Good News, Bad News
Evangelization, Conversion and the Crisis of Faith
A review of Father McCloskey's book by Joanna Bogle.
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This is a book about something most Catholics don't like to discuss — it's about evangelizing people, making converts, helping people to make their way home to the Church. Confronted with the uncomfortable truth that Christ's message of salvation is for everyone, and the Church is not a private tribal club into which some people happen to be born by virtue of their family history, many Catholics just shy away. Easier to affect embarrassment about one's own Catholicism, or to try to run away from it, than to acknowledge that it is something to share.
Father McCloskey, based for many years in Washington, recently spent a year in London, during which part of this book was written. It's partly a "how to" book on introducing people to the Faith, helping potential converts, answering common objections to Catholicism, and being an effective witness to truth and love. It's also rich in anecdotes, in common sense, and in quiet wisdom.
Attracting converts to the Faith isn't done primarily by argument — Father McCloskey emphasizes that it is essentially about prayer, about cooperation with God, and about personal sacrifice. Often, the only thing to do is pray, and offer up genuine penance. Other things that matter include the cultivation of true friendship — because good friendships are a great and splendid thing in themselves, and because a true friend wants the best for those he cares about.
A Catholic also needs to be well-informed, and there's a reading-list which covers all sorts of good things from Belloc and Bernanos to Teresa of Avila and her namesake of Calcutta, from Thomas a Kempis to John Henry Newman. And there is a need for optimism, for a sense of that joy in the Faith which Pope John Paul and Pope Benedict have made central to their teaching. People are looking for answers to life's puzzling and often hurtful questions. This book exudes quiet confidence in answering them. It carries a message of hope.
The author is realistic about the kinds of questions people ask, and the circumstances in which they ask them. Most conversions are not tidy affairs. People bring their own hurts and confusions with them — a relationship that has gone wrong but can't be given up, a complicated marital difficulty, family tensions, old prejudices, new prejudices, assumptions of knowledge about what the Church teaches, inaccurate information gained from quirky sources, resentments and real or imagined slights from Catholics over a lifetime. Some questions can be answered. Some will need study, further information, detailed research, or a quick enquiry with some one more knowledgeable. All will need prayer.
The book tackles a lot of the issues that people today find puzzling about the Church — not excluding the Church's own internal difficulties. It is honest about the problems facing potential converts, and those helping them. But the message is upbeat, positive, thoughtful, and above all practical. Simply to read it is a boost to morale. But it would be better to use its ideas and information, and to put its message into practice. The Faith is dying in our corner of the world, , in the Europe of which we are geographically a part. If we don't want it to die in our own country, we must do what our ancestors did, from St. Edmund Campion to John Henry Newman — experience conversion and help convert others. This is a readable paperback that will help us to do that.
What do I know about conversion? Twenty years ago I walked into the Jesuit dining room at Georgetown University and accosted a startled priest, Fr. Dave Wessels, with the announcement that I wanted to talk about Catholicism. I'd been involved in the madness of the Cold War for some time, and it was as if I had been propelled through the doorway by the two hind legs of a mule. The explanation for why it happened in this manner is way over my head, maybe literally.
Therefore, it was a pleasure recently to pick up a book about the process of conversion by two people who can write about it rationally, clearly and knowledgeably: Fr. C. John McCloskey, III, and Russell Shaw. Shaw is a personal friend. Fr. C. John, as he's known, is someone I've waved hello to at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC, but never spoken to at length. He's an illustrious converter of the well-known, and of people famous only to their friends and families. The fame part doesn't matter. Anyone who has been able to say: "Joe, meet my friend God" has done himself and Joe more good than fame can ever bring.
The book is called Good News, Bad News: Evangelization, Conversion and the Crisis of Faith (Ignatius, 2007).
"What does a specialist in evangelization and convert making do?" asks Fr. McCloskey in the introduction. Good News, Bad News gives practical answers and real-world examples of how people move from worlds of despair and emptiness to the one world of hope, faith and charity. That's because Fr. C. John really is a specialist in lifting up, and he's drawn on the autobiographical experiences of people who have risen from the bad places in their lives to the ultimate good place. He knows them personally.
Evangelists and apologists like Fr. McCloskey and Russell Shaw can draw from deep understanding and extensive contacts to give examples of how questions can be answered and how tactful friendship can draw non-Catholics to the Holy Faith. The compelling reason for doing so, they point out, it is that all followers of the Lord, lay or clerical, are missionaries and servants in the salvation of souls, including their own.
The book contains some shrewd observations and comments on where the Church is these days. It pulls no punches there. It also draws attention to an astute proposal for getting the American male out of his often depressing spiritual, and literal, isolation. I've never seen this suggestion anywhere else.
Sometimes it takes the kick of a mule to bring someone into the Church. Fr. McCloskey and Russell Shaw explain the other ways.
Good News, Bad News: Evangelization, Conversion and the Crisis of Faith is a handbook for missionaries, lay and clerical, and it should be on the shelf of every Catholic.
