Patrick Madrid gives Catholics a handle on how to explain, defend their faith

Renowned author, speaker and radio/television host Patrick Madrid explains apologetics. Carol Baass Sowa | Today's Catholic

By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic

SAN ANTONIO • “What can we do to get people to take a second look at the Catholic Church?” With that question, author, speaker and radio/television host Patrick Madrid was off and running at his apologetics seminar March 13 at St. Matthew Catholic Church. Whether dealing with a Catholic who has left the church, one who is wavering in their faith or a non-Catholic who views Catholicism skeptically, Madrid offered plenty of ways for Catholic attendees to open up their faith to others.

People leave the church for a variety of reasons, he said. Some drift away because they become bored with “the routine,” others because of a moral issue (such as contraception) and still others leave because they feel that something is missing, a sense of “not being fed.” (The evangelical mega churches the latter gravitate to, he noted, are populated largely by former Catholics — including some of these churches’ pastors.)

Some leave the church because they are told something by a non-Catholic that seems to contradict Catholic teaching. As an example, Madrid brought up door-to-door missionaries quoting Mt 23:9, where Jesus says “call no man on earth father,” to disprove Catholics using this title for priests. “These kinds of conversations can introduce these types of questions,” he said, “which can lead to doubts, which can lead to a crisis of faith.”

Madrid then set about educating the audience that packed the McDonald Center at St. Matthew on mistakes Catholics make when sharing the faith, admitting at the outset that “I come here tonight as an expert in this field because I have made every mistake that I am about to share with you.”

One of the biggest mistakes, he said, is not sharing your faith. “We Catholics have a tendency,” he observed, “for being quiet about our faith in a public sense.” On the other hand, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and many Protestant churches do much public promotion of their faith, including literature and commercials.

Instead of avoiding discussions on religion to be polite, Catholics need to stop being shy about sharing their faith with those with whom they come in contact, Madrid said. He noted there are times when even he doesn’t feel like chatting about religion, but added we must be willing, like St. Peter, to get out of the comfort zone of our “fishing boat” and “move beyond the comfortable confines of Catholic anonymity.”

He noted we do not come into contact with the people we meet in our daily lives by accident. “God arranges everything such that our families, people in our social circles, people you sit next to on an airplane, whoever they may be, they’re put there by God’s providence,” he said, “so that there may be an opportunity to help share the truth with that person.”

Another hang-up for Catholics is apologetics, he observed, noting we should follow the words of St. Peter, “Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Even something as simple as opening the Catechism of the Catholic Church and pointing out the church’s teaching there may set someone’s mind at rest about why Catholics believe as we do.

He stressed the importance of being willing to share with non-Catholic acquaintances why we believe in such things as papal authority, purgatory or praying to Mary. “It may very well be that this person is far closer to the Catholic Church than you might imagine,” he said, “and this stumbling block, this thing that’s preventing him from moving closer, if it could be explained to him it would cease being a stumbling block and would become instead a stepping stone.”

The second reason we must share our faith, he said, is because we owe people the fullness of truth. “As lay Catholics,” he said, we have a special obligation to speak the truth, “including in those areas that might seem a little bit dicey.” He added, “You’d be surprised how many people will wind up saying, ‘You know, that makes a lot of sense. I never understood that before.’”

One simple thing we can do, he noted, is get little business cards printed up with your name and parish and listing three or four helpful Web sites, such as Catholic.com (the Catholic Answers Web site), CatholicsComeHome.org and the EWTN Web site, NewAdvent.org.
Another mistake he mentioned is Catholics not preparing to share the faith through study. The average church-going Catholic, he related, does not have much religious education past confirmation, which is a problem as the world has changed dramatically. “There are more and more difficult challenges that face us, things that our grandparents never had to worry about,” he said, such as fetal stem cell research or cloning. “So we need to have a better, more in- depth knowledge of the Catholic faith,” he said, referring to this as getting a Roboflex for the mind, its two primary parts being sacred Scripture and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Catholics also make the mistake of not preparing for the work of evangelization through prayer and the sacraments, which help us grow in holiness. He added that perhaps our priests have “not really preached enough hellfire from the pulpit” and told of a liberal southern California parish where Father John Corapi, SOLT, had said Mass one evening as a visiting priest.

Father Corapi startled his Catholic audience by calmly stating there are only two kinds of people in the world — winners and losers — and that most of those present were losers and headed for hell without even realizing it. He proceeded to tick off several “things that California laid-back Catholics do,” such as viewing Internet pornography, cheating on their spouse and using contraception. He added they were then compounding these mortal sins by not receiving confession while still receiving Communion regularly at Mass. The churchgoers sat there in stunned silence, but Madrid noted that not everybody went up to receive Communion that day.

Later, Madrid decided to use this story in a presentation he was giving in Reno, Nev., to a group of high-powered Catholic business people. Afterwards, a successful-looking woman came up to him and admitted she was much like the people who had been in Father Corapi’s audience and asked for advice. This incident taught Madrid “the awesome power of telling the truth,” even if it discomforts some, and also that we are fooling ourselves if we think we will make it to heaven based on being “nice people” but not following what the church teaches.

Another mistake in our faith-sharing, Madrid said, is not listening with hearts as well as ears, noting Bishop Fulton Sheen’s ability to intuit unspoken messages by truly listening to the speaker. Madrid himself listened to a lady who had an abortion at 19 but left the church as no one would advise or talk with her about this afterwards, causing her to become quite bitter towards the church.

Lastly, we must not make the mistake of trying to do everything ourselves, he advised the audience. “We have to let the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting,” he said, observing that we are often like sowers of seeds that will, unknown to us, bear fruit later.

He suggested getting two books of his: Search and Rescue: How to Bring Your Family and Friends Into, or Back Into, the Catholic Church (to prepare for sharing the faith) and Surprised By Truth 2 (to give to non-Catholics or those who have left the church).

Madrid also offered some practical information, advising purchasing a Bible you can mark up and using page tabs. He noted that Catholics often know more Scripture than they think, having been exposed to it in Mass, with daily Mass-goers hearing virtually all the New Testament and most of the Old Testament during the church’s three-year cycle of readings.

For those who quote Scripture refuting calling priests “father,” he recommended highlighting I Cor 3:10, in which St. Paul refers to his congregation as their father and cited other passages from Scripture as well.

In discussing the Eucharist with non-Catholics who believe Jesus was not speaking literally when referring to the bread and wine as becoming his body and blood, Madrid recommended asking these people how they know their interpretation of Jesus’ words are correct. He personally refuted two evangelical Protestants by asking them to interpret a written sentence: “I never said you stole money.” He pointed out to them how the meaning could change depending on which of the six words was emphasized when speaking it.

What words say on paper does not guarantee you know the intention of the writer, he said. However, Catholics know the meaning intended by Jesus through tradition, the handing down of information by his disciples, which has continued through the centuries. He noted St. Paul saying in I Corinthians, “... you hold fast to traditions, just as I handed them on to you.”

A final argument is asking those who debate religion with you to show where in Scripture it mentions one must go by Scriptures alone, adding there is no mention of this in the Bible.

In the question and answer session that followed, Madrid brought up that there is nothing in the Catholic Catechism contradictory to the Bible, noting that the church was “preaching and teaching” years before the first words of the New Testament were written down.

He refuted the Rapture theory, pointing out how the Bible verses in question clearly refer to the end of the world and not a pre-coming of Christ, and provided a defense to use with atheists and skeptics who say Catholic oral tradition cannot be trusted as it probably was garbled over the years. St. Polycarp, he noted, personally knew John the Apostle and transmitted what he learned from him to his own student, St. Irenaeus. In addition, there are the historical writings on the early days of Christianity by disinterested third parties of that time, including Jews and pagans.

As for a concise apologetic for purgatory, Madrid, quoted 1 Cor 3, starting with verse 10, in which St. Paul speaks of fire testing the foundation upon which a person has built, with those whose foundation is “burned up” suffering loss, but being purified by God’s fiery love till no vestiges of sin remain.