Catholics Come Home

Yesterday, instead of the homily at Mass, we had a taped homily from Archbishop Sean Cardinal O'Malley introducing the "Catholics, Come Home" program the Archdiocese of Boston is launching, and asking for support for it. While I could gripe a little bit about the liturgicality of having a taped homily instead of a live homily, with concomitant complaints about using projectors and such devices in church, period, those are my own quixotic peccadilloes. What I want to write about here is the program being introduced. Again, I could talk about its probable effectiveness, and how it concerns me that television and radio advertising is the main thrust of the program, but that's not what interests me. What interests me is my own involvement.

Or, perhaps I should say, "lack of involvement." I am involved simply by reason of being a Catholic in the Archdiocese of Boston--or I should be. If I truly took to heart the principal of loving obedience to my pastor (that is, the ordinary of the diocese, my archbishop), I would be doing as he exhorted: inviting those Catholics who have fallen away from the faith to come back.

However... I'm not. Okay, it's true enough that the homily was yesterday and the only person I've seen since then is my girlfriend. It's also true that I live in a foreign city 3000 miles from home, and I don't actually know if I know any lapsed Catholics. However... it's also true that even if I did, my efforts would be timid indeed as far as encouraging them to come back to the faith goes. Timid, if in fact I had any efforts at all.

This isn't just me selling myself short. It's also a recognition of the fact that my immediate family all goes to Church, and that my friends, if they are Catholic, tended to formed at Church or in seminary--thus, they're still going. So I've never really had the opportunity to learn how to invite people back. It goes further than that, however. I'm not much good at inviting people to do anything. I'm petrified of imposing on people, and thereby making them reject or dislike me. Taken into the realm of the faith, this has a crippling effect on my ability or desire to evangelise. Put simply, I am far too polite to ever want to suggest that someone should abandon their faith (or lack thereof) and join mine--and this is despite the fact that all my friends know me as both opinionated and archetypally Catholic.

It's not a problem that's going to solve itself any time soon... and it makes me sad that I'm no longer in Alberta, because at least there I had strength in numbers. Jesus was quite right to send out his disciples two-by-two. In Boston, I have no partner, and indeed barely know any Catholics. That's something I need to work on, and as this is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, it seems a most appropriate intention.