For many years in the past, I ran an RCIA program (which is now called OCIA). The goal of such a program is to work with adults who seek to become Catholic. One participant, who came from a multi-generational Mormon background, took a long time to discern whether or not he wanted to join the Catholic Church. He started the program, then left, then came back, and eventually he was received into the Catholic faith. At one point, he told me that he had been a Mormon missionary and he had learned all the tricks, as he put it, of getting someone to commit to something. He said, with great surprise, that I was not using any of those tricks in my program.
I told him that I took his words as a compliment. I would never want to trick anyone into believing the Catholic faith and joining the Catholic Church. We should continually invite, but we should never trick, manipulate, or coerce. Following Christ should always be a free choice. The same perspective on interacting with non-believers applies to all of us. However, as Catholics, we are very good about not tricking, manipulating, or coercing others to share our faith. But we are not so good about inviting others to Christ. Perhaps we are too shy or afraid or polite. Or we might think that it is not nice to try to change another person's life in some way. Perhaps, seeking to be nice, we have a live-and-let-live attitude, hoping to live in a world where everyone just goes about their business, encouraging each other in whatever life project they might be embarked upon. But there are two fundamental problems with that perspective.
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Image Credit: Musée Boyadjian MRAH 20 11 2011 Ex-voto 04, from Wikipedia Commons.
