How to Evangelise

 A friend of mine started reading about the Councils of Nicea and Trent.   He was so surprised at what he found that he put his findings on a post on Facebook.   He got so many positive responses from all over the world that he was shocked.   I told him that I had had discovered about two years books on the Early Fathers and my posts since then had had great interest from Catholics all over the world.   

Now I have recently been criticising a non approach to evangelisation from those who were given the task to enable it.   What is missing in their work is the teaching of the Early Church.   Somehow they support the critics of the Church who claim that the Catholic Church made up all their teachings throughout the ages and misled the Christian people, so what must be done is to refute these teachings and put the laity in closer union with Christ.    The Church they claim is just an institution and can change its teachings according to the times.    So if Jesus Christ said divorce was wrong yesterday, well the world has changed, and we must allow divorce 'to meet the needs' of the people.   By doing this they of course deny Christ, but that does not seem to matter.   Yet in the early Church the Early Fathers and Christians forbade divorce.    We have the evidence of St Justin who replying to a charge that Christians had orgies with their brothers and sisters and ate the flesh of a man called Christus, responded that they ate the flesh of Jesus in he form of bread.   They were not as Christians permitted to divorce, and many of the congregation remained chaste until old age.    Need I ask why our young people are not being taught this, that chastity and Christ go together?

On the doctrines of Our Lady, that she was the new Eve born like the old Eve without the fallen nature and 'full of grace', yet she remained faithful to God whereas Eve had not, was commented on by many of the Early Fathers.    Now the laity do not get this kind of evangelisation some would call it 'triumphalist', and yet it is the truth.   No doctrine of the Catholic Church was made up in the dark ages or the middle ages.

Getting back to my friend, he has discovered how to evangelise.    I pray that the Church will learn from him. 

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