Modern secular Europe  is a somewhat hostile audience for the Catholic Church (and Christianity in general).

So, how do we win over a hostile audience?

1. Don’t make it about us.

We’re sinners. We (should) know that. We’re not debating to “prove” personal sanctity (or at least we shouldn’t be). Nor are we (supposed to be) doing it to prove how clever we are.

The Apologist’s Evening Prayer, by C.S. Lewis

From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories that I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
at which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

2. Don’t be so Euro-centric. Look to parts of the world where the Church is strong. Be willing to learn from our brothers and sisters worldwide. This means dropping subconscious (and conscious) prejudices aganst Catholics poorer than us and Catholics of colour.

3. Accept that this is not a popularity contest. Sometimes, speaking the truth means arguing with (or even losing) friends. I don’t like it, but it’s the way it’s got to be.

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you^* on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.” – Luke 6.22-23

4. Quit whining. It could be so much worse.

Margaret [Clitherow, who lived in England under Elizabeth I] wanted her son Henry to receive a Catholic education so she endeavored that her son be sent outside the Kingdom to Douai, France for schooling. Such an act was considered a crime. When the authorities discovered their intention, the Common Council had the Clitherow house searched. They initially found nothing but later retrieved religious vessels, books and vestments used for Holy Mass. They also found a secret hiding place but no renegade priests. Still, Margaret was arrested. Margaret refused to plead and to be tried saying, “Having made no offense, I need no trial”. English law decreed that anyone who refused to plead and to be tried should be “pressed to death”. So on the morning of March 25, 1586, after sewing her own shroud the night before and after praying for the Pope, cardinals, clergy, and the Queen, Margaret was executed. She lay sandwiched between a rock and a wooden slab while weights were dropped upon her, crushing her to death. She did not cry out but prayed “Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, have mercy upon me. She died at age 30.

5. Most importantly of all, PRACTICE WHAT WE PREACH.

SIR– “Is the Church a force for good?” (Report, October 23). This was precisely the motion debated at the university in Paris in the early 1830s, which was also defeated.
Among those present was one Frédéric Ozanam, a law student. He thought he ought to do something about it. But he was unsuccessful until he met a Daughter of Charity of St Vincent de Paul who invited Frédéric to join her at her soup kitchen. The result was the founding of the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP). The SVP’s motto is that “no work of charity shall be foreign to the society”.
Vincentians, as we are known, are simply men and women who are trying to be Christians, (ie a “force for good”); to be a Christian you have to do your very best to follow Christ; that means “love one another as I have loved you”, even if it costs you your life. Maybe the Church that Mr Fry knows is not a force for good; perhaps he has never met the SVP, although all the brother and sister Vincentians that I have met would readily admit that we are failures – we fail to love “as Christ has loved us”.
Is there not a Catholic among Mr Fry’s or Mr Hitchens’s circle who could invite them to come and see the good works that are being done in every parish and all over the world?

Yours faithfully,
Christopher Koe
Peterborough