Are Catholics Chicken or Something?

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One never knows when a ‘Holy moment’ of opportunity of Evangelization may happen.
It was good that you recognized that your welfare was his concern.
But usually it is by relationships that Evangelization happens.
But I’ve heard good things about St. Paul’s Street Evangelization.


Things like that are best done with knowledgeable groups;
to share with the willing.
In that regard, we have had many discussions regarding Salvation
with the willing when we pray in front of a child killing center.
And there is much fruit of conversions in this reported.
Peace.
 
I just wanted to share some experiences I have had and seeds that were planted.

First of all, the strongest witnesses of Christ in my life were people who lived it. I knew they were Christian and that was enough. At least for the family that God used to shine as a light to me. This family had and still has so much joy and peace, as they have Christ in the center of their lives, that I could never get it out of my head. I never found it elsewhere in the world. They literally resonate an otherworldy joy. The last time I got to see them I felt the presence of Jesus strongly and the words they spoke to me were from Him. But when I was growing up as an adolescent, they never said anything to try to witness to me, because they thought I was a believer. However that didn’t matter because their love and joy and peace was all I needed to see. It clearly came from God.

Later a neighbor that I had who ended up becoming my spiritual grandmother, started inviting me over to her house. She treated me like her grandchild… gave me food and would talk with me like I was her own family. She started to tell me about Christ and how nothing in this world would fill the emptiness in my heart. Her love and genuine care, and also not judging me was her witness, in addition to telling me about the Lord. If she had not genuinely cared or loved me, telling me about Christ would not have been effective. The truth must be shared in love.

Later in life I have been hungry and poor because of being/living in third world countries in Latin America (mostly Colombia). I have prayed to God for what I needed, food basically. So God used Catholics to give me food without me even asking them. They also didn’t know I had prayed or that I was hungry. However he had also used one evangelical couple, a pastor and his wife, in another country, when I was in need. By the way, I do not aspire to be helped by others and I don’t think anyone wants to be in that position. However I have been able to see God’s power when I am so weak. So God has used all this to humble me and also so I can rely more on Him.

One of my friends is Catholic and she can’t even read (she is Colombian and middle aged and comes from a poor background, which is why she can’t read), but because of her grace and generosity (she also helps the poor with food), that was a witness to me. She also saved my husband’s life several months ago while I was in America. He nearly died from being sick, but my friend’s boyfriend came and got him, and brought him to their house, while she nursed him back to health.

My husband has Catholic friends but is still anti-Catholic and seems to ignore how much more caring they are than people from his own evangelical church in his hometown (in Colombia). Maybe I am being judgemental about them though?

The family who witnessed to me by their joy, and my spiritual grandmother, both in America, are Evangelicals. However the evangelical Charismatic Christians in Colombia anyway, seem far more concerned with the prosperity gospel, and getting materially blessed with more things, than helping others. I am generalizing here but this has been my experience and what I have seen.
 
This looks awfully familiar. How on earth did a pollster figure out how many heretics and angry Catholics there are? This doesn’t seem reasonable.

-Fr ACEGC
 
I don’t have any good reason to believe secret sources. If you want to use graphs, make sure they’re well backed up with actual polling data. Otherwise, you just make yourself and fellow traditionalists look bad with what amounts to a political cartoon.

Full disclosure: I wear a cassock every day and I say Latin Mass every chance I get. But I can’t abide silliness. Let’s have reasoned discussion.
 
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By any chance do you fit much of the suggested profile I observe 🤔🤔🤔…
 
When was this exactly? No one in at least five generations of my pretty huge family on both sides that came from 6 different countries has ever lived in a “Catholic nation state” in their lives. Do you mean before the Protestant Reformation? I think that was a heckuva lot earlier than Vatican II.
In countries throughout Africa and the Third World, evangelisation was all the rage.
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Still is, apparently, given that every US parish seems to be getting priests from there.
Even in America Churches were full, and vast swathes of the country was solidly Catholic.
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Unless you’re talking about “America” as in North AND South America, this was never the case. Yes, some churches in USA were full, many of them were also pretty dern small.
“Vast swaths of the country were solidly Catholic”? In the United States? More like certain concentrated high-population urban areas had large concentrations of ethnic Catholics who were immigrants or children or grandchildren of immigrants. "Vast Swaths "of the USA were Protestant, all different denominations, as they still are today.
Unfortunately, the effects of the Spirit of Vatican Council II are plain for all to see
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Does this have anything to do with the entire preceding post you wrote or is it a new topic?
And what’s this “schismatic” stuff?
 
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observer333 said:
One might think it’s because Catholics are chicken, that they’re afraid to do so. And of course they are. Evangelicals are, too! You have to screw up your nerve to do this kind of thing. That’s only human!
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As I see it, one of the marks of an authentic religion is that it doesn’t do aggressive evangelization. Ever had a muslim come up to your doorstep uninvited or accosting you in the street to tell you you need to join their religion or perish? A Hindu? A Buddhist? A Jain? A Sikh? An Orthodox Christian?

Precisely. Same for Roman Catholics. We don’t do aggressive or intrusive envangelization. It’s “conduct unbecoming” a proper Christian, because it isn’t meek and it isn’t modest.

Furthermore, those who engage in uninvited evangelization typically assume way too much about the other person, as your own example shows. The typical “enthusiastic” envangelizer sees what he or she wants to see, not necessarily who is actually there. JW’s are the best example of this: though I think they have a lot going for them, the ones that stand on street corners evangelizing never consider the possibility that the person they’re talking to is already grounded in Faith. They simply completely overlook this possibility until you emphatically point it out to them.

So, no, RC’s are not chicken. It’s appropriate modesty, not cowardice.
 
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I really hesitate to ask but why does my priest at dismissal every Saturday tell us “now go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” ?

Is he asking us to sell the book?

Serious question, perhaps I should have asked him years ago.
 
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Lee1 said:
[…] why does my priest at dismissal every Saturday tell us “now go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” ?
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A fair question. I admit that I’m not too fond of that particular ending. It’s only one of several allowed, of course, the older one being simply “Go forth, the Mass is ended.” In Latin there is the “Ite, missa est”, which does suggest we are sent on a mission, but I believe that can be pursued in a variety of ways. It’s not even clear (not in the Latin version anyway), that this mission involves converting others. The third ending, “Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life,” is the one I like best myself.

Anyway, I don’t believe we are given an exhortation to accost people everywhere and tell them they need to become Christians, but I understand some will read that into the ending words of the Mass.
 
We announce the gospel by living it and displaying the fruits of the Spirit. A lot of missionaries actually start out by serving the communities they intend to evangelize by feeding the hungry, healing the sick, visiting the prisoners and by prayers. They get to know the people as people first. This is very important especially when addressing something as intimate as a person’s faith.

We need not be door to door salesmen selling Jesus as if he was a used car. To me as a former atheist, these Evangelicals who approach asking if I have been saved and then telling me I’m going to hell are like those telemarketers, very annoying and a turn-off.
 
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Lee1 said:
I really hesitate to ask but why does my priest at dismissal every Saturday tell us “now go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” ?
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It’s one of the newer standard endings to the Mass. I personally don’t see what’s wrong with the good old “The Mass is ended, go in peace” (in Latin, “Ite, missa est”) but whatever. We can certainly “announce the Gospel of the Lord” by doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which we’re supposed to be doing anyway. We don’t have to run down the street waving the NABRE Bible and quoting the Gospels and badgering people to join our church.
 
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Thank you everyone, comprehensively answered.
Now what do I do with 250 bibles…🤔 ?
 
Donate them. 😀

If you actually do have 250 Bibles.
 
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One can proclaim the Gospel by the quiet witness of our lives surely. A few charitable words at the right time every year or two may help also.
 
Totally agree, very charitable of you to help 🙂

If you’re like me, under a leaden sky, todays a great day to add a little sunshine to someone’s life :sun_behind_small_cloud:

So merry Christmas mr Sophie!
 
As a Jew, I’ve had conversations with Evangelicals, some of them interesting, one (on a bus) rather annoying. Likewise with JW’s, who must have just as much courage, if not more, as Evangelicals since JWs are bold enough to enter people’s private domains, often at early inconvenient hours. I remember one conversation I had with a JW. I was not converted but almost inadvertently converted him to Judaism!
 
Capta(name removed by moderator)rudeman said:
One could easily say that the streetside form of evangelization is useless and not taken seriously in today’s world.
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Even though i am a Catholic, i always feel uncomfortable when people come up to me in the street preaching. I don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with it. But unless people ask me about my beliefs directly, i tend not to say anything.
 
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