How do you convince a non catholic your understanding is correct?

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How do you convince a non catholic your understanding is correct?

And is there another way ?
 
The great news is that Jesus told us specifically how to do this:

Let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify My Father in heaven!

Jesus also said:

By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, that you have love one for another.

He also told us to be the salt of the earth, to be a light on a hill.
 
You, as Little Lady said, show by and example, and you pray…“How do you convince” is presumptuous in that it implies we, not God, has the power to do so…Passive apologetics is often a better approach than active apologetics.
 
I’m not sure if that suggestion holds all the way through. The OP wanted to know about any non-Catholic not convinced of Catholic understanding, so let’s break it down into two parts.
  1. If we take a non-Catholic Chrisitan (let’s say a Presbyterian) and his or her light shines before men, and his or her works glorify the Father. Using the same reasoning couldn’t you say that person would be convincing non-Presbyterians of Presbyterian understanding?
  2. If we take a non-Christian, whether it be a person of a different faith or no faith, and his or her light shines before me, and his or her works glorify their deity and/or their belief system. Using the same reasoning couldn’t you say that person would be convincing people of faiths other than person of his or her understanding?
 
You can’t. Because it’s a matter of mind. If the mind refuses to see a certain reality, it won’t see. We don’t see what is outside of us anyway, our vision is actually an image built in the brain from nerve impulses. It’s been proven that you can show someone something their brain is incapable of processing, and they will fail to register is with their eyes. It happens a lot in cases of severe trauma, where memories are created of events that never happened, or memory is altered to protect the psychology.

You can’t make someone believe something, no matter how right you may feel you are. All you can do is present information, and trust that God will enlighten the person in his own time, at the right time for them, too.
 
LOL, trick question.
You don’t convince anybody of anything
You can inform and walk your talk
The Holy Spirit will take over from there
 
You do your best in a kind way. The rest is in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
 
Not to sound trite, but “it depends” is somewhat in play here. I do think it’s very important to:
  1. Avoid logical fallacies in your arguments.
  2. Be consistent.
  3. Don’t be obviously hypocritical. If you mess up, you may need to admit it. Not a big deal.
  4. Be familiar with secular/rational reasons for what the Church does.
 
As to your question: Neither you, nor I, nor the world’s best evangelist, nor the Pope can convince someone. That is the job of the Holy Spirit. Our part in all of this is to pray for them, invoking the Holy Spirit, employing patience, and showing them by your life, words and actions, the joy that you have found.

I know that this is not nearly as satisfying as having a killer argument, but that is how the Lord works. Prayer, example and patience.
 
Get close to their ear, looking at them directly in the eye, and say, “REPENT!”



No but really, there is a Lighthouse talk I recommend listening to called Contagious Catholicism. Basically, one of the primary ways to attract anybody to the Catholic Church is to speak their language, the way Paul spoke like a Greek when among Greeks or like a Jew when among Jews.
 
Why do we need to convince people we are “correct?” It’s not like we are proving a scientific theory. We believe what we believe because we have faith. There are very few things in our faith that we can be certain are correct in the secular view of “correctness.” It’s not like we could prove our beliefs in a court of law.

We had a great young priest at a parish I was at who did amazing sermons every week. One he did was on faith. He said faith is the opposite of certainty and it’s actually the greater of the two. I think this need for “correctness” is about a need to be certain, which is an attempt to not need faith, which is not a goal we should be striving for.

I like the posts about letting your light shine. Yes, non-Catholics can let their lights shine also and I think we should encourage that. Light is light. There isn’t “Presbyterian light” and “Catholic light,” just light. We need to have faith that ours will be seen by the non-Catholic to be shining brighter.
 
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