More Triumphs in Catholic Catechesis

I can't escape the sensation here of what I call "layering" in this conversion story. What I mean is: very often people leave the Catholic communion for reasons that have nothing to do with theology. Usually it has to do with our abominably bad way of simply not finding a place for people to attach socially. You can go to a parish for years and remain utterly unknown to your pewmates.

So many Catholics find their way into contact with some warm, loving, vibrant Evangelical community that welcomes them, affirms their baptismal gifts, actively looks for ways in which that person can be both fed spiritually and also given constructive work for the Kingdom of God. What happens is much more like falling in love than accepting a syllogism. And so the Catholic becomes an Evangelical--because they were loved.

However, after this happens, theology starts to get layered on top, often because the convert knows they are walking away from some pretty serious truth claims. And so, months or years *after* the conversion, you get people telling you that the *real* reason they left was not because of matters of the heart, but because "I read in Matthew 23 that Jesus said, 'Call no man Father' and I realized to my horror that Catholics called their priests 'Father'. So I had to reject this false teaching" or whatever other ex post facto justification.

That's what I mean by "layering". Theological excuses for rejecting Catholic teaching get layered on top of the real reason: which was that Catholic fellowship sucked and left people feeling unloved and unconnected with the Church any living way and Evangelical fellowship did not. Often what drives the search for theological excuses to stay away from the Catholic Church is the fear that, should the Church's claims turn out to be sound, one will be exiled back to that loveless parish one left.

Now the stupidest thing Catholics can do (and some of them do it constantly) is to *mock* this reason for leaving the Church. As though the fundamental requirement of the human soul for love, work, and meaning is a sign of weakness and stupidity. I don't know how often I've run across Catholics for whom *any* mention of love in connection with the faith is sneered at as "Kumbaya Catholicism". This peculiar notion that orthodoxy and love are enemies has to be ruthlessly killed, I think. Because the Church is paying an awful price for it. I hope Patricia Heaton is able to find her way home one of these days. She's already doing much of the Church's work and what she's seeking is, if she but knew it, right where she left it. But much of that is up to us Catholics, innit?