Make Converts To Catholicism? That Is Now Controversial.
(ANALYSIS) For centuries, missionaries from the Church of Rome ventured into foreign lands, often risking their lives while seeking converts to Christianity.
Their motivation came from the Gospel of St. Matthew: “Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’”
The question, according to Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, prefect of the Vatican's powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is how should this commission be accomplished in a changing world.
“The Church considers herself the disciple and missionary of this Love: missionary only insofar as she is a disciple, capable of being attracted constantly and with renewed wonder by the God who has loved us and who loves us first,” wrote Fernandez in “Venite ad Me (‘Come to Me’): Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in an Epochal Change.”
The cardinal's text was as complex as its title, because he then added: “The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by ‘attraction’’’ through which “the Church ... accomplishes every one of her works in spiritual and practical imitation of the love of her Lord.”
The controversial word "proselytize" is defined by Dictionary.com as “to convert (someone) from one religious faith to another.”
But many modern Catholics argue that the term suggests pressuring, even tricking, potential converts.
Thus, Cardinal Jean-Paul Vesco of Algeria recently told a Belgian Catholic publication that “we are ... not a proselytizing Church, not a Church that is there to convert, but a Church that aspires to be one of the components of this people." He added that "in monotheistic religions, proselytism is poison, because it implies considering the other person's religion false.”
This drew a blunt response from one of America's most outspoken bishops.
“When St. Paul came to Corinth or Athens or Thessalonica, his purpose was not to listen or to form a discussion group,” noted Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, via social media. He is also the founder of Word on Fire, a global Catholic apologetics ministry.
“Quite obviously,” he added, “no one thinks that this work of evangelization should be done in a browbeating, overbearing, or disrespectful manner (proselytization), but for God's sake, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. If I really thought that the Church does not exist to bring people to Christ, then I would resign and get an honest job.”
Cardinal Vesco responded by insisting that his views reflected the teachings of recent popes — St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis and Leo XIV. His bottom line: “Yes, I believe that the believers of the three monotheistic religions have better things to do than to seek to convert one another. Rather, they should accept that there is a measure of what they cannot know about the faith of the other.”
In this debate, it's important that the French-born Vesco serves as the archbishop of Algeria, a north African land that is 99% Muslim. According to U.S. State Department reports, its few Christian congregations live under laws that criminalize blasphemy, offending Islam and “proselytizing by non-Muslims.”
Cardinal Vesco can also quote a pivotal document from Vatican II.
“The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator,” states the “Lumen Gentium (Light of the Nations)” text. “In the first place amongst these there are the Muslims, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind. Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath ... and as Saviour wills that all men be saved.”
Meanwhile, Cardinal Fernandez — days after the release of “Venite ad Me” — told the Spanish news outlet Religion Confidencial he was disappointed by the apathetic response to his work among church leaders.
The problem, he explained, was that progressive bishops and theologians are primarily “passionate about structural changes and dialogue with society" and, thus, are not interested in encouraging a "personal encounter with Christ." On the other side, he said, doctrinal conservatives appear to be fixated on the "transmission of sexual morality.”
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Terry Mattingly lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. He is a retired mass media professor at Milligan University.