Apologetics presents what it is that the Catholic Church teaches and the reasons for it, on an intellectual basis. But apologetics is only one component in the overall work of evangelization, which tries to bring people—ourselves and others—to a closer relationship with Jesus Christ. Building that relationship involves spirituality. Spirituality is the intended result, and it requires spirituality to make it happen. Apologetics is necessary, but we have to go beyond it.
That’s an overall, high-level summary. But allow me to make it clearer with some concrete examples.
Shortly after getting involved with the Catholic Evidence Guild, I began to realize that acceptance of objective truth is fundamental to everything we talk about. Objective truth—the fact that something is true of itself, regardless of what you or I think about it—is denied today on a widespread basis. Intellectuals deny it, and people who are not intellectuals fall victim to their arguments. Especially in the area of morality, people say, “What’s true for you is not true for me, so don’t try to impose your rules on me.”
I read a magazine article about Alice von Hildebrand, who taught philosophy for thirty years at Hunter College in New York City. The topic she managed to teach successfully in a hostile environment was that of objective truth. I wanted to find out how she had done it. I discovered that Dr. von Hildebrand would be giving a talk on another subject at a parish in Manhattan, so I went to hear her speak, in the hope of asking her afterward about objective truth. And I did succeed in talking to her for about thirty seconds.
After some pleasantries, I mentioned the magazine article and asked her how one teaches that truth is objective. Suddenly she got intense. “You pray, you pray to the Holy Spirit. By yourself you can do nothing. You are like Moses before Pharaoh—all you can do is stammer. Some days you can be brilliant, and it doesn’t get through to anyone. Other days you’re floundering, but they see the light.”
Quickly she ran down the intellectual argument: You cannot deny that truth is objective without implying that truth is objective, for without objective truth you cannot communicate with anyone nor have any purpose outside yourself.
So the intellectual arguments are necessary, but the spiritual effort is primary—prayer, the assistance of the Holy Spirit and, presumably, self-denial and almsgiving.
Let me give another example. Jean-Baptiste Chautard, in his book The Soul of the Apostolate, describes the transformation of two French convent schools for orphan girls and the effects upon the lives of the students after graduation (107–109).
Over a period of thirty years, they tracked the graduates of these two schools, both of which trained each girl in Catholic faith and practice and placed her in a good situation when she graduated at age twenty-one. Out of sixteen girls, five became part of the dregs of society and, of the other eleven, only one remained a truly practicing Catholic.
After a period of years the mother superior was changed in one school, and later the chaplain in the other. In each case there was very soon a dramatic transformation in the spirit of the school. And the graduates all remained good Christians.
Why? Chautard maintains that initially the spiritual direction had not been supernatural, with the result that the action of grace was crippled. In his words, “The former superior in one case and the former chaplain in the other, although sincerely pious people, had had no deep interior life and, consequently, exercised no deep or lasting influence. Theirs was a piety of the feelings, produced by their upbringing and environment, made up exclusively of pious practices and habits, and giving them nothing but vague beliefs, a love without strength, and virtues without deep root. It was a flabby piety, all in the show-window, mawkish, mechanical” (108). Right away the change in spiritual leadership brought about a more meaningful approach to prayer and the sacraments and more lasting effects in the lives of the orphans.
It’s a concrete example of what Christ mentioned in the parable of the sower: Some seeds fell on rocky ground and sprung up immediately, but because they had no roots they just as quickly fell away when tribulation or persecution come their way. Chautard states unequivocally, “The interior life is the condition on which the fruitfulness of active works depends” (107).
These statements about the primacy of the spiritual life over the active apostolate apply especially to apologetics. This is true because apologetics by its very nature has limitations. The appeal of apologetics is entirely to the intellect. We in the Catholic Evidence Guild try to tell people what it is that the Catholic Church really believes and teaches and the reasons for it. We do this in order to clear away, if we can, some of the misunderstanding in so many people’s minds regarding Catholic teaching and practice.
Apologetics is a necessary part of the overall effort of evangelization. This does not mean that it’s sufficient. Ultimately, we’re trying to get people to act, and people do not act solely on the conclusions of their intellect. Intellectual conclusions are sterile, like theorems that we learn in high-school geometry. They don‘t lead people to action. Something else has to be added.
People act on the basis of what’s in their hearts, beliefs that they can get passionate about. These human passions can be good or they can be evil. There’s love and there’s hatred, there’s joy and there’s sadness, there’s desire and there’s fear, and there’s anger. These passions are involved in some way if people act. Such passions have to be kept under control so they don’t lead us to act in a way that’s contrary to our benefit, and the intellect provides that control. If the intellect does not come into play, we have people acting solely on the basis of what they feel like doing, and if too many people act solely on the basis of feeling or passion, then we have anarchy.
What happens in oral communication—in conversing with people or giving a street talk? The speaker makes noises with his or her mouth and vocal cords, and these noises go to the ear of the listener. Now, assuming they’re both using the same language, those noises from the mouth of one to the ear of the other convey words, ideas, concepts, from the mind of the speaker to the mind of the listener.
If the listener has the same level of prerequisite knowledge as the speaker, then whole sentences mean the same to both of them, and so the understanding of one becomes the understanding of the other. If the listener does not have that level of knowledge, then he does not g.asp what the speaker is saying, and there is no true understanding. The other possibility is that the listener does understand what the speaker is saying but disagrees and rejects the statements on intellectual grounds.
But it goes one step further. Whenever we talk about something in which values are involved (or should be involved), then the words chosen by the speaker, the manner of expression, the body language, all carry overtones due to the feelings he has about the issue under discussion. Those feelings are transmitted unavoidably from the heart of the speaker to the heart of the listener. Just as the listener may not be capable of having the same understanding of the speaker or may reject the statements on the intellectual level, similarly he may or may not be capable of interpreting those overtones of feeling. Or the listener’s own feelings may lead him to reject the communication on an emotional basis even though he understands it intellectually.
Apologetics, as I said earlier, addresses the intellectual level regarding what the Catholic Church believes and professes. It attempts to clear away common misunderstandings so that people can come to appreciate the Church’s truth. In some ways it’s like doing demolition work—not on the other person’s religion but on their incorrect understanding of the Catholic religion. Then the apologist must show the structure of Catholic teaching more clearly so the listener can compare it with his own religion and hopefully see the superiority of the Church.
That’s apologetics on the intellectual level. But, as I said, since talking about the Catholic faith involves values, those additional overtones that I mentioned—the quality and intensity of our feelings about what we are saying—become part of the communication. And that’s where spirituality enters. The apologist is not trying to win an intellectual debate; he’s trying to evangelize, to bring his listeners to a greater appreciation of Christ and the Church. So we must try constantly to deepen our own relationship with Christ in order to be able to communicate it effectively.
Still, the intellectual level has to be the starting point. Just as the intellect has to rein in unruly passions and feelings, it also provides the foundation for positive feelings. Without it one gets a purely emotional religiosity, the shallow kind that prevailed in the convent schools that Chautard described before the new leadership was introduced.
In the Catholic Evidence Guild, the primary role of the spiritual life is taken seriously. Members spend time studying and researching in order to prepare a talk to be given in public, but we reflect also on the relevance of the topic to our own spiritual needs and those of the audience. One member describes it as meditating on the topic of the talk.
For example, in giving a talk about the existence of hell, one can emphasize the mercy of God and show that the purpose of hell is to serve as a fallback for those who deliberately reject or ignore that mercy. In speaking about the purpose of life, one can point out that not only are we obligated to strive for that purpose but that achieving one’s purpose in life is the only way a person can realize his own true happiness.
Furthermore, from the earliest days of the Guild in England, all speakers have been committed to spending an hour praying before the Blessed Sacrament for each hour that they present a talk in public.
What one finds is that just as prayer and other elements of the spiritual life are necessary for effective evangelization, the study, preparation, and delivery of apologetic talks provides food for the spiritual life. The speaker becomes more convinced, more strongly motivated, in the practice of his own Christian life, which naturally carries forward into the conviction he can bring to the street talks.
In this respect you might say that the name Catholic Evidence Guild understates the purpose of the organization. Evidence is what an attorney might present in court on behalf of a client—”This is what the record shows.” We try to present the evidence, yes—but more than that we, and all Catholics, must be constantly trying to be witnesses to the faith. Witness is the testimony of one who is convinced, “This is what I believe and profess because I have found out for myself.”
There’s an important role for all Catholics regarding apologetics. We quoted Dom Chautard as saying that the interior life is the condition for the fruitfulness of active works. This interior life of prayer and self-denial is the work of every Catholic. We in the Catholic Evidence Guild are trying to recruit additional members, but we also realize that not everyone can take an active role in this type of apologetics. Yet everyone can, and should, pray and offer sacrifices for the success of evangelization efforts.
I described earlier the obstacles to people’s acceptance of the message we try to convey. When I mention to people that I’m a member of the Catholic Evidence Guild, they often say, “Oh, you must be very thick-skinned to put up with all the heckling you get.” Actually, what a speaker really needs is a thick skin for being ignored. Very few people stop to listen and ask questions. We know that people often have more immediate things to do, but that’s not the case on a Saturday afternoon in New York City’s Washington Square Park.
The reasons they ignore us here are probably threefold. First, many do not believe in objective truth, so why bother to listen and discuss? Second, everyone knows that Catholics are all crazy, so why listen to what they have to say? Third, many people are caught up in a destructive lifestyle and don’t want to hear anything that might lead to a conclusion that they need to make an unwelcome change. Unruly passions or addictions can throw up a huge smokescreen in front of intellectual truth.
The purpose of our going out into public places is not just to give a talk on Catholic teaching but also to listen to the questions and comments of people who will talk with us. That’s how the things really on their mind come to the surface so that we can deal with them. But we cannot deal directly with the people who don’t listen to us and talk with us. Only prayer and self-denial can make that happen. We members of the Evidence Guild can offer our prayers and sacrifices, but we need the backup of many other people who will pray and make sacrifices also for this intention.
So it’s not just a case of praying that we will say the right things at the right time, to sow the seed properly. It’s also a case of asking God to prepare the soil to receive the seed, that people will listen, discuss, and accept.
One striking instance that I recall took place one afternoon in Washington Square Park. Two of us were talking with a Jewish fellow who knew a bit about Catholic beliefs. He admitted that a man named Jesus Christ was crucified on Calvary, but he could not accept Jesus as Messiah or as being divine. Then somehow he mentioned one of the last words of Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).
Suddenly it occurred to me to ask him, “Do you realize what you’re saying? Those are the opening words of Psalm 22. All the Jews who were there at the Crucifixion recognized that. And imbedded in that psalm is a description of what’s happening—the people deriding him, wagging their heads; the dogs at his feet; the nails through his hands and feet; his parched tongue; their dividing their garments among them and for his vesture casting lots. Written by King David, a thousand years earlier, and happening in front of them right now“
This loquacious man became speechless. I don’t know where it ultimately led him. The point I’d like to make is that there is no way I could have planned it. He had to say exactly what he said for me to react the way I did, but there’s no way I could have foreseen what he would say, much less set him up for it. As Alice von Hildebrand said, it takes prayer and the Holy Spirit.
I hope I’ve convinced you that apologetics is necessary to deal with the intellectual side of objections to Catholic belief, and it requires study. But it is secondary to the interior spiritual life.