I recently went to see some evangelical friends that I have not seen for twenty years. The last time they saw me I was a fellow evangelical Christian. They were absolutely shocked that I was now a Catholic. We had a very interesting discussion. Before we parted, one of my friends, an ex-Catholic, said “Paul, you are first Catholic I ever met who was on fire for God. All the other Catholics were not on fire for God at all! That is why I left.” I did not realize it at the time, but this was his last argument, to him the strongest argument, against Catholicism.

 

What he was saying was that I was an anomally, an exception to the rule which merely proves that rule. Catholicism to my friend is dead, dry legalism. That is what he saw in all the Catholics he experienced. He now sees me, who as a Catholic has a relationship with God. His argument is that I am not a typical example of what Catholicism is all about, since I am just one person. All the others truly reflect Catholicism. Is this a valid argument? Should we judge what Catholicism is by the majority of Catholics we see? I think not.

 

Evangelical Christians take up only a minor segment of Protestant Christianity. There are all kinds of Protestants – Lutheran, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Unitarians, etc. Within any Protestant denomination there is, according to evangelical Christians, a small remnant of genuine “born-again” Christians. Most of Christianity is made up of merely professing Christians, not the “born-again” kind. I recall when Jimmy Carter ran for president, and said he was a born again. The media was all abuzz about this. What is this “born-again”? They never heard it before this.

 

But evangelical, born-again Christians do not consider themselves to be an anomally. Instead, they consider their brand of Christianity to be what Christianity is all about. To them, they have captured the essence of Christianity.

 

A wise Catholic friend once told me that there is a tendency to compare the best of Protestantism to the worst of Catholicism. They look at the worst of Catholicism (the Crusades, the Inquisition, the child-molestation scandal, the nominal Catholics who do not even bother to go to church) and they compare that to the best of Protestantism (the born-again Christians who are on fire for God). But that is an unfair criticism. We should compare the best of Catholicism (the Catholic saints throughout the ages, EWTN, Bishop Futon Sheen, Father John Corapi) to the best of Protestantism (John Wesley, Billy Graham, “born-again” Christians). Or we should compare the worst of Catholicism (already mentioned) to the worst of Protestantism (the Salem witch trials, slavery among Protestants before the Civil War and intense racism afterward in the Bible-belt South, the nominal Protestants who do not bother to go to church). If we compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges,  Catholicism comes up just as well as Protestantism, maybe even a little better.

 

Yes, my brand of Catholicism is not what a person typically sees among Catholics. And the brand of Christianity shown by born-again Christians is not what a person sees among mainstream Protestantism. There has been a strand of Catholics throughout the centuries that have shared my vision of what it means to be a Catholic. This vision has been maintain throughout history by most of the Church’s popes, bishops, and priests, by its religious orders who have remained faithful to the magisterium, by its saints, by EWTN, and by laypeople who are quietly serving God in His Church. So I am not alone.