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.
