation. The sun has less atmosphere to pierce through. It also gets hot, cold, and dry, followed by deluges of rain. Sometimes, the dogs’ water is frozen solid in the morning, but by noon, people are walking their dogs in short-sleeved shirts, which is to say that it vacillates between hot and cold within hours.

The sun was particularly bright this weekend, and I sat in the orange chair in a little corner of the porch, sweating. When I checked the temperature, however, I discovered that it hadn’t even reached forty degrees. I just happened to be sitting in a spot where the south-facing sun collected. The sun is powerful. Solar energy would work well here ninety percent of the time — it’s that ten percent worth of cloud layer that would be inconvenient. Of course, farmers don’t find clouds inconvenient, especially if they bring rain.

Some people are particularly gloomy and find all the dark shade they can. Others are of sunny dispositions and are annoyingly positive all the time. Yet others seek out sunny corners where they can rest for a while. To be honest, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have a compulsion to write every day, and I’m so low on sleep, another 1000 words towards my ghost story or my memoir isn’t happening. Yes, of course, I’m writing a memoir. I’m always writing one, as the future will be curious about the past and want to know the thoughts of ridiculous secretaries. Unselfishly, I will oblige them.

I really love my ghost story, but I’m afraid it does require some intelligence to write, which I have very little of right now. In its initial version, a widow buys an old, decrepit house that’s haunted and manages to lure the hapless co-owner of a hardware store into helping her solve the mystery of her house. In its current version, I swapped the hardware store owner with a UPS driver…except I call the delivery service the PDex, and him the PDex man. I know, it’s dumb, but the name PDex makes me giggle like a teenage girl. Or guffaw like a teenage boy; I’m not sure which. I changed my male protag to a delivery driver because it occurred to me that delivery drivers in a city like Roswell know everyone’s names and where they live, and their presence on private property goes unquestioned. It didn’t just occur to me, honestly. One of the local drivers noted that she knew where I lived, where my daughter worked, etc., and I still don’t know her name. It wasn’t as creepy as it sounds. I just have an unusual last name, which she recognized after I started signing for the bulletins delivered to the church.

My ghost story ought to be gloomy, but it isn’t. I can’t help it. I want to create little sunny corners even when murdered femme fatales come out to haunt them. If you’re wondering how theologically correct my ghost story is, I’ll try to stifle a yawn…not because I’m bored, though. Oh, no. I’m simply too tired. I already said that. I find these are important questions to ask, as some Christians believe ghosts can only be demons, and not the spirit of the dead walking about, half here, and half there.

I don’t hold to such a rigid perspective, though. I’ve listened to enough question and answer sessions with exorcists to know that the “ghosts are demons” is the predominant position Catholic authorities take, too. But there is room for mystery in Catholicism. There is a willingness to accept that God might allow the spirit of a person in heaven to visit earth for a special purpose. I’ve often contemplated why there are places with weird “energy” to them, as well. I recognize that sounds new-agey. What I mean is, could there be places where the heavenly dimension has bled over into the earthly dimension? I don’t know. I don’t seek out these “energies,” as it were, and I certainly don’t go looking for ghosts with a special purpose. I’m only using the ghost trope because gothic elements in stories work. They work because we know at an inner level there is more to life than meets the eye.

Also, I think my poor widow woman needs help being ushered back to a land of hope where sunny corners can be found on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Whether it’s the spirit of a dead woman who will bring about a powerfully sunny justice, or the PDex man with his Santa Claus vibe (the real St. Nick was, after all, from the sunny Mediterranean world), who am I to deny my poor heroine her sun just because she will get a sunburn?

God Confounds the Wise

The end of this phrase should be in their own eyes. Our intelligence is finite and our ability to act out wisdom is limited. When Solomon asked God for wisdom, he was rewarded for it because wisdom is what we should be attempting to achieve in this life. But even Solomon failed to fully achieve it, bringing Israel down with his foreign wives and their imported idolatrous religions. Religious freedom has a dark element to it; it is not an ideal God encouraged in Israel. In fact, he forbade it. Sometimes, I wonder what our founding fathers were thinking when they determined religious freedom to be a high ideal. Actually, I don’t have to ask because I know. They thought, unwisely, that religious freedom would mean they could practice any form of Christianity they wanted and had little foresight that spiritual battles are indeed real, and if the dark spirits could destroy Christianity in America through our foreign “wives,” as it were, then that is exactly what will happen. They also had little forethought that freedom of speech and assembly would result in pornography, gay pride parades, and drag queen story hours.

Of course, all of this is hindsight 20-20 on our parts today. We know what’s happened in America because we are living in the aftermath of our beloved cafeteria of ideas. We also know what happened in Israel due to Solomon’s lack of wisdom because it’s recorded in the historical accounts of the Israelites. What we are less able to see clearly is our own inability to have perfect understanding and wisdom. Oh, sure, we can see it in other people, generally those who disagree with us. I can go right now to YouTube and find numerous videos of people spouting off who have no humility in their declarations at all. A lack of humility does not, obviously, mean someone isn’t speaking the truth, but it will most decidedly mean that person isn’t open to correction when he or she (hardheadedness and/or hardheartedness are not gendered concepts) is wrong. Everyone is wrong at some point, but not everyone has acknowledged their receipt of that memo. Thankfully, most people arrive at a place where they can admit to being wrong or at least to not fully understanding an issue. When a person doubles down under challenge and refuses to listen to counter arguments, I generally just walk away. Generally. Not always.

In the “cafeteria of ideas,” there are many I won’t entertain at all, even if I’m considered hardhearted. The fact is that, in every field of knowledge, there are foundational concepts that can’t be removed without toppling the entire field. Within Christianity, for example, if you argue that there was no resurrection, you have just toppled Christianity. It doesn’t exist anymore — so what is the point of this argument? This is why the early church fathers condensed core beliefs into creeds while also holding to the ten commandments and their New Testament counterpart, loving God first and then your neighbor. Even if it is impossible to understand God or his Scriptures perfectly, it is possible to know the gospel and how we should live as Christians.

When it comes to God confounding the wisdom of the world, you can see it all over the Bible, e.g., in God choosing the youngest sibling instead of the eldest for kingship or a birthright; or in God granting wisdom to a woman instead of to a man regarding family decisions. That’s one that will irk our modern patriarchals, but the examples are recorded for a reason: e.g., Rebecca chose the son whom God had chosen; Isaac did not, and Abigail had an understanding of who God’s chosen king was, even though her husband either did not or did not care. There are more examples of this phenomenon, in which God reveals that we don’t understand as much about the world as we think we do.

The above thoughts came about because I always ponder Solomon at the start of a New Year. I ponder him because he’s a classic old world version of a nihilist, and nihilism creeps into my soul in January. Years ago, it was so difficult for me to cope with this nihilism that I avoided reading Ecclesiastes. It’s not easy reading, and Solomon’s answer to it is easier said than done. I don’t avoid the book any longer; after all, God wanted it in the Bible for a reason. Still, I don’t go out my way to join Ecclesiastes Bible studies, even if I read it as part of liturgical or yearly Bible reading.

But what ultimately got me thinking along the lines of God confounding the wise was listening to a Christian YouTuber who mocks almost every Christian leader, pastor, or musician who exists in the world today. I listened to him because I clicked on a link where he reviews The Chosen. Solomon this man isn’t. Most of us aren’t even capable of the wisdom, power, or, conversely, the sinfulness of Solomon. I mean, how many of you men have 700 wives who are building temples to their false gods? Aside from that, though, it’s not that men like this YouTuber have first principles they stand for. Everything is a first principle to men like him. It gave me a chill up my spine because I’ve been dealing with a narcissist in my life, and my husband and I have both been gathering information regarding this personality disorder. One of the telltale signs of narcissism is never admitting to being wrong unless it’s for the purpose of manipulation. So, although God confounds those who are wise in their own eyes, the entire world will be able to see it, except the narcissist. They will instead view it as persecution and be protected from the fallout…to an extent, as they will eventually burn all their bridges and be left with no one but God for help.

If you want to know who the YouTuber is, his name is Spencer Smith. I haven’t listened to enough of his videos to claim he’s a narcissist; nor am I a psychiatrist. All I know is he gives off the whiff of it from a distance. Of course, YouTube is no doubt rife with narcissists because it’s an open platform for engaging with people. Narcissists will burn their bridges and retreat as victims to lick their wounds from time to time, but their mental illness requires an audience. Assuredly, they will be back for more. If you are wise, you will avoid them, and I don’t think God will confound such a decision unless he (cringe) wants to use you to penetrate the armor a narcissist wears for protection.