Relatable Catholicism Isn't Good Enough

The Church can meet people where they are, but she cannot leave them there. Evangelization has to move people, not just encounter them

A young man shows up to the parish young-adult night, or a men’s night, or whatever-night-we-designate-to-bring-people-into-the-Church night. His friend twisted his arm to drop in, swearing it isn’t weird, which it isn’t. In fact, it’s very much like any social night out, and minutes after he walks through the door the whole thing starts to feel familiar. Comfortable.

The music is good. The talk is funny, very considerate, and careful never to come down too hard on anyone or on any subject. Somebody cracks a joke about Catholic guilt and everybody laughs, including the priest. As they say, a good time was had by all.

The young man leaves thinking, that was easy, those people were normal, I could see myself there. So he comes back for the next one. Over months, the initial strangeness of going to a Catholic parish—and at night—wears off. The Church stops being the grim institution he had half-imagined and becomes a place where he fits in. By every ordinary measure, that first night was a success. He came, he experienced, he encountered, and he came back.

People were drawn to the tough-talking John the Baptist. But some were also put off by him. Jesus didn’t shy away from the hard message (“Don’t sin anymore…”) but he was a master at balancing challenge with appeal and intrigue. He met the people where they were, but never, ever left them there.

This is what relatable Catholicism is for, and on its own terms it works. As a young evangelizer, it would not have been my style or approach. But time and experience teach lessons, and over time I began to understand that evangelization is delicate work. It needs strategy. It needs patience. It needs a willingness to lower the drawbridge before anyone will even consider walking toward the gate.

Often you have to go low before you can raise high. “Meet them where they are” is the Church’s universal mantra these days, and there is wisdom in it. Most people don’t keep their distance from the Church. They keep their distance from a caricature of it. They imagine joylessness, contempt, a Church staffed by scolds, schoolmarms, and Inquisitioners in medieval clerical garb. They run from that because it is repellent, and because it is too foreign to their lived perspective.

So relatable Catholicism is a good thing. But it’s supposed to be the doorway, not the destination. And too often in modern evangelization it has become the former. We meet the people where they are, and then leave them where we find them. The strategy has no direction, and it builds a faith that has no life.

“Relatable Catholicism is supposed to be the doorway, not the destination.”

Evangelization is supposed to go somewhere. It should have direction and momentum. That sounds obvious until you look at how often our Catholic outreach is built to attract, soothe, include, and retain, but not necessarily to form.

We want people to come back, and of course we should. But come back for what? At what point do we nudge them to the next step along the road?

Truth is life-giving. It has to be fruitful or it ceases to be Truth (See my Afterthoughts segment at the end). That’s also true in our own lives, and in our own Catholic experience. No matter where we are in faith or formation, we always have to be moving forward in order to move upward.

Truth also finds us where we are as practicing Catholics. But then it’s up to us to allow Truth to move us forward, not to remain where Truth finds us. Maybe Truth has found us in the Mass. Maybe in the Rosary or the Bible. Maybe somewhere else in the spiritual life. Wherever we are in this Catholic adventure, we are not at the destination until we are in Heaven. We must always be moving forward.

Wherever we are in this Catholic adventure, we are not at the destination until we are in Heaven.

That’s true for the outsider who wanders into a parish hall for the first time, and it is true for the practicing Catholic who has been in the pew for decades. Wherever the Truth finds us (and the Holy Spirit is always behind that, with the Church providing the materials, the road, and the mechanisms), it finds us in order to move us. Only we can screw that up, by choosing to stay where we are in the Catholic life.

A lifeless, directionless, inert evangelization strategy doesn’t move anybody to holiness. It only changes the wrapper, not what’s inside. Same with a comfortable, familiar Catholic life. An active evangelizer has to remain aware of that, and we, as practicing Catholics, should likewise keep watch and stay alert. Remember to keep moving forward and to let the truth move us closer to our eternal destiny.

PAID MEMBERS, there’s an Afterthoughts segment for you! Linked below

Afterthoughts (9-minutes)

Paid Members Only - Explaining what I mean by “Truth is life-giving” and why. I briefly explain my thesis, and then go to three scripture passages that demonstrate Truth resulting in direction, and life (it does not “leave them where we find them)