Conversion and Evangelism

[Moore11]

When you are talking with or dealing with family members co workers or friends who do not have any faith in their life and have very little understanding of God but need and want to start a relationship with Him do you find it easier to first steer them in a protestant or non denom path or do you actually bring them into the Catholic faith in a Mass or theology that they may not be able to understand or need right now.
I have found that with some of the lost you have to craw before you can walk and I would rather they turned their lives around and had some sort of Godly relationship even if it is emotional and not substantive.

In short, an emotional engaging non Catholic church, hoping to bring them into the fold later or drag them to Mass and Fr so and so’s monotonous homily.
Just your thoughts.

 

[monicatholic]

Al Kresta, catholic radio host, long ago introduced his audience ( and me) to a concept he called " pre- evangelization".

It’s engaging in the discussion of objective reality, the possibility that there is Truth, that there is something to be said for the insistence of natural law. And then further, that we humans were perhaps(what a concept) created with free will and higher intellect and the ability to love and sacrifice. And that there may very well be a " creator" and that the " creator " may very well have revealed himself and be knowable by us, and that there very well may be a plan.

All of this (sort of the 12 step concept of Higher Power who has a will for each of us and is concerned for us) is pr-evangelization.

Its been my limited experience that a few things will happen:
The conversations become too threatening to the agnostic paradigm and the conversation partner backs out

Or

They stay, listen, debate, listen more and the stage is set for Catholicism.

If you can get a guy to agree that all these proposals may have merit, then youre in conversation with a potential catholic.

I would probably never encourage a person to a non- sacramental conversion with anti- catholic underpinnings.

 

[Moore11]

Al Kresta, catholic radio host, long ago introduced his audience ( and me) to a concept he called " pre- evangelization".

It’s engaging in the discussion of objective reality, the possibility that there is Truth, that there is something to be said for the insistence of natural law. And then further, that we humans were perhaps(what a concept) created with free will and higher intellect and the ability to love and sacrifice. And that there may very well be a " creator" and that the " creator " may very well have revealed himself and be knowable by us, and that there very well may be a plan.

All of this (sort of the 12 step concept of Higher Power who has a will for each of us and is concerned for us) is pr-evangelization.

Its been my limited experience that a few things will happen:
The conversations become too threatening to the agnostic paradigm and the conversation partner backs out

Or

They stay, listen, debate, listen more and the stage is set for Catholicism.

If you can get a guy to agree that all these proposals may have merit, then youre in conversation with a potential catholic.

I would probably never encourage a person to a non- sacramental conversion with anti- catholic underpinnings.

I agree about the anti catholic thing but some people just aren’t that introspective. If you have a family member who has been lost, a cousin perhaps, and she gets pregnant, marries the guy and is trying to turn her life around and comes to you to ask about God because she knows you are serious in your faith then it can be hard to explain the Mass and the length and commitment of RCIA when this person is really looking for an immediate God fix. Id rather have someone praying to Jesus than not doing anything, the rest can come later. But I would share your concern about some churches that are anti Catholic and thereby anti Truth.