How Catholics are like baseball fans

And how Twitter Catholics are like diehards and stats nerds

I recently read an insightful article over at Notre Dame’s Church Life Journal entitled “Misunderstanding the Rise of the Nones” by Phil Davignon, in which he challenges the popular notion that the key to evangelizing the nonreligious or to keeping young people in the faith is “presenting them with arguments that prevent them from believing misconceptions about the Church.”

Certainly in some cases this is true. Those of us familiar with the popular Catholic apologetics industry are likely familiar with countless conversion stories about people who “read their way into the Church” or who met Catholics who patiently explained the reasons why their ideas and prejudices about Catholicism were based on falsehoods. It is important that we help others (including other Catholics) understand the truths of Catholic doctrine and belief.

Those of us who are tied up in doctrinal debates and apologetics often fail to realize that only a tiny minority of people relate to their religion in this way. For most people, religious faith is primarily relational.

The statistical reality is that the most common reason someone enters the Church has very little to do with the finer points of doctrinal minutiae. It’s marriage. In a 2008 Pew Forum study, 72% of converts to Catholicism reported that marriage was “an important reason” for their decision and 68% said it was because they found a religion that the “liked more.” None of the other reasons surpassed 34%.

I think of my own father’s conversion to the faith at the age of 25, just months before marrying my mother. I was always told that his reasoning at the time was that it would be better, if they had children, for both parents to be the same religion. When he died 42 years later, he had spent most of his life as a Catholic — raising a family, praying with us every night, taking us to Mass every Sunday, volunteering at our Catholic school, and serving our parish as a lector and usher. On the final day of his life, he received the Sacraments of Penance, the Eucharist, and the Anointing of the Sick. He may not have been able to win an apologetics argument but he was a faithful Catholic by any measure.

We’ve heard the arguments about how “better catechesis” can help, and certainly it can’t hurt. But Davignon emphasizes that our response to the rise of secularism cannot make this our central focus for evangelization:

"The assumption that proper catechesis produces assent to Catholic doctrine-which thereby fosters Catholic identity and practice-assumes that people choose their actions and identity primarily on the basis of theological beliefs. Yet this widely held assumption has come under fire recently. James K. A. Smith's work on cultural liturgies draws on Augustine, cognitive psychology, and philosophies of action to challenge this myth: people's behavior is not driven primarily by what they know and believe but by what they love and imagine as good. This is not to say that beliefs are unimportant, but that what gives shape to human action is primarily one's imagination and enduring dispositions (habitus) rather than mere assent to doctrine."

Of course, understanding this point well underlies Pope Francis's entire message of evangelization. It is why he places so much importance on welcoming, accompanying, and listening. Debating isn’t going to get us as far as some people may hope. It's also why he prioritizes proclaiming the kerygma first, aiming to stimulate lifelong growth.

As he wrote in Evangelii Gaudium:

160. The Lord's missionary mandate includes a call to growth in faith: "Teach them to observe all that I have commanded you" (Mt 28:20). Hence it is clear that that the first proclamation also calls for ongoing formation and maturation. Evangelization aims at a process of growth which entails taking seriously each person and God's plan for his or her life. All of us need to grow in Christ. Evangelization should stimulate a desire for this growth, so that each of us can say wholeheartedly: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20).

161. It would not be right to see this call to growth exclusively or primarily in terms of doctrinal formation. It has to do with "observing" all that the Lord has shown us as the way of responding to his love. Along with the virtues, this means above all the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments, and the one that best identifies us as Christ's disciples: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 15:12)."

Remember, people have different types of personalities, and their responses to things will depend upon their personalities, interests, and personal experiences.

Let’s look at baseball fans, for example. Millions of people in the US love baseball. Some of these people are diehard fans, almost zealous in their devotion to a team and its players. Some baseball fans are stats geeks. They seem to know every player who ever lived, their career statistics, and every major baseball news story in the last century. Some people just like the experience of going to a game, even though they don’t really understand it. Some love rooting for the home team but can't name a single player. All of these people are baseball fans, but their reasons for loving the game can vary dramatically. And I daresay the diehards and stats geeks make up a very small minority of them.

The problem with, say, Catholic Twitter is that it is dominated by stats geeks and diehards who don't seem to realize that they are outliers in the Church. And that they always will be the outliers. Most committed Catholics have no clue what the diehards are even talking about.

Of course this is why having a pope is necessary. The Church doesn't work if everyone is expected to sift through all the different theories and opinions that diehard traditionalists or pedantic Neo-Thomists throw out there. "Stick with the pope" must suffice or we would have chaos.