How to convert Catholics by Carol Robinson

(https://traditionalcatholicresistance.blogspot.com)  This wonderful article by Carol Robinson from 1947 is included in the strongly recommended, recently published, Breaking the chains of mediocrity available from the excellent publisher Arouca Press. see here

 IT IS HARDER TO CONVERT CATHOLICS than it is to convert other people, but it is very rewarding. As a Catholic Action lecturer once said to me: "Don’t worry about the Protestants; if we could only get the Catholics to be Catholic, the protestants would fall over themselves in their haste to join the Church." I have myself observed the truth of his statement. People are not attracted to the Catholic Church on the basis of average virtue. They do not reckon: "Let's see, taken as an average, ninety per cent of the Catholics I have met have practiced forty per cent more virtue than the Lutherans and eighty percent less adultery than the Unitarians; so I guess I'll join the Catholic Church." No, that's like figuring that if there were 1o,ooo missionaries in China, and if each converted 100 Chinese per year, etc. The truth is, of course, that the job could conceivably be done by one St. Francis Xavier, and might very well fail of accomplishment with 100,000 missionaries.

A man may meet in his life several  thousand "unconverted' Catholics. Let them be virtuous, respectable church-going people; yet our man may never feel drawn to Christ's Mystical Body. On the other hand a man's Catholic encounters may include several first-class heels, along with sundry drunks and murderers. But let him just once meet a man who has allowed Christ's life to transform him, just once see someone in whom God is fleetingly rejected, and his pulse will quicken, his steps will turn in the direction of the Source of that Life. Leon Bloy, in the intensity of his inner life and the miserable conditions of his material life, was such a magnet, The beauty of the Faith penetrated his writings, which were otherwise and literarily no great masterpieces. This was so much so that the impoverished Frenchman could cry out that "there is only one unhappiness, not to be one of the saints!' Jacques Maritain was one of the those who heard his echo of Christ and drew near.

Let us get back to the matter of converting Catholics. The reason it is hard to convert them is that they are suffering under the illusion that they are already Catholic. What then is lacking? From what must they be converted? Well, chiefly from mediocrity and unbelief.

MEDIOCRITY: DIAGNOSIS

As aforesaid, quality not quantity is the measure of the Church's strength. The same Catholic Action leader told me: "It would be better for the apostolate if we had fewer Catholics in the United States and they were better ones. We are weighted down by mediocrity, which throws a smoke screen in front of the faith."

Too many Catholics are wearing the Faith like a comfortable old shoe instead of a sparkling new diamond. They have watered it down to external activities, instead of to a change of heart. They recite perfunctory prayers and sing sentimental hymns, instead of crying out to God from the depth of their being. Religion is something they do in their spare time, instead of the pivot on which their lives revolve.

In the Apocalypse St. ]ohn writes: "And to the angel [bishop] of the church at Laodicea write: Thus says the Amen the faithful and true witness, who is the beginning of the creation of God: I know thy works; thou art neither cold nor hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to vomit thee out of my mouth. . . ." What does that mean? It means what we dont like to believe, that God may prefer the Bowery bum, perpetually drunk, to the respected citizen and the complacent Catholic Committee woman; and the reason is that the former at least bears testimony to God by his anguish at being separated from God, while the latter fails to catch fire in the very presence of the flame. Holiness does not consist in self-righteousness (this was the pharisees' error and has characterized Protestantism in practice. That is the reason for the widespread revolt against religion today in our post-Protestant country. Let no one say that the contagion has not spread to, and diseased, many a Catholic). Holiness especially does not consist in negative righteousness (I never blaspheme, never look at women - "thank God, I am not like other men, sinners"). It does not even consist in our own virtue. Holiness is the supernatural life, is God’s life, surging through us and pervading us. Our role is to allow it to do so. We get the Life from the Sacraments, and the only predisposing condition on our part is humility. So the drunk in the gutter who cannot help but know his own utter failure, is in a way terribly near to God. Natural despair is very close to supernatural hope, because it is when we know we are nothing that we are ready to admit that God is everything and to cast ourselves on His mercy. This is the key truth discovered by Alcoholics Anonymous. They do not go to fellow alcoholics when they are on the wagon, but when they are in Bellevue alcoholic ward, just having failed utterly for the nth time. They do not say, "Pull yourself together, man," but they do say, "See how persistently and utterly you fail by yourself. Cast yourself upon the mercy of God!

Look at it another way. Christ said that He is the living water, and that if a man drinks of Him he shall no longer thirst. This is the secret that the saints have discovered and the source of their peace. But many a man who is thirsting for the Living Water, not knowing where to find Him, tries to slake his thirst with the firewater of whisky, and finds it unquenchable.

The mediocre on the other hand are those who have neither drunk deeply, nor do they thirst. They are those who sip Coca-Cola and wonder when the new automobiles will be generally available. Mediocrity hangs over America like a pall. That is why Monsignor Sheen can say that God may be more pleased with the Russian people than with us. There is an intensity, a spiritual intensity, deeply imbedded in the Russian temperament. It is hard to imagine any considerable number of Russians falling for an ideal of 'comfort." Asceticism, suffering, intense joy, profound melancholy, wild gaity, are all part of the Russian nature. They incline to hate God or to throw away everything for the love of Him. They are either hot or cold.

MEDIOCRITY: PRESCRIPTION

The essence of mediocrity is that we cling to our lives instead of dying to ourselves that God may live in us. In the case of Catholics it is not usually because they have not received grace in the Sacraments, because many mediocre Catholics are even daily communicants; the difficulty is that they have not died to themselves.   Granted that it is hard to die to yourself in an age which encourages feverish activity and endless concern with what we shall wear and how we shall decorate our houses, and which pyramids committee meetings on top of committee meetings. Nevertheless it must be done. The first step away from mediocrity is to realize that it takes heroism to be a Christian today.

There is no way out of mediocrity which does not involve a conversion from worldliness to other-worldliness. One must cultivate precisely those habits which we tend to overlook, precisely those habits which will make us unpopular, singular, conspicuous, and all those other things which we so long to avoid. It will not always be tough going because in the end we will have maneuvered ourselves into another set, another way of life, far better than the original one. But we might as well face the fact that the beginnings will be difficult.

The essence of the new program will be penance, mortification, intensification of the Sacramental life, development of the interior life, prayer. Start going to Mass instead of to novenas. Turn off the radio and see if you can endure the silence. Drop out of the mad race to be well dressed. Start giving alms at the sacrifice of luncheon desserts. Observe strictly the fasts prescribed by the Church. Try to pray without a book or a rosary. Do spiritual reading. Cut down on the movies. All these things will be the first beginnings of the road which leads to sanctity. You will need a spiritual director to help you along.

Now it is an odd thing about Catholics that it is precisely this conversion they resist with all their might. They will go to more and more meetings, give more and more money, talk more and more; but please do not ask them to about-face. If they did, they would cease to be mediocre.   A conversion means a turning away from something, and a turning to something else. The first conversion (the spiritual life is a series of them) means a turning away from the world and a turning to God. Most converts from outside to the Catholic Church are strikingly aware of this and are quite prepared for their lives to be transformed. They have entered into a new economy, the economy of salvation, and everything they do from there on is a step toward God.

Mediocre Catholics are the people who won’t come in or go out. They shy away from mortal sin, but they won’t turn all the way toward God. That's why they don’t progress in holiness. They mark time, but they can’t mark time forever.

"In our time it is impossible for anyone to be mediocre," said Pius XI. And so it is. These mediocre Catholics are under an ever-increasing strain. Presently they will fall either all the way in or all the way out of the Church.

UNBELIEF

"Yeah, but you've got to earn a living!" This is the theme song of the unbelieving Catholic. The thing he chiefly doesn’t believe in is the Providence of God. If you say to him: "But Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be given you besides,) he will answer you, in effect, by saying that you have to be practical. Practical means you have to seek first the kingdom of mammon, lest you starve to death, and that is to say that you just don’t believe what Christ says. Some people may not think that it is very important not to believe just some certain things in the Gospel, but as a matter of fact the whole goes together.

Either you believe the Church or you don’t! There are no intermediary stages (although there is a lot of procrastination, ignorance, and vacillation). The people who don't believe that the just man lives by faith will be found upon investigation to be somewhat incredulous about dogmas beginning "Credo in unum Deum...." In my own experience this is more and more borne out. The other night I was discussing her business with a greeting card saleswoman, of Irish descent and convent education. She was trying to explain why you can't have a religious theme on your Christmas cards because that will make them unsuitable for the Jewish trade, and I was telling her, somewhat irritably, that her position just didn’t make any Catholic sense. Later on in the evening it came out that she was, as she put it, "tormented by the Devil with doubts." What she meant was that she had as good as lost her Faith.

There are thousands and thousands of Catholics in the same spot. They still go to church, usually. They still know the Catholic lingo, although they have a distaste for discussing spiritual things. They are still held by the thin thread of sentiment to a Church in which they no longer believe.

Now, we live in a world of middle thinking, but out of it all there comes a certain secular creed, having dogmas like these: "God is unimportant!' "This world is the one we have to make into a paradise' "Science is omniscient!' "Money is all-important!' "Psychiatrists (not priests) know all about the soul!' "You can't live without sex!' Etc. Etc. It comes in over the radio. It's knee-deep in all the mass-circulation magazines. It utterly pervades secular education (I know a major public college in which, as far as investigation can tell, not one single truthful proposition is taught). It is hawked in the movies. It is common gossip. It is the basis of all business. It is so bad that it is almost true to say that "either what the Church says is true, and therefore everything the  world says is wrong, or vice versa, the world is right and the Church out of its mind."

The sad situation of Catholics is this: they want to believe the Church, but they eat up everything the world says and, in effect, order their lives accordingly. How can they do both? They do it by a combination of ignorance and sentimentality. You never catch them reading a Catholic book of theology, even if they are studying secular philosophy. They go in for novenas, partly with the ‘gimme' spirit, but partly too for the emotional satisfaction they get out of it. Emotion does not carry over into daily. Out of this situation arises the curious and sad phenomenon you very often see in the Church: a pious mother (as measured by devotions) who opposes every effort of her daughter to go into Catholic Action, while pressing her to become a worldly and financial success.

The advantage of coming into the Church from the outside is that you already know when you become a Catholic, the secret that is still hidden to the Catholics; the utter bankruptcy of the non-Catholic world. We are in a world which is dying of despair, while Catholics (hastily throwing the pearl of great price under the kitchen stove) sit around and admire it. They think (having been themselves poor for so long) that the rich build country estates and go about on yachts in a delirium of joy. They do not. They keep erecting palaces, making music, laying out gardens, and changing dresses to hide from themselves their internal disquiet, the aching of their own hearts. The emptiness of their godless lives. The last place that they who so need help will look for hope, is among those who keep copying and admiring their own futile efforts.

The pagans keep writing stuff that they themselves do not believe, saying things that have a tinny ring even in their own ears. How we betray them when we believe it! There are thousands of examples. One interesting one is found in psychoanalysis. There are plenty of Catholics ready to find this pseudo-science "very interesting” and containing a number of truths. While we sit by and admire (kicking off into a corner the sword of the spirit which is the word of God and which happens to be lying around), someone like Clare Boothe Luce slashes through its error like a knife.

Does the Freudian say we all secretly desire to return to our mother's womb? All that means, says Mrs. Luce, is that plenty of us wish we had never been born. Has St. Augustine said: "Thou hast made us for Thyself O Lord...."? It is Mrs. Luce who has just fished it up from the dust-heap in the corner and is lost in the joy of knowing it.

The remedy for unbelief is Faith, and Faith is a gift. Don’t be too proud to believe something you haven’t thought up and examined for yourself. Take God's word for it. Don’t think that everything God says has to be examined in the light of opposing errors. Faith increases, and becomes more and more luminous, and makes us sing out that what the Church teaches is true, in proportion to how much we cherish and believe it. Cut out the national weeklies and the national monthlies. Abstain from the radio. Skip the tabloids. Subscribe to a Catholic library. Where was it that you dropped that sword? It ought to be lying around here some place; let it shine it up and gird ourselves with it.