11/01/2004 The Pleasures and Perils of a Catholic Apologetics Apostolate. (Part 1)
Dave Armstrong
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-pleasures-and-perils-of-a-catholic-apologetics-apostolate https://www.catholic.com/profile/dave-armstrong "Not that I complain of want; for I have learned, in wh**ever state I am, to be content.
I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want.
I can do all things in him who strengthens me."
(Phil. 4:11–13).
My wife and I looked at each other with that expression of concern that husbands and wives share in inverse proportion to how much income they happen to be blessed with. This happened just last week, as it has many times over the course of our marriage. Being in ministry or having an apostolate (as Catholics generally describe it) presents its own unique financial, emotional, and psychological challenges, especially for a married man with four children.
Almost every time when we get to the point of worrying out loud about where the next dollar will come from and how we will pay the latest bill due, one or the other of us will hearken back to what God has done in the past when we were about to give up, and all hope of financial survival—that is, while being in full- or part-time ministry—seemed lost.
We can bear witness to the fact that God has provided our needs. We’re not in danger of cracking the Forbes 500, but our bills have been paid, we have a decent house, we’re healthy, and our family is clothed and fed.
Time and again when we were at the brink of discouragement and disenchantment, money would come from somewhere, and we would feel ashamed at our anxiety and lack of faith.
It’s happened so many times that we marvel at it and thank God for his tender mercies. I wish we had written all of these "saved in the nick of time" occurrences down. It would be quite a story.
Today it remains true that God provides the basic needs of his children. I am presupposing, of course, that able-bodied men and women are doing some sort of work by way of making a living.
(cf. 1 Tim. 5:8).
That said, our Lord Jesus himself, in his Sermon on the Mount, taught us that we should not be anxious about food, clothing, or the troubles that may come "tomorrow"
(cf. Matt. 6:25–34).
The Catholic Church is oriented to celibate priests and nuns doing ministry and dev****g themselves to the Lord with a minimum of distraction (cf. 1 Cor. 7).
That is as it should be. Praise God for all these wonderful men and women who are "married to the Lord."
We should all pray for them daily and express our gratitude for their work as often as we can. They are engaged in a heroic level of commitment for the sake of the gospel and the Church.
Yet there is also a definite place for lay ministry (of both single and married men and women) in the Catholic Church.
The Second Vatican Council placed particular emphasis on the laity in its Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People
(Apostolicam Actuositatem). (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity)
www.vatican.va/.../ii.../vat-ii_decree_19651118_apostolicam-actuositatem_en.htmlThe following passage provides a good capsule summary of the thrust of the Council’s teaching about the laity:
"Since, in our own times, new problems are arising and very serious errors are circulating that tend to undermine the foundations of religion, the moral order, and human society itself, this sacred synod earnestly exhorts laymen—
Each according to his own gifts of intelligence and learning—to be more diligent in doing what they can to explain, defend, and properly apply Christian principles to the problems of our era in accordance with the mind of the Church"
(AA 2:6).
The Church has been blessed with great lay teachers and ministers, especially in the area of apologetics.
In the last century, Frank Sheed and the Catholic Evidence Guild immediately come to mind, as do G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
The growing, thriving apologetics movement in the Church today is populated by many lay apologists.
Some are theologically trained former pastors (Scott Hahn and Marcus Grodi);
Some are theologically trained non-pastors (Karl Keating);
Some are academics in other fields but also very sk**led apologists (as the Anglican C. S. Lewis was), such as Peter Kreeft (philosophy), Jimmy Akin (philosophy), and Thomas Howard (English).
Still others have no significant formal theological education (Mark Shea, Steve Ray, and many others; I fall into this category).
So there are differences in qualifications and areas of strength and specialties, but all of these men are laymen.
I hasten to add that many of the current top apologists are priests and religious (Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Fr. Peter Stravinskas, Fr. Benedict Groeschel, Mother Angelica).
To the extent that all of these writers and teachers are engaged in spreading the faith and the gospel of salvation and the message of the fullness of Christianity found in the Catholic Church, they are engaged in ministry and an apostolate of some sort.
Charting the Course
How does one determine such a vocation?
I think it is largely like anything else in life:
One finds that certain activities are enjoyable and interesting, and, with the aid of prayer and spiritual discernment and the counsel of others, discovers that this might be an area to be pursued as one’s occupation.
I knew that I was called to a ministry of apologetics and evangelism in 1981, my last year of college. I started reading a lot and sharing what I was learning.
I was a Protestant then, but the dynamics of vocation work the same way: I was being called by God to do a certain thing that not everyone can do.
Soon I was involved in counter-cult ministry (my area of concentration was Jehovah’s Witnesses), campus outreach, and pro-life work.
I left a job as a quality-control technician at an auto-related company in 1985 to engage in campus ministry full time. I had been married for six months.
This is the sort of course of action that makes people suspect mental illness or a serious case of financial irresponsibility.
But Peter left his nets as a fisherman, and Matthew forsook his dreaded tax-collecting. It all depends on what God is calling you to do.
I did the so-called "radical" thing and followed my vocation as I discerned it, but does that mean that everything was fine from then on and that no difficulties occurred because I was right smack dab in the middle of God’s will (as we Evangelicals were fond of saying in one way or another)?
Of course not.
Again, we observe the instructive model of Paul.
He certainly was called to be the greatest evangelist of all time and founder of several local churches, but he also was called to suffer for the Lord’s and the gospel’s sake.
(cf. 2 Cor. 12:7–10, Phil. 3:7–11).
In fact, my first attempt at full-time ministry proved traumatic and disappointing and, from a certain point of view, a total disaster. It lasted full-time less than two years.
Somehow I survived another two and a half years part-time until I finally gave up.
In the meantime we had been subjected to unjust accusations, misunderstandings, and almost general scorn (or so we perceived it) from our church community.
A lot of that was due to false but pervasive notions of what "success" in ministry entails.
In the Protestant world—shot through with pragmatist notions of "wh**ever works is right and good"—that boils down to lots of conversions as a direct result of one’s work, or growing churches. If you fail at these, your calling often becomes suspect.
Despite these trials, I remained convinced that I was called to this work. At the time of the disintegration of my Protestant campus and pro-life ministry in late1989, I had no idea what lay ahead in my life.
I felt like a total failure—I was 31, after all, and had no idea what else I wanted to do with my life—and was disillusioned, disenchanted, and cynical (not toward God but people in the Christian community).
It was a mystery. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t even try to. I went through an existential crisis of sorts.
But God is omniscient and outside of time, so he knew that I would convert to Catholicism almost exactly a year after that and start writing and doing apologetics in the Catholic Church and eventually—
After many more years of trials and frustrations and immense disappointments—become a published writer and author, able to make my writing available to all via the Internet.
I suspect that my own particular journey, filled with joys and equally strong disappointments, is rather typical.
(End Part 1)