Chapter 32

Photo:  Friends, 
Location:  France, 1956
Photographer:  Thomas Mcavoy

WHAT WILL MY FRIENDS SAY
IF I BECOME CATHOLIC

But if I enter the Catholic Church, you may say, I may have to make sacrifices.  I may encounter difficulties.  My friends may not like it.  My relatives may object to it.  Yes, it is true, some of your friends may not like it, and they may be less friendly with you for a time.  And your relatives may object to it.  But if you lose the company of earthly friends, you shall gain the friendship of God Himself.  If your relatives object to it, never-the-less it is God who commands before whose judgment seat you will one day appear, when neither your relatives nor your friends will be able to answer for you but only you yourself.

Nor are there any sacrifices too great to make in return for receiving the gift of faith from God Himself.  "The sufferings of this time are not to be compared," says St. Paul, "with the glory that shall be revealed in us."  For no sacrifice is too great when the sacrifice of your immortal soul is concerned.

Jos. Frederick Kinsman was a Bishop in the Episcopalian Church, Bishop of the diocese of Delaware,  One of the highest ranking officials of that church in the United States.  But like so many other Bishops and ministers of his church, when at length he realized after study and prayer that only one Christian Church had the right to exist, and that one was the Church founded by Christ upon Peter, he did not hesitate to put off the robes of his office, renounce his rank in the Episcopalian church and become a simple Catholic layman.  It meant for him the loss of many friends.  It meant the loss of his position in society.  It meant the loss of a fixed income coming from his office, when he was no longer a young man.  Like the Apostle however, he counted all as lost if he could not gain Christ.  He knew, as we all know, that we must not put relatives or friends, social position or wealth before the call of Christ.  He knew, as all men should know, that man's first and most solemn duty is to God.  

Christ Himself has said:  "Unless you hate not father and mother, you cannot be my disciple."  Christ did not mean that one should hate his father or his mother.  That would contradict the fourth commandment which commands us to love our parents.  That would be contrary to Christ's own example, who showed by His actions, the great love He bore His own mother.  These words do mean, however, that no matter how deeply we love our parents, our relatives and our friends, we should not love them more than we love God;  we should not put their wishes before God's commands.  

One of the most touching lessons taught in the Gospel, is woven around this distinction between the love we should bear God and the love we should bear our parents.  On a certain occasion Christ had been preaching to the multitudes and so moving were his words that a woman in the crowd cried out:  "Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps that gave Thee suck."  Yet though Christ loved His Mother dearly, He replied:  "Yea, rather blessedare they who hear the word of God, and keep it." (Luke11. 28)  Our relationship to God is our first and our highest relationship.  It takes rank above all others.  Hence when I stand before the judgment seat of God, I shall not be asked to answer for the soul of my parents or my friends.  I must answer for my own.  Nor can they answer for me.  Neither should they then interfere with the affairs of my soul upon this earth.  They must not stand in the way of my following out what my conscience tells me is the will of God.  Nor must I allow them to stand in the way.  For other reasons, too, one must not be too dismayed by the objections of relatives or friends.  If you embrace the Catholic faith and live up to the Catholic faith, your good example will shine forth before their eyes.  It often happens that relatives who begin by objecting, end up by not only consenting but by following your example and they themselves following your lead back home.