How to Win a Convert

The Roman Catholic Church in the U.S. is not standing still. The 1948 Official Catholic Directory, published last week, showed that the number of U.S./- Catholics increased 807,524 during 1947. Total of U.S. Roman Catholics (according to the Directory): 26,075,697. The hierarchy was augmented by 25 new bishops (new total: 178). The priesthood grew by 1,277 to 41,747. Catholic colleges more than doubled their enrollment during the last two years--from 102,655 to 220,226. And the number of converts to Catholicism was record-breaking: 115,214.

Any good Catholic would attribute such statistics to the grace of God. But to make its members serve as instruments of God's grace, the Roman Catholic Church enjoins strict attention to hard work and know-how. A testament to both is a recently published compendium of the most successful proselyting techniques--Winning Converts (P. J. Kenedy & Sons; $3). Edited by the Rev. John A. O'Brien of the University of Notre Dame, it may give many a pointer to evangelizing Protestants as well as to Catholic priests and laymen.

Conversion by Mail. One of the experts quoted is the famed mail-order priest, Father Lester J. Fallon, whose correspondence courses of instruction in the Roman Catholic faith signed up 38,000 servicemen during the war. Father Fallon, who calls his technique "Getting Them Up on the Rectory Porch," points out that many a potential convert is embarrassed at approaching a priest, and would rather read about Catholicism at home before ringing the rectory doorbell. Paid advertising in newspapers and magazines is the best method of reaching such prospects, says Father Fallon.

"Effective convert-making requires systematic action," writes Jesuit Father John E. Odou, in explaining the organization called Convert Makers of America, of which he is director. Founded in 1944 to enlist the Catholic laity in proselytizing for their faith, the C.M.O.A. requires of its members that they correspond once a week with a priest-adviser on the problems and progress of their convert-making. "Trains, hotels, depots, beauty parlors are all crowded with potential converts," writes Father Odou. "That is why the slogan used by every C.M.O.A. is: 'Never let an opportunity slip.' "

Oh, for Disney! The Superior General of the missionary Paulist Fathers, the Very Rev. James F. Cunningham, writes of the Paulist "trailer missions" which since 1939 have been touring out-of-the-way parts of the U.S. some of which have never seen a Catholic before. Last summer the Paulists operated six trailer chapels through Texas, Tennessee, South Carolina, Missouri and Utah showing movies, preaching sermons, answering questions. Motion pictures are powerful aids in dramatizing religion, and the Catholics use them widely, but there is a shortage of good up-to-date material. One priest is quoted as exclaiming wistfully: "Oh, what Walt Disney could do with that Baltimore Catechism!"

Sharpest observations on contemporary convert-making come, as might be expected, from the most famed proselytizer of all, Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen. Modern converts, he writes, unlike those of past generations, have nothing to be converted from ("It is no longer Protestantism from which we convert souls; it is confusionism").

Some Sheen maxims:

P:"As Horace said: 'If you would make me weep, you must weep first.' Unless we cast a few sparks, how shall the convert catch fire?"

P:"No gratuity should ever be accepted from a convert, not even a stole fee at baptism. They will hear plenty of money sermons later on, and it would be a good idea to start them off with a memory of never having heard money from the priest who instructed them."

P:"Win an argument and you lose a soul. When a discussion becomes purely dialectical, we lose the purpose of instructions."

P:"There are three rules of dealing with all those who come to us: 1) KINDNESS, 2) KINDNESS, 3) KINDNESS."

/-Including Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands.

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