It's like they'll let anyone into this church - even the clearly imperfect son of Protestant missionaries. It seems that anyone who's willing to take the time to learn about what it means to be a Catholic Christian and agree to abide by those practices and beliefs can be accepted. Even if they have bad breath or other unpleasant personal traits. Even if they're a 15-year-old confirmation candidate whose cultural Catholic family shows no indication of sincerity about their faith beyond having gotten their children baptized at birth.
One might be tempted to label the Catholic Church the recycle bin of humanity, trying to get as many people in to heaven as possible, by any means possible - even baptizing them before they're old enough to hurt themselves.
As someone with elitist tendancies, this has been one of the hardest things for me to deal with in the Catholic Church. I pride myself on my knowledge of scripture, but meet priests who don't know the Bible as well as I do. I feel blessed with my intellectual abilities, but meet Catholics who don't know and don't care even about simple things like there being multiple translations of the Bible. I make a point of going to church every Sunday (or Saturday evening vigil mass) and on holy days of obligation, but most people who call themselves Catholics seem satisfied with only attending on Christmas and/or Easter - or not at all.
I understand that there are over 1 billion Catholics in the world - more, I believe, than all Protestants put together. But if you want to find most of them, you're more likely to locate them at a sports venue or party than in a Church.
Why has this happened?
One reason is the fact that large portions of the Catholic population are drawn from cultures where a monarch proclaimed th conversion of an entire realm to the faith (not a circumstance unique to Catholicism, mind you). As a result, there are many families whose original conversion to the faith was mandated rather than freely chosen, and who passed that "cultural Catholicism" down the generations.
Another, related reason is that, in those places and historical times when being a Catholic was the norm, those who didn't claim the faith were often less included in social and commercial interaction, and there are still vestiges of that attitude in many cultures.
At the same time, in the post-World War II era, a global, interconnected, amoral, entertainment-centric culture has emerged that offers constant gratification in exchange for the loosening of scruples and identity. Everyone, Catholics included (and perhaps especially cultural Catholics), is exposed to this and lured away from "traditional values" by it. So we have many ostensibly Catholic public figures espousing "anything goes as long as it feels OK" positions.
One could well be tempted to say it's time for the Catholic Church to shake all these fakers out of its robes and stand up, dust itself off, and start behaving like the original Christian Church.
But then there's the parable of the wheat and the weeds (see Matt. 13:24-30). It seems that Jesus wanted to include as many people as possible, giving everyone every chance to be saved and let Christ's redemption work in and through their lives, rejecting no one before judgment day.
So, if you can't get rid of all these stained Christians who are taking up space in the ornate theological cathedral of Catholicism, what do you do with them?
In my life, my conclusion is that there's only one person whose conversion I'm responsible for, and that's mine. And even that original conversion and ongoing redemption is only by the grace of God.
So, if I want to see more Catholics become real Christians, the only way I can do it is by becoming more and more of one myself, and that only by seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33), not by seeking to change others.
Which, as do so many other things in my journey, brings me back to Romans 8:28, reminding me that any good resulting from my efforts is a blessing from God, or, to quote one of my favourite sayings embodying this Bible verse, "God writes straight with crooked lines."
(Copyright (c) 2011, Reg Harbeck, all rights reserved)
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