believing Christian, all you had to do was go with the tide. But that changed many decades ago, and we don’t live there anymore. Now you have to go against the cultural tide, which in most places is either indifferent or hostile. We’re in a world where people increasingly don’t just inherit faith. They don’t inherit religious belief from their parents or from being part of a particular ethnic group. Young adults assume that when they come of age, they will piece together their identities themselves. If they were born into faith, they will either walk away or stay because they choose to. So, today we’re in the land of intentional Catholics, not cultural Catholics. COLUMBIA: Can you further explain the term “intentional,” especially in relation to Christian discipleship? SHERRY WEDDELL: Pope John Paul II said something in one of his very first apostolic exhortations that really struck me when I first read it years ago. Most Catholics, he said, do not yet have a “personal attachment to Jesus Christ” — “they have only the capacity to believe placed within them by baptism and the presence of the Holy Spirit” [Catechesi Tradendae, 1979]. He had spent most of his life at that point in Poland, which is one of the most Catholic cultures on Earth. And yet he was still aware of this tension, in reality, between being a member of the Church and having a relationship with Christ. You can be validly baptized, a member of the body of Christ, and yet not have a personal faith. I’ve had hundreds of conversations where people say, “I grew up in the Church, I went to Mass, I was confirmed, the whole nine yards. And yet, honestly, I thought of God as this nasty, distant figure who didn’t care about me and only showed up to punish you when you broke the rules.” So, when I talk about intentional discipleship, what I mean is somebody who has spent enough time with Jesus to consciously decide to follow him as a disciple in his Church. You can’t sleepwalk your way through this, especially in our culture, where the tide is against us. You won’t go against the tide for a lifetime unless this means something to you. That’s what I mean by intentional. An intentional disciple is not a saint — I’m not saying that. But he or she has embarked on the larger journey that leads to sanctity. And that is to follow Jesus Christ in the midst of his Church for the rest of one’s life. It’s what the Catechism of the Catholic Church [1428] calls the second, ongoing, lifelong conversion. COLUMBIA: What advice would you have for Knights of Columbus who want to lead and evangelize as intentional disciples — and particularly Knights whose children or grandchildren have left the Church? SHERRY WEDDELL: The first thing I’d do is pray: I’d say, “OK, Lord, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t feel like I know enough. I’m not holy enough. I don’t know what to say. But I want to be used somehow to help my children and my grandchildren. Lord, I’m open to whatever it takes. 10
There’s no reason we cannot be a generation of saints now, in the 21st century. We have the same Jesus Christ, the same grace of the Holy Spirit, the same Gospel, the same tradition. The question is, will we respond? Will we say yes? Whatever I need to repent of, whatever I need to grow in, Lord, I’m open, just show me.” I have never known God not to respond powerfully to someone who just declares themselves open and says, “Boy, do I need help.” In Forming Intentional Disciples, I talk about the five stages of spiritual journey that 21st-century unbelievers typically make. For many of them, the first issue is trust — do I trust anything about Christianity or the Church or Jesus Christ or God? For a lot of young people, the bridge of trust has been broken, if it ever existed. For a variety of reasons — peer pressure, scandals in the news, personal experience — it’s greatly damaged. But there has to be a bridge. Maybe that bridge of trust is a friend or a parent: They think your religious ideas are crazy, but they trust you, they like you anyway. So, you’re their bridge. And the first thing we’ve got to do is build that bridge, so eventually it can hold the weight of truth. Learning how to listen is one of the most crucial things. Part of building trust is lowering defenses so people feel like, “I can talk to Dad, even though I know he disagrees with me. I can trust him to honor me, to not run over me.” Really listening — asking good questions that evoke issues, and then listening without judgment — that is when people’s defenses drop. I used to think that if I let people talk error, and I didn’t correct them right away, I was hardening them in their error. And, boy, was I wrong. Because what enables them to open the door to new input is you listening, asking the questions that probably no one has ever asked them before. Maybe they’ve never tried to put their ideas into words; they themselves don’t know what they actually think. By listening, you’re opening the door not just to conversations with you, but to conversations with a lot of people. Studies indicate that nonbelievers and nonpracticing Christians are much more likely to talk about faith with someone if they’ve had a positive faith conversation in the last year.
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