Are We Evangelizing?

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Unfortunately many Catholic parishes do not educate their parishioners.
I think parishes should be offering FREE classes on the Catechism for adults,
and Bible Study on one’s faith.
 
All anyone has to do is contact their parish, talk to the pastor and suggest whatever they want to suggest. Catholic schools have religion class. If adults want to learn the Catechism they can request to meet together and with someone qualified to teach them. If that’s not possible, buy a Catechism and read it or go online.
 
Are we Evangelizing? I hope so. One person at a time. I love talking about Jesus and the Church. I know there used to be an it’s not polite to discuss religion or politics notion that got in the way, but my generation (mid 30’s) atleast locally doesn’t seem to have that problem.

People communicate poorly on the internet (in general, not here) but most real life, person to person conversations I have about Catholicism seem to go well. That being said, I don’t door knock, just discussions when the opportunity arises.
 
My response was in response to childinthefaith post:
“We should NOT be losing cradle Catholics to Evangelical Churches, but we are. Why? Because they’re made to feel very welcome, they see excitement about that faith, and people are able to convince them that they’re not “saved.” THAT is a reflection of people not knowing their Catholic Faith well enough to not be fooled. So yeh, a lot of Catholics need to be evangelized as well as those outside the Church, no doubt.”

I am fairly well versed in the faith and am not looking for adult ed through the parish. I am simply acknowledging that many adult Catholics lack knowledge of their faith and are not really involved in the faith. The church as a whole needs to re-educate adults to an adult understanding of the faith.
 
I know other’s posted about taking college classes or asking the pastor to offer programs, etc.

These are certainly things that an involved Catholic can/does do, but we really need to reach the majority of Catholics who just show up every Sunday for Mass.

For starters religious instruction for kids should be done on Saturdays and/or Sunday’s and mandate that the parents of the children be in their own class of instruction. I also feel the church needs to provide classes on Catechism, Ten Commandments, Beatitutdes, etc. and they should NOT be charging for this. It should be free of charge.
 
You know, I worry about not being more talkative about my faith. I am cheerful and joyful and totally in love with Jesus. And if the subject comes up I do explain (around here there are lots of misconceptions about Catholics…)
Then I realized something. God put me in this relationship with my DH who is the hardest nut to crack. It’s been 30+ years of daily living, trying to get him to open up or just listen… I go on about my business of loving God, singing songs of praise every morning at sunrise, saying my prayers, trying to be good, holy and faithful. After oh 25+ years I decided to include him in my morning offering prayers. Now he joins me in the Our Father, and he listens to the Apostles Creed and other prayers. He even suggested that I learn the 23rd Psalm that was special to him as a boy going to church. I see some cracks in the shell sometimes but really not that much. I’m hanging in there though because I finally realized that God thought I could do this… I’ll let you know how it all turns out, if I’m able… 🙂 What I’m really trying to say is look around you and notice what God has chosen YOU for and try to do your best right there…
 
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Herculees said:
These are certainly things that an involved Catholic can/does do, but we really need to reach the majority of Catholics who just show up every Sunday for Mass.
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Actually, the problem is that the majority of Catholics DON’T show up for Mass every week. They’re busy with other activities. I wonder if more children’s activities – including non-religious things like sports – might attract them. At least getting them on the premises would present opportunities for evangelization.
 
Herculees said:
Unfortunately many Catholic parishes do not educate their parishioners.
I think parishes should be offering FREE classes on the Catechism for adults,
and Bible Study on one’s faith.
Click to expand...
I’ve no clue how classes like that would go over in the typical parish, whether people would go or not. I would.
After my wife and I finished RCIA, I was so very desirous of learning more, still am, but it would have been perfect if there had been something to the effect of “RCIA - Pt II” available after we had finished and joined the church. I had one little question after another, and most of them about the Liturgy, for quite the time.
gama232 said:
All anyone has to do is contact their parish, talk to the pastor and suggest whatever they want to suggest. Catholic schools have religion class. If adults want to learn the Catechism they can request to meet together and with someone qualified to teach them. If that’s not possible, buy a Catechism and read it or go online.
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Sure, we can suggest all day long. An overloaded pastoral staff isn’t bound to take our suggestions. And, many of them would give an answer like the one you give here, which I’ve done BUT STILL have questions, “buy a Catechism and read it…” Oh yeh, I have a giant green CCC on my desk and have read it. However, as is the case with the Scripture, I frequently need a qualified person to help me interpret what I’ve read…

That whole “just figure it out yourself, resources are available” attitude is precisely why so very many cradle Catholics don’t know the answers when I ask THEM questions - they have seen no reason to figure it out on their own, and in many many cases, have not read (clearly), the Catechism, much less tried to figure out what it means.
The one thing that helped me understand the very little I do was reading the Code of Canon Law. Very boring, but if one focuses on the parts labeled in contents as related to the lay faithful, it can be enlightening as to what IS expected of us.

That said, I frankly appreciate the fact that there is a much larger treasury of knowledge about our Church than I will ever approach running out of. But I see so very many people who have been Catholic for decades still use the “go ask a priest. i don’t know.” reply that I wonder what exactly, besides habit, brings them to weekly masses. Is it a thing where people think "If i go to weekly mass I get a ‘go to heaven free’ card? Or do they even know WHY they go and just do it?

This is how and why other churches can suck in Catholics as converts to Their faith. It’s called being engaged not only in Church, i.e., the mass, but with people, inside and outside of the church.
 
I’ve gone door-to-door with the Legion of Mary. And they’ve done that throughout the world through many years. Now, one of the reasons that we might not be able to do that right now, is because of a disease epidemic. With that said, there are other ways to bring the gospel to people. I use a Blog , a YouTube channel, and a podcast under a pseudonym. Almost no one listens to the podcast, and on the YouTube channel, I’m lucky if I have 5 views in a week. In fact, my blog actually seems to get more hits than anything else. But, because of the situation we’re in right now, we have to be very prudent on how we bring the gospel to people. I think, as a Catholic, a lot of Catholics are kind of cowardly about talking about their faith, and we really shouldn’t be. I’ve heard so many distortions about the Catholic faith from people who really should know better, that I’ve learned to defend my faith pretty well. Also, living in the Deep South in the United States, because Catholics are a minority here, I really have to be prepared to be able to answer questions about the Bible.
 
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