If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen me mention this last week, but I wanted to go a little deeper on some Catholics saying that if a person doesn’t like a teaching of the Church, they should leave.
It kind of reminds me of that scene from Mean Girls where Gretchen tells Regina that she can’t sit with them because Regina is wearing sweatpants on a Monday. Regina explains that sweatpants are the only thing that fits her, hoping to get some compassion from her friends. Instead, they make her leave the lunch table.
Obviously, Church teachings are much more important than arbitrary rules about pants, but it is still extremely cruel to see someone who is struggling and tell them they aren’t welcome.
As Christians, we should want to lead all to Christ and be willing to walk with those who are struggling.
Note: in this post, I’m going to talk about being welcome in the Church in a general sense. Reception of the Eucharist is a whole other topic that I am not going to address.
God’s Law is Good
Jesus summed up man’s duties toward God in this saying: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This immediately echoes the solemn call: “Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.” God has loved us first. The love of the One God is recalled in the first of the “ten words.” The commandments then make explicit the response of love that man is called to give to his God.
CCC 2083
Our desire to uphold God’s law is a good one. Our culture is becoming increasingly secularized, and we want to make sure the Church remains as Christ intended, including things like moral teachings.
We know that God’s laws are intended for our own good. Through obedience to them, we find true freedom in pursuit of God. God’s laws are something to delight in because they stem from Love.
We also know that Christ established His Church with the guidance of the Holy Spirit
I think nearly every Christian can understand intellectually that the laws are for our own good while also struggling to actually follow them in practice.
Struggling Isn’t Sinful
When a child is asking their parents “why,” they aren’t necessarily trying to disobey. In the same way, when we as children of God struggle with a teaching from the Father, it doesn’t automatically mean that we’re sinning.
Struggling with our faith is part of being Christian. There are so many Biblical examples and so many examples of Saints struggling with their faith at some point in their life. Jesus articulated this feeling on the cross.
At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mark 15:34
I’ve written about this before both from the perspective of someone having doubts and from the perspective of someone who recognizes a lack of charity in how we respond to people with doubts. Even if someone is outright defiant, we should still try to walk with them.
Other Christians Aren’t Our Enemies
In our sincere desire to proclaim the Gospel, we sometimes forget that the real enemy is Satan. When we see people trying to advocate for things that seem unloving or things that don’t seem in line with the Gospel and Church teaching, it’s easy to fall into an us vs. them mentality.
We need to recognize that every Christian (or almost every Christian) believes what they do out of a desire for all to experience the love of God.
The vast majority of people aren’t trying to undermine the Church or punish people or do something harmful. At the end of the day, we all want to share the love of God.
In the brokenness of our world, people are bound to be mistaken on the best way to achieve this and may even stray from the truth. But pushing people away is not the answer. The answer is Love.
Relationship First
I say this as someone who makes this mistake frequently: we need to stop putting rules before relationship. That doesn’t mean we need to do away with rules together; on the contrary, relationships thrive with rules in place. But if we want to respond to those who are struggling with teachings of the Church, we need to start with relationships: relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and more importantly, a relationship with God.
The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love.
Roman Catechism, Preface 10
Relationships with Eachother
Made for Love
Every single person is made in the image and likeness of God. We should treat them with love, respect, and dignity.
We become children of God when we are baptized. This is the most important aspect of our identity.
The way we treat people should make them feel like part of this family.
Love your Neighbor
Our actions need to start with love. Love must be part of everything we do. We must end with love.
Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.
Romans 13:8-10
“If I . . . have not charity,” says the Apostle, “I am nothing.” Whatever my privilege, service, or even virtue, “if I . . . have not charity, I gain nothing.” Charity is superior to all the virtues. It is the first of the theological virtues: “So faith, hope, charity abide, these three. But the greatest of these is charity.”
CCC 1826
The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which “binds everything together in perfect harmony”; it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice. Charity upholds and purifies our human ability to love, and raises it to the supernatural perfection of divine love.
CCC 1827
Proclaiming the Truth
Yes, it’s true that eventually we will need to walk with our neighbors through those difficult teachings. Part of loving our neighbor involves sharing the truth and providing correction.
The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction; it is benevolence; it fosters reciprocity and remains disinterested and generous; it is friendship and communion:
Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward it, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest.
CCC 1829
Of course, the truth must be shared with love. It shouldn’t be a gloating “haha, I know better than you.”
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
Love must be the driving force behind proclaiming the truth.
Simply Put
We need to evangelize people before we try to catechize them.
Several years ago, I attended a seminar on missionary discipleship. Something that stuck with me was the speaker’s encouragement to allow ourselves to be comfortable with error. Yes, we ultimately want to bring people to the truth, but it starts with a relationship. We will change more hearts if there is first a genuine relationship centered on Christ’s love.
More importantly, we should want others to have a relationship with Him.
Relationship with God
It’s difficult to accept His laws if we don’t first understand who He is. When we see God as our savior, a friend, a loving father, our hearts are more receptive to His laws.
Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This is why Christ the Redeemer ‘fully reveals man to himself.’
Pope St. John Paul II
We were made to be in relationship with God.
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.
CCC 1
God loves us immensely.
He is Love.
When we see the source of all the Church teaches is Love, we can embrace theses teachings joyfully, recognizing that in them lies true freedom. Of course, there will always be challenges, but when we start with a loving relationship with God, we have the strongest foundation.
And as Christians, we should want everyone else to encounter Love.
If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him.
Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)
My Experience Asking Questions
I’ve shared the story of a conversation I had with God on several occasions.
It basically went like the following.
Me: God, what am I supposed to do here? I feel so lost.
God: You are mine.
Me: Ok, that’s nice, but what am I supposed to do?
God: You are mine. That is enough.
In that moment, I was full of questions and doubt and confusion. God’s response to me wasn’t one of condemnation for feeling lost. His response was one of love. He was calling me closer to Him in my time of uncertainty. God called me as me – the doubt-filled, lost, confused me.
He calls us to Him in our imperfections so he can perfect us.
That loving invitation from God enabled me to address some of my doubts and struggles.
God is the answer to many of our biggest questions, but if we push people away during their imperfection until they find the answers, they may never actually find the answer – God Himself.
Don’t Push People Away
I hope at this point it is clear why it’s not Christ-like to tell people “if you don’t like a teaching, leave.”
God loves us exactly as we are and wants us to come to Him.
Struggling frequently is not sinful, and we as Christians should lovingly walk with our sisters and brothers in Christ through those doubts, concerns, and uncertainties.
God’s love is transformative. By encountering Him and experiencing His inexplicable love, we are more receptive to following Him and His teachings.
But there’s also a practical reason we shouldn’t say “if you don’t like it, leave” – people will. They’ll go to whatever sect will validate their erroneous beliefs or they’ll lose faith altogether. Your callous remarks could be a contributing factor for someone leaving the Church. Your indifference could be one of the reasons a person loses faith.
When you see a person struggling with a teaching of the Church (or their faith altogether), please don’t push them away.
Don’t say “if you don’t like it, just leave.”
Walk with them lovingly towards God who is Love and Truth.
Pray for them. Listen to them. Love them as Christ does.
There is a time to share the truth, to defend it, to fight for it. That time is not when an individual is brokenhearted, trying to follow God but having doubts, and feels lost and unwelcome. In that moment, we need to make certain they know how tremendously God loves them and demonstrate His love with our own actions. The truth will follow.
