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F e a t u r e A r t i c l e
Winning Converts (In and Out of Prison)
A Prison Evangelist Shares His Tips for Teaching Evangelistically
By Russell L. Ford
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Long-time readers of This Rock will recognize my byline and recall that I have been active in prison evangelization since my conversion here in prison in 1988. The last sixteen years of work have been anything but boring. There has been much joy, sadness, pain, suffering, and happiness. Friendships have been forged among "free-worlders" and convicts alike that will last into eternity. We have reached out to thousands of Alabama convicts.
The one question I am asked more than any other is "To what do you contribute your success?" Let me first say that it hasn’t been a success. There have been numerous success stories and even more tragedies. As to the successes, which in terms of conversions have been remarkable, the answer is simple: The Holy Spirit alone is responsible. I’m a hard, arrogant, difficult man. Still, from the very beginning God has willed that human intervention be necessary for all conversions.
When we began our work in 1988, I personally adopted the maxim of St. Ignatius of Loyola: "Pray as if everything depends on God; work as if everything depends on you." Using the natural gifts God gave me, over the years a method of evangelizing through the catechism has evolved. There are seven basic elements, in no particular order:
- Make the student think.
- Stress free will.
- Assume the student’s conscience is ill-formed.
- Be sure you are exacting in presentations of doctrine and dogma.
- Use anecdotes or parables.
- Use humor.
- Expose the student to traditional Catholic culture.
Every element is important, and each element is intimately related to all the others.
Make ‘em Think
Electronic and print media have done our thinking for us for so long that Americans are almost incapable of original or intelligent thought anymore. Yet the ability to think and reason is vital to our ability to understand the faith. The best way to make a student think is by using the Socratic Method: Ask a series of questions in a logical order. For help, you can turn to a good question-and-answer catechism. The Church traditionally has used this method, as it is helpful for memorization and can be used to make a student think.
I use my own catechism, The Missionary’s Catechism, but any question-and-answer catechism will do. Each question is restricted to the topic at hand (for example, a particular article of the Creed, or a sacrament), and the questions are in a logical order. So to make the student think, all you have to do is read the question and silently wait for an answer. It may be uncomfortable at first, but the student will get the hang of trying to figure things out when he grasps the idea that all questions are in logical order.
I recommend that you do not give the student his own copy of the catechism, and there are several reasons for this. The first is that many students will not bother reading it. Experience has taught me that asking the student to study or read in preparation for the next lesson is a recipe for disaster. Indeed, the brighter the student, the more this is true.
Another problem, particularly with the more intelligent students, is the failure to understand what he has read. Catholic theology has its own vocabulary. Students often take a word in a catechism by its common meaning, form a wrong idea, and then stick with that wrong idea from then on. A good example is the first such word you come across in a catechism: original. When we use the word original, we think of something unique. But when Catholics use original in conjunction with sin, the word refers to a type of sin that comes to us from its origin.
So use a good question-and-answer catechism, but use only your own copy. Read the question and let the student try to answer. After he answers, affirm whatever is affirmable from his answer to give him confidence. Then read the book’s answer, adding any commentary you find necessary.
Make ‘em Admit It
We live in the most litigious society on earth. Everybody wants to be a victim; nobody wants to be responsible. Emphysema and cancer patients sue tobacco companies. Obese people sue fast food chains. Gunshot victims sue Smith and Wesson. The problem is that the smoker lit up without R. J. Reynolds twisting his arm. The fat guy was never dragged into McDonald’s by Ronald. And no gun ever took it upon itself to aim and fire at a living being. In every situation the so-called victim had free will.
One of the stupidest statements I hear is "I didn’t mean to sin." You cannot sin accidentally. If you are guilty of a sin, you meant to do it. You can commit an objectively sinful act out of ignorance, but the ignorance makes it subjectively impossible for the guilt of sin to be imputed to you. So it comes down to free will, a concept most people will not or cannot easily accept.
When teaching the catechism you will get your first opportunity to teach about free will in the first article of the Apostles’ Creed: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." The first article, by both explication and implication, covers the existence and nature of God, the Trinity, angels, and man. Free will is found in the very basic composition of man.
Man is a creature with a physical body and spiritual soul. The soul, created in the image and likeness of God, possesses intellect and free will. The soul is what gives us life. It is the soul that possesses personality, free will, intellect, and the ability to reason. This is the basic teaching of the Church on the makeup of man as God created him.
After I teach the student that God is the origin of free will and that it is a faculty of his soul, I never miss a single opportunity to press home the reality of free will. It is impossible for a student to form a right conscience, accept the Church’s teaching on the sacrament of penance, or accept Catholic morality unless he first understands and accepts the reality of free will.
Before moving on to the next element, let me stop here to stress something of importance. The reader may think that my experience is restricted to convicts. It is not. I have evangelized and catechized scores of people in the free world, some of whom were cradle Catholics and the product of modern parochial schools. My experience has been that, generally speaking, everything in this article applies equally to free-worlders and convicts alike. Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said to a room full of convicts that the only difference between him and them was that they got caught. My experience has been that the great archbishop was right.
Remake Consciences
To assume that your student’s conscience is formed rightly in such areas as stealing, sexual morality, and lying is to do him a grave disservice. Moral relativism has so permeated our culture that it amazes most teachers and evangelists just how skewed the average student’s conscience really is. To demonstrate this, the following is a situation I used on the seventh commandment.
Let’s say you’re at the supermarket. You check out, pay in cash, and get your change. You are in a hurry, so you hold your change in your hand until you get to the car. You count your change and realize you have two dollars more than you should have. You are running late, so you just leave. Have you just stolen two dollars?
At least 60 percent of my students—both convicts and free—tell me that to keep the money is not sinful. They claim it is not theft because the clerk gave it to them. You cannot assume that your students understand even something as simple as this.
I do woodcarving and furniture making in our prison hobby shop. About a year ago, a supply company sent me a $250 router I did not order. I could have kept the router and no one would have been the wiser. I caught a lot of flack from convicts telling me I was crazy to send it back. That did not really surprise me. What did surprise me were the dozen or so guards and their supervisors who gave me a hard time about it. The guards have an obligation to set a good example for us, as is fitting with the concept of rehabilitation. Again, you cannot assume that any student has a good grasp on the difference between right and wrong.
Therefore, when teaching Catholic morality it is imperative that you stress both what is sinful matter and the degrees of that matter. Students are not easily divested of their moral relativism, so you must explain and help them reason out why a thing is sinful. It does no good to state that the Church says a thing is right or wrong; you must demonstrate why a thing is right or wrong.
Make It Clear
All catechisms have their strengths and their weaknesses, so it’s important for the teacher to know more than the catechism he uses. The following is a good example from a relatively good catechism:
The question is: "Is it ever permitted to take the life of another?" The answer is: "To kill in legitimate self-defense is not sinful."
We have a right and obligation to use proportionate force to stop an unjust aggressor, but taking the aggressor’s life is a last resort. Furthermore, the defender’s intention must not be to take the aggressor’s life but rather to stop the aggressor. If the defender intends to take the aggressor’s life, he commits murder, no matter how unjust the aggressor or his aggression.
If a teacher failed to expound on the question, he would be teaching something less than exacting and precise orthodoxy.
We must teach always and only what the Church teaches. We cannot water down anything.
Likewise, students have a right to all the Church’s teachings, not just those that fit our preferences. I am personally against the disciplinary norm that allows Communion in the hand, but I teach students that they have that option in the U.S.
Make It a Story
People can grasp a point better when it is driven home by way of a story. Jesus used parables in teaching throughout his entire public ministry. We should follow his example.
Many times I have seen the "lights go on" in a student’s eyes when I used a parable or anecdote. By nature, we are creatures who react emotionally to the things that affect our senses. That emotion can be evoked to form a commitment of the will that the student will remember the rest of his life.
My first choice is to use anecdotes from the lives of the saints or Church history. But if you teach long enough, you will develop many anecdotes from personal experiences that you can use. You may even learn to make up parables of your own to fit the lesson at hand.
Make It Funny
Which are you likely to remember later: a lecture by a gifted orator or a stand-up comedy routine? Which one are you more likely to be able to quote? Chances are that it’s the comic you’ll be reciting later. That’s because we all love to laugh.
During the early and mid-90s, This Rock published articles I wrote about the evangelistic adventures of Bubba and Buckethead. It has been seven or eight years since the last article appeared, but readers still quote lines from the irascible Bubba, whose Southern humor made readers laugh while still getting the point across.
No matter how serious the subject, humor can be found somewhere in the topic you’re teaching. There is nothing wrong with getting your point home in this way. After all, God has a sense of humor. If you don’t believe it, look around you.
Remake the Culture
Let’s not sugarcoat anything here. When the dissenters began tearing the Church apart from within after Vatican II, they also managed to destroy an entire culture. We seldom hear the phrase "cultural Catholic" anymore. That is because Catholic culture is merely a dim memory in the minds of older Catholics.
Yesteryear, the Catholic Church in America had its own culture, and it was a healthy, wholesome culture. The parish priest had his widowed mother or aunt living in the rectory as his housekeeper. He was seen in cassock and berretta. When he walked down the street in his Catholic neighborhood, men tipped their hats to him and women curtsied.
It was no scandal to see Father walk into Kelly’s pub or Manzetti’s bar early on Saturday night, where he would enjoy a cigar, a whiskey, and a game of poker with the neighborhood Catholic men. Before he left he would remind all the men in the bar he expected to see them at Mass the next morning. And Kelly or Manzetti would stop serving at 11:45 on Saturday night so customers would not violate their eucharistic fast for Communion the next morning.
The family’s weekend revolved around the worship of God. Long lines formed outside the confessional on Saturday. The pews held people preparing for confession, doing their penance, and adoring Christ in the tabernacle. Several Masses were celebrated Sunday morning to accommodate the crowds who would attend—as early as possible so families could go home to breakfast after Mass. Everyone wore their best clothes because they were paying a visit to the King of Kings, the Creator of the universe. Ladies wore mantillas.
During the week there were meetings of the Legion of Mary, the Ladies Altar Society, and the Knights of Columbus. Those were the days when men supported their families and women stayed home to care for their homes, their children, and their husbands. It was a time when priests were real men pursuing masculine pursuits; nuns wore their habits and stuck to their vocations and the charisms of their orders.
I am not advocating a return to the "old days." What I advocate is that we develop an authentic contemporary Catholic culture: Keep the technological advances and new knowledge, but make them fit into a healthy and wholesome Catholic culture. We must do it for the sake and survival of our children.
But how do we do it? One convert at a time. We must help converts to imbibe the traditional Catholic culture while they are catechumens and neophytes. The only way I know to do this is to promote the reading of old Catholic novels and the viewing of old Catholic movies. When I’ve used these tools in the past, I have tried to point out how we can return to the old culture while maintaining our modern identity. It can and must be done, or we as a presence in the West will be in danger of extinction within three generations.
A book could be written on technique, method, and means for evangelizing by way of teaching the catechism. Still, my own experiences convince me that anyone can develop his own successful method of teaching and winning converts if he will be faithful to the use of these seven elements for teaching evangelistically.
Russell L. Ford is an inmate in an Alabama prison. He is the author of The Missionary’s Catechism, available from Catholic Answers.
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