When I was a young undergraduate student at a Pentecostal college in Florida, it was a different world then. In some ways it was more sound, simpler, and it was honestly not necessarily bad. In those years, I myself was a Pentecostal, and as part of my story now I want to share a couple of things I learned that would eventually place me on the road to being a devout Catholic.
Back in the early 1990s, many Evangelicals still were looking for converts (they don't do so as much today), and of course that led to some rather crazy things. For one thing, a technique that was pushed that I never completely understood or agreed with was popular then, and that was this whole idea of door-to-door evangelism. Essentially, I learned later that while some of my classmates were sincere about their faith, they were taught to share it wrong. There were groups of students who knocked on doors, handed out religious tracts on street corners to prostitutes and homeless derelicts, and many of them also tried to use rock music and sterile things aimed to evangelize kids to increase numbers. This was called "soul winning," and to be honest it was not really all that effective. Some of us - not just me - felt awkward about even doing this stuff, because it seemed like we were more like vacuum salesmen than future ministers. It turns out that a lot of it was a numbers game - churches wanted those impressive numbers to show how "on fire" they were, and for those who didn't get the numbers, they were looked at as being either spiritually weak or needing revival. In the ensuing decades, most mainstream Evangelicals began to abandon those practices, taking a more nuanced approach to gaining converts, and to be honest it actually helped them. There are still some holdouts - many extreme Fundamentalists for instance - who swear by those worthless "soul winning" programs, but for the most part it was seen as a fruitless endeavor. As a result, many of those Evangelical denominations are now in decline or they have plateaued, but to their credit they are focusing more on things that really matter, such as apologetics and discipling the people they actually have (that latter thing was something sorely neglected during the mass-conversion days - they were after numbers but not truly seeking to transform souls). I have been wanting to tackle this for a long time, and now as a Catholic I can without apology. So, let's begin.
I recall during my junior year as an undergrad at a very prestigious Pentecostal university where I would graduate from that there was this focus on "missions." I was a Missions major myself then, but in all honesty I found many of their efforts futile. I remember one time for instance during a chapel service when the Intercultural Ministries group I used to be part of staged this really dumb presentation. They marched out holding up signs of groups they wanted to "evangelize," and perhaps two of the most offensive I saw were "Byzantine Catholic" and "Coptic." They were encouraging sheep-stealing to pump numbers! I visited some of these with them when I was part of the Intercultural Ministries team, and I even rose to the rank of assistant leader of the team. However, my focus when I went to another Christian church of some nature was to dialogue, not to convert - to me, these people were already Christians. So, when we visited a Coptic or an Eastern-Rite Catholic parish for instance, I would wear my clerics as a licensed member of my Pentecostal denomination. As a result, I made actual friends, and the people were more receptive to me. I also participated in their Masses and liturgies as well (at least as much as I could, because being non-Catholic then I was not able to partake of Sacraments or anything like that). This got me some angry reactions from some of the more staunch of my classmates, but others actually would look at me and marvel as to ask "how did you do that?" My answer was always the same - these people who graciously let us visit and attend their liturgies were not some bunch of heathens, but they were our brothers and sisters in Christ and I saw them as such. We did visit non-Christian religious groups too though - I recall going to a synagogue, a mosque, and a Buddhist temple for instance. Some of the more overzealous classmates tried to convert these people in their own temples! I never did - I was there to observe, dialogue, and learn about who they were, although I disagreed fundamentally with their belief systems. That likewise gained me some respect too. I even remember one time they had a group of students visiting an Episcopal church as a potential "mission field," and there are a couple of things to say about that. For one, I of all people am not a fan of ECUSA, as that body has essentially apostatized from its original faith - the ones who preserved the Anglican tradition better were the Anglican Catholic Church I was once involved with, which was definitely Christian. Secondly, although a very liberal denomination, Episcopalians still at least had a veneer of Christianity, and in all honesty back in that day many of the local Episcopal parishes were still quite sound and they had good pastors - one was a bit hyper-charismatic, but I was used to that then too. Therefore, I always wondered why on earth our "Intercultural Ministries" group was trying to sheep-steal from other churches they saw as different from them? That conviction is one reason why I eventually dropped out of it. By the time I was in my senior year of undergrad work, I had already converted to a conservative form of high-Church Anglicanism and was no longer Pentecostal, the fruit of a long journey via my work with the Convergence Movement then. I graduated from that Pentecostal college an Anglican, and just over 4 years later I was received into the Catholic Church. Stuff like this is what led me on my journey, but there's more.
On occasion, in our Missions classes on campus our main professor, a very jolly and energetic Assemblies of God missionary who had served many years in Zimbabwe and who also had a genuine spirit of Christ, would invite speakers to class. Some were missionaries, others worked with different focus groups, and some were even nationals who for some reason or another were converted by the denomination this college was affilliated with. One of those people really got my knickers in a bunch one time when he visited, as the guy was frankly a moron. This man claimed to be a "missionary to the Amish and Mennonites" for heaven's sake! He was based in Ohio, had no heritage in those movements, and lest one forgets, these Anabaptist groups are the ones that many Pentecostals and Baptists alike claim as their spiritual ancestors. Yet, this ding-a-ling, who for some reason obtained ministry credentials from the same denomination which our university belonged to, felt like all the Amish were "going to hell" and he felt a "burden" to save them - this was common language used by people like this, especially if they had some sort of vendetta against a group of people or another religious tradition. Normally, I listened to these people respectfully when they came to class, and at times I even showed an avid interest in them, but for some reason this guy rubbed me wrong - his spirit was not genuine, and he seemed to have some kind of axe to grind. He put me in mind of another professor we had that year whom I will talk about briefly next, as another Catholic apologist named Tim Staples had a similar encounter with this guy.
Dr. Andres Carrodeguas - a native of Cuba, a former Catholic priest in Spain at one point, and although a brilliant man, there was always something a little off about the guy. Oh, he was friendly enough, but in his class a lecture could easily go off into some anti-Catholic rant. This guy originally worked with Jimmy Swaggart (also known for rabid and ignorant anti-Catholicism) and he was the guy responsible for translating some of Swaggart's religious writings into Spanish. Dr. Carrodeguas served as what was called a "Missionary in Residence" during my junior year, and naturally I took one of his classes as part of my required coursework for the program I was in. Initially, I didn't have much of an opinion about the guy - he was somewhat quiet on campus, and he did have a polite smile and cordial greeting when you would pass him in the hall. But, underneath, he was a bitter, hate-filled man who despised even the word "Catholic," and given the opportunity he would launch into a tyrade at the drop of a hat. The back story on him was that he was indeed a Catholic priest at one time - I think he was either Benedictine or Jesuit, I can't recall - and a combination of two things caused him to leave the Church. The first I am somewhat empathetic about, as he talked about some Catholic religious orders incorporating things like New Age spirituality and religious syncretism, as well as espousing Liberation Theology, into their practices. This really shook him (and understandably so) and I feel for his experience in that regard - I have seen some of that nonsense masquerading as "Catholic" too but it is not true Catholic faith, I will tell you that right now. His disenchantment with that sort of stuff was justified, but instead of trying to understand that those things were a poor example of true Catholic faith, he began to reject everything Catholic and I understand he even may have been in touch with the con man from the Chick comics, Alberto Rivera. Instead of transforming him, this new hatred of everything Catholic turned him into a very bitter man who rejected even God's grace, and he became basically a very hyper-fundamentalist version of Pentecostal, which may also have led to his work with Jimmy Swaggart, as a charlatan like Swaggart would eat up that garbage like a maggot in a rotting carcass. That hatred even extended to other Christians who he felt "looked Catholic," including Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, and even staunch evangelical Reformed ministers like Dr. D. James Kennedy. The "testimonies" of other anti-Catholic Fundamentalists like him were abundant and resonated ad nauseum from pulpits, religious TV, and even the occasional chapel service. However, I don't think that was the only reason Carrodeguas left the priesthood - it was odd that less than a year after he left the priesthood officially he actually was married. Maybe I am reading too much into that, I don't know, but it was somewhat odd that he would renounce the Church and then end up married a short time later - what was that story?? We will never fully know what really makes men like Carrodeguas tick, but I recall when I was listening to Tim Staples one time about his encounter with Carrodeguas back when the latter was still an instructor at Jimmy Swaggart's Bible school in Louisiana. Tim, who had been raised a Baptist and later was part of the same Pentecostal denomination my college was affiliated with, had a rather tense encounter himself with our man Carrodeguas when he came to the decision to become Catholic while a student still at Swaggart's college. Upon hearing of Tim's embrace of the Catholic faith, the powers-that-be at JSBC decided to sic Carrodeguas on him, and his account of that meeting will make the hair stand up on your arms. Carrodeguas actually started to move to the boundary of violence with Tim, and when finally deciding it was a lost cause, he condemned Tim to hell (a classic arbiter of salvation move) and then snapped "You didn't become Catholic - you are Catholic!" Tim actually saw that outburst - which was meant in a malicious way by Carrodeguas - as a compliment. To Tim (and I know the feeling myself) this was a badge of honor meant as an insult. Today, Carrodeguas is retired and in Florida I believe still, but he pops up on social media every so often. In his final months at the college I was at, he was censured a couple of times by the department chair who thought he was going too far, as the college I went to was very much Pentecostal but not as Fundamentalist-leaning as Swaggart's school in Louisiana was. Many of the other professors there were actually cordial with Catholics, as some had known many during the years of the Charismatic Renewal, and others were ecumenically active and were on practically a first-name basis with a couple of local priests. So, although Carrodeguas found some fertile ground for his vitriol among the students, he was becoming a bit of a thorn in the side to the school administration, as they tended to be more nuanced about ecumenical relations and frankly Carrodeguas was a spectacle to them. In time I made my pilgrimage to Rome too, and I actually wrote Tim about my story - I never heard anything from him about it, but hopefully he read it and maybe I can meet him someday and discuss in person. In summary here with this part of my discussion, anti-Catholicism is not about evangelism, as a deeper agenda often underlies it, and people who act like "soul winners" in reality despise Catholics - to them, a Catholic is a hell-bound sinner who worships the Pope and Mary (neither of which any Catholic I know of does, and I definitely have never done that as a Catholic myself), and thus is an object of ridicule and contempt, all in the name of "reaching them for Jesus" of course. Problem is, many Catholics who get hit with that sort of hatred from somebody will rightly have nothing to do with that person, because they know the intent and it isn't anything about loving them or saving their soul - it is about a personal vendetta a Fundie has against anyone they view as different from them. And, that leads me into some closing thoughts.
Much of what went on years ago in Evangelicalism in the name of "soul winning" and "witnessing" was never about transforming someone's life - it was about one of two things. First, it was to curry favor with their religious group, as the more "souls" they "saved" made the church look good and also was like a sales award. Secondly, some who engage in those activities were not doing so out of love - as a matter of fact some individuals had an axe to grind and they wanted to take it out on any Catholic or anyone else whom they deemed somehow "reprehensible." I talked a couple of weeks ago about another view of hell that no one ever thinks of, and I want to remind people the purpose of hell again. Hell is not someplace God is itching to throw us into - as a matter of fact, he doesn't want to, and he never will. Hell is a place we send ourselves to, as it essentially is willful separation from God. The imagery of the lake of fire is scary enough, but the real terror of hell is the isolation the person who goes there will feel one day. Many supposedly religious people are in danger of this, in that they willfully exclude people who don't think and believe exactly like them, and in doing so they think they have superseded the Holy Spirit. In time, even the person of Christ will end up falling short for them, although they will never come out and say so. Therefore, if they do not repent and transform before they die one day, God is going to give them exactly what they want - total separation. They may even at first think that they have made it to "heaven" as it may even look beautiful to them, but then reality will set in, and the fire will be the eternal loneliness and isolation they will have for all eternity. So no, while the debate over whether or not hell is a literal lake of fire is a valid debate and people do so now, hell is still real, it is eternal, and the worst part of it is not some white-hot magma-like lake somewhere - the worst part of hell is complete separation from God, and the torment of the soul which will result from that. Many overly-zealous Fundamentalists need to have a reality check about this, because if they don't grow up and have true transformation through supernatural grace, they will face a grim future in a place they really don't want to be but that they asked for. This is somewhat of a revolutionary way to view hell, but in all honesty that is what the Church has taught about it for centuries - we focus on the fire, but perhaps we need to think of what sent us there, and it may not even be a heinous sin. Hatred and exclusion of others in this life because we had a conflated view of ourselves is the thing that will send us there probably the quickest, as it is God giving us what we hollered about. This is why he says in Scripture that not everyone who says "Lord, Lord" will enter the Kingdom. He was not just talking about apostate Episcopalians either; this applies to religious Fundamentalists too. Let this sink in as you rethink what you have been taught about the reality of hell.
Now, that does not mean that we are so open that we have no ground to stand on either - that type of Christianity is sterile and dead in all honesty, and many who embrace that would be better off as atheists in all honesty. There is a Tradition, a set body of teaching, and universal law that sets boundaries regarding morality and ethics, and we need to be mindful of that too. Those standards are non-negotiable in all honesty. However in living out the belief we have, we must also remember that the best witness is a real witness - if you spout a bunch of religious jargon to people, then you are putting yourself under a microscope. But, if you quietly live out your faith with both conviction as well as making living your faith as natural as breathing or eating, people will notice. Actions often speak louder than words, and it is possible to be very conservative religiously while having just that quiet witness of living your life - people will eventually come to you then, and you don't have to wave a huge Dake's Bible around and hand out religious tracts trying to get people "saved." You won't need to in all honesty. The best testimonies I know as a matter of fact are not testimonies full of religious jargon uttered in a sanctimonious tone - rather, they are testimonies of people being real, quietly living out their faith, and then when they are approached about it they can tell their story to inspire others. That is the true act of evangelization.
I am sure I probably rambled too long, but some things have to be said, and I felt seriously that this was one of them. Thanks for bearing with me, and will see you next time.