A Call to Holiness

I hadn’t seen my cousins in nearly four years. My mother invited us to her house because some of our extended family were passing through Illinois on their way home from a pastors' conference. I looked forward to the reunion. I love my cousins. They are some of the most zealous Christians I know. They also happen to be Assembly of God ministers.

With great excitement, they told of their evangelization efforts during a recent trip to Malawi. (In case you are as geographically-challenged as I am, it’s in Africa). They’d raised enough money to take thousands of Bibles to the Malawian people.

I didn’t know much about Malawi or the Malawi people, so I listened with interest, thinking it’s great that the Gospel message is spreading through the world, and great that God was using my cousins to reach people for Christ.

But then it came.

My cousin and her husband said that Malawi was a Catholic country. (In actuality, sources say that the country is 55% Protestant, 20% Catholic, 20% Islamic and 5% other religions.) In their mind, being "a Catholic country" was an indication that the country needed to be evangelized.

My first thought was that my mother obviously didn’t tell them I’m Catholic now. Once I got over that surprise, I realized just how much their words stung me. The people of Malawi aren’t Christian? But they’re saying the country is Catholic? What were they implying?

I thought about it for awhile and came up with a couple of ideas. While the world judges Christians by how much we love, Protestants (especially evangelicals) judge the Catholic Church by how well Catholics live out the call to be holy. And many evangelicals simply don’t see Catholics being holy.

Here’s the disconnect. . .

Protestants know Catholics, but the Catholics they encounter don’t seem to be living out their baptismal vows. I don’t remember where I heard the statistic, but I recently learned that about thirty percent of Catholics are faithful to Church teaching. No wonder evangelicals don’t get a true picture of the Church. What can we do?

First, Catholic laity must live out the faith. Not just a few of them. Not even many of them. But most – if not all – of them. Why? Because the testimony of religious doesn’t even make the evangelical radar. I don’t know why it is so, but evangelical Protestants judge the Catholic Church by her laity. When they look at many Catholics, they don’t see the Gospel lived-out very well. And so, they make sweeping statements and perpetuate their preconceived misconceptions about Catholicism.

A Catholic layperson who is not a holy witness for the Catholic Church does incredible damage to the call to unity. You may bring your mortal sin to the confessional. You may offer your venial sin up in the Mass. But if you don’t go and try “to sin now more,” those outside the Church will never see that your faith is efficacious, and you will become a stumbling block to another’s conversion. They are watching. They are listening. The truth is many Catholics don’t act markedly different than people with no faith at all.

Second, you must know your faith. If you are living out your faith, Protestants will notice and they will engage you in dialogue. You will do a great disservice to our beloved Church if you do not know your faith and cannot accurately explain your faith.

To summarize, we will never convince our separated brethren that they should consider converting unless the laity lives what the Church teaches. Some Protestants won’t even think of us as Christians. Can you think of anything sadder than that?

Let us pray that we will be holy as Christ is holy and be prepared to share our faith with conviction, love, and solid apologetics.