Why it Matters to ME that YOU Be a Good Catholic

I was talking to a buddy on the phone yesterday and I confessed, “I am more Catholic cheerleader than apologist.”

When I watch apologists debate the Catholic and Protestant sides, I feel like I am watching an unbearably long Ping-Pong match without any record of score. Each observer has to imagine the score in his own head.

After half an hour or so, my brain goes numb.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe apologetics is a very important discipline, and I have great respect for those who engage in this essential ministry professionally. Many a seeker has made a definitive choice for the Catholic Church because the case for Catholicism was well argued and systematically presented. I have learned a great deal from the likes of Patrick Madrid, Jimmy Akin, and Michelle Arnold, brilliant apologists all.

Also, I believe that every Catholic should be able to articulate his faith well enough to present a logical and reasonable defense of Catholic doctrine, especially in these relativistic times when truth seems up for grabs and logic and reason are a rare commodity, obscured as they are by rampant emotionalism and banal sentimentality.

But when it comes down to me, my primary drive is to evangelize the disengaged, or the lightly engaged, of the fold. Perhaps this is because I found myself astounded upon my entry into the Church at twenty-nine years old, and following a life of impoverished agnosticism, by the many Catholics who seemed bored by the Faith. I was like a starving man that looks on in wonder as other hungry people sit before piles of the most exquisite food without partaking.

Interestingly, this is my primary drive for myself, as well. All the books I read, all the YouTube videos I watch, seem to appeal to one goal I desire: to help this mediocre Catholic guy get his act together and take more seriously his own call to be a saint. I would like to skip the whole purgatory deal and get right into heaven, if you want to know the truth. But I look at myself and think, Boy…  you will be fortunate to make it to Purgatory at this rate!

I don’t want to settle for mediocrity in following our Blessed Lord.

There are some great Catholic cheerleaders out there, men and women I consider mentors in spirit: Matthew Kelly, Fr. Robert Barron, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Mother Angelica. And while these people are certainly able to hold their own in apologetics, I see their best gift in their ability to promote the goodness of living one’s faith fully and with integrity. They inspire me to strive to be a saint.

Take Fr. Barron’s Catholicism series. One has the sense that this serious and sincere priest is eagerly unpacking the treasure we know as Catholicism before our eyes while saying, like a gleeful child to his family who has neglected the chest in the attic, “Look at this! Look at all the wonderful and beautiful things we have in here!”

As I spoke to my friend on the phone, I wondered to myself, Why am I so driven to share the beauty of the Catholic faith with my Catholic brothers and sisters? Why is that such a passion of mine?

And it came to me as I shared with him: I love my children. I want the absolute best for them. I want their lives to be lives of meaning and hope and joy, and I want most of all that they spend eternity in the Presence of God in Heaven, which means that today I want them to know, love, and serve God to the fullest.

I assume that’s what you want for yours, as well. I mean, it has to be, right?

Let’s say I am going to put my son on a sports team, and I have the choice between two teams.

One team is a bunch of players who are all in it for themselves, have no sense of mission or purpose, exercise little discipline in playing by the rules of the game, pay no attention to the coach’s leadership, fail to practice the game, don’t bother developing their abilities, and have no desire to win. They are disengaged and divided.

The other team is made up of players who are unified, have a deep sense of purpose and mission, are disciplined and recognize that the rules form and focus their abilities, respect and obey the coach, concentrate and work hard on their personal development, and possess a strong drive to be successful in the game.

Of course I would want my children to be on the latter team. If salvation can be likened to sports (and why can’t it be? After all St. Paul used sports analogies quite effectively), I want my children to be players on the best team in the game of salvation (which is a serious game indeed).

When my children are surrounded by winners, by those that are engaged and unified, they benefit and grow in their own abilities, and in their determination to be the best they can be. “Iron is sharpened by iron; one person sharpens another” (Prov. 27:17, NABRE).

And that’s why it matters to me that you be a good Catholic.

I want our children to grow up in a Church that takes its mission seriously, that understands that God has called her members--- all of them--- to holiness, to win heaven.

I want our “team” to be unified and mutually determined to realize our purpose, to enjoy the game, to allow the rules to form and discipline us, to benefit all and help us reach our goal.

How are our children going to take seriously the Real Presence and the fact that the Mass is the highest form of worship on earth we give God when the vast majority of us don’t even attend Mass? And many of those that do are not regular attendees? What kind of witness to the Real Presence, and the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of our Eucharistic Lord is that?

How will our children come to know the mercy of Christ as experienced through the Sacrament of Reconciliation when most of us don’t even bother with it? What kind of sign to God’s merciful love are we if we avoid the confessional, the place of deep mercy, like the plague? How can we expect our children to take the reality of sin and mercy seriously if they never see us acknowledge our own sin and celebrate the Divine Mercy?

How will our children learn the beauty and goodness experienced and witnessed by openness to life in marriage when, according to statistics, most Catholic couples participate in the intrinsic evil of contraception, a sin that acts against life, that teaches us to view life as a commodity and to view one’s beloved as an object to use for pleasure? What kind of icons of God’s fruitful, self-giving love are we when we deny the procreative meaning of sexual intimacy through the distrustful and unfaithful action of contraception?

How will our children grow to understand the sacrament of marriage as a permanent bond, a living of the mutual self-giving love between man and woman, when so many of us Catholics ignore the Church’s wisdom in favor of an advocacy for the popular culture’s gross distortions of true marriage, which are prompted by its misunderstandings of what tolerance and fairness are?

Who will proclaim the goodness of true marriage if we Catholics fail to understand what authentic love and the meaning of sexual union are, if we go along like sheep when our society attempts with audacity and arrogance to reform the very meaning of sexuality, and redefine words like marriage to mean what suits our human disorders and our broken natures, rather than reflect God’s reality? 

How will our children come to know Christ, the Healer and Redeemer, if those who are called to be His hands and feet, first and foremost, don’t take Him seriously enough to fully embrace the Faith he has given us? We are lying to ourselves if we claim Catholicism while we blatantly disregard (and sometimes protest against) the teachings of His holy Church. 

I guess what I am trying to tell you, my Catholic brothers and sisters, is that my children need your witness. And your children, do, too.

There has never--- never--- been a Catholic saint that lived a mediocre, pick and choose, cafeteria style Catholicism. And as Father Larry Richards says so bluntly, as is his signature style: Only saints get to heaven. Saints are the good Catholics we are all called to be.

As Dr. Peter Kreeft has said, “Nothing is more formidable and unconquerable than the Church Militant. But nothing is more sleepy and sheepish than the Church Mumbling. Christ’s words roused His enemies to murder and His friends to martyrdom.”

Following Christ is a dying to self. And in the great paradox, it leads to Real Life. 

In one of the most extraordinarily beautiful accounts of conversion I have ever read, Thomas Merton tells how, early in his journey, his friend Robert Lax asked him what he wanted to be.

Merton hesitated, and finally blurted, “I don’t know… a good Catholic.”

Lax corrected him with words that have dogged me for twenty years: “What you should say… is that you want to be a saint.”

After Merton stammered incredulously in reply at the notion of becoming a saint, Lax went on: “All that is necessary to be a saint is to want to be one. Don’t you believe that God will make you what He created you to be, if you will consent to let Him do it? All you have to do is desire it.”

I believe this exchange has an incredible amount of wisdom to teach that most of us never quite get.

A good Catholic is a Catholic who will follow the Blessed Lord all the way. He will lay down his own ideas and preferences and desires and give God the full and bursting “Yes” of his whole life. 

And when he fails, as he will, when he slips into selfishness and denies his Lord, he will face is own darkness, confess his sin, turn back to Jesus in repentance, and allow the Lord’s mercy to raise him once again in order to continue on the journey of salvation. 

The good Catholic will never give up.

Please--- oh, please--- show our children what a good Catholic looks like.