Apologetics and the Catechetical Ministry
Mark Brumley

Once upon a time seminarians took courses in apologetics as part of their formation. Even Catholic high school students had a class or two on the subject. Then the sixties happened and many people came to believe that Vatican II had abolished apologetics. Yet a careful reading of Vatican II shows that it intended to strengthen "whatever can help to call all mankind into the Church" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, no. 1).

The What and Why of Apologetics for Catechists

What is apologetics? Not a medical term like obstetrics   though I have been asked if it is   and certainly not the art of apologizing for being a Catholic. The term apologetics comes from a Greek word apologia, which means an apology in the sense of a reasoned defense   not what a man gives his wife for having forgotten their anniversary.

In ancient times, the word apology referred to an attorney 's case for his client. Apologetics is that branch of theology which makes the rational case for the Christian faith, producing arguments to show Christianity 's reasonableness and answering criticisms against it, the way a lawyer marshals evidence in defense of his client. Nowadays theologians sometimes speak instead of "fundamental theology," but there is nothing immoral, illegal or theologically obtuse about the word apologetics.

Although apologetics declined immediately after Vatican II, it is making a comeback today   a very good sign. In fact, properly understood and employed, apologetics can be extremely useful, especially in parish evangelization and catechetical programs.

There are at least two main reasons anyone should study apologetics. These reasons apply preeminently to catechists, who are supposed to assist the primary teachers of the faith, the bishops, in carrying on Christ 's teaching ministry in the local Church. The first reason is that people have brains   intellects that naturally desire to know. Eventually they will have questions about this or that Catholic doctrine or practice. Non-Catholics may certainly ask, but even Catholics frequently have questions    or should if their minds are at all engaged. Catechists and religious educators of adults who are unable to give a reasonable explanation of why the Church believes what it does can unwittingly help undermine a person 's faith. The questioner then begins to think, as Karl Keating of Catholic Answers has said, that unanswered questions are unanswerable questions; that the truth lies elsewhere.

A former Evangelical myelf, I know of many Catholics who joined Evangelical churches because their Catholic pastors or parish catechists were unable to give them solid, cogent answers to basic questions posed by Evangelical missionaries. That is tragic. I cannot help but think a little apologetics training would have greatly served the Church 's pastoral ministry there, without succumbing to the temptation to provide simplistic answers to complex questions.
Since apologetics is the business of giving reasons for faith, it can help people find answers and, properly employed, maybe even bring non-Catholics into, or former Catholics back into, full communion with the Catholic Church. Consider the recent flood of conversions by former Evangelical ministers such as Scott Hahn, Steve Wood, and Marcus Grodi. They testify that apologetics played a vital role in leading them into the Catholic Church.

Even so, some people   even some priests   argue that apologetics does faith a disservice. Faith, they insists, is more than accepting doctrines based on arguments; it rests on a relationship with the living God. And so it does. Faith goes beyond argument; it is the work of grace, not the end of a syllogism. And it is founded on a relationship with God. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, "To believe has ... a twofold reference: to the person and to the truth: to the truth, by trust in the person who bears witness to it" (no. 177). When we believe, we do so because of the "authority of God who reveals, who can neither deceive nor be deceived" (CCC, no. 156; cf. Dei Filius, chapter 3).
But none of that means apologetics has no role to play with respect to faith or that reasonable argument and discussion should be ignored.

For one thing, it does not make sense to argue that you should not argue about faith, since defending that view itself amounts to arguing about faith. Besides, faith takes us beyond what reason alone can tell us, but it is not opposed to reason. In fact, we must use our heads to understand what we believe and why, lest we succumb to sheer blind faith or superstition. Remember the Blessed Virgin 's response to the great mysteries of faith she experienced? She asked in faith, "How can this be?" (Luke 1:34). She "pondered these things in her heart" (Luke 2:19), using her head to understand better the things of her heart. That is what apologetics helps us do.

Furthermore, God is a credible witness because He is God, the Supreme, All-Knowing Being, Truth Itself. He is, in fact, the most credible of witnesses. If God has spoken, we can believe whatever He says, for His Word is more reliable than anything we might think we know on our own. That is at least part of what it means to believe because "of the authority of God who reveals ..."

But the key word there is "if." If God has spoken, then we can be certain what He says is true. But how do we know He has spoken? The Catechism refers here to "motives of credibility" (no. 156). There are signs   miracles, fulfilled prophecies, or other indicators which allow us to see the "finger of God" present when God 's Word is proclaimed. They do not prove the truth of His Word in such a way that our intellects are compelled to believe, but they show that it is reasonable for us to believe. They allow us to conclude, "God is speaking here, therefore I should believe." Apologetics is the science by which these signs are examined and their implications explained.

Another objection some people make is that apologetics fosters a defensive attitude toward faith, in the pejorative sense of the word. Of course it can come to that but it need not. A truly Catholic apologist will not set himself up as a theological Rambo, out to machine-gun opponents with biblical arguments and historical facts in favor of Catholicism. He will not unnecessarily offend Protestants or act contrary to genuine ecumenism. Properly understood, apologetics involves dialogue, which, as Paul VI stated in his first encyclical Paths of the Church, includes respect for our dialogue partner and excludes automatic condemnations and polemics (no. 79).

A second reason for apologetics is that we have hearts; we have wills by which we love. We should engage in apologetics because we love God and want to understand, as best we can, what He is up to   what He has revealed about Himself and ourselves. Apologetics, as the branch of theology concerned with the rational basis for faith, helps us know more about God and what He has done for us. Of course, merely knowing about God is not enough; we must know Him personally. Yet knowing more about God helps us to know Him better, for it is extremely hard to love much someone about whom you know little. Knowing more about God gives us more reasons to love Him. As the street teacher and Catholic apologist Frank Sheed once observed, it would be a strange God indeed who could be loved better by being known less.

Furthermore, if we truly love God, we will obey Him. Now God has commanded us to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19)   to evangelize and catechize, in other words. Apologetics is the flipside of evangelization and catechesis; it addresses problems people have with accepting the initial proclamation of the Gospel (evangelization) or understanding its systematic exposition (catechesis). In this sense, apologetics is a necessary tool in carrying out the Lord 's Great Commission.

Sometimes proclaiming the truth generates questions   even seemingly sound objections to it   in the minds of some people. Apologetics addresses these concerns, removing obstacles to faith the way an eye doctor might remove a visual impediment from a patient 's eye. Now opthamology does not bestow sight, nor does the eye doctor produce the light by which his patient sees; he merely removes the obstacles to seeing.

So, too, the apologist with believing. He removes the mental obstacles people sometimes have to faith. He cannot generate faith, only help create the conditions that dispose a person to believe. Once that is done, it is up to the Holy Spirit to move the heart and mind of the person to believe, and up to the person himself to freely cooperate with the Spirit.

Every Catholic should, to some extent, be an apologist or spiritual opthamologist, if you will, making sure we have first removed our own intellectual beams before helping others with their specks. Why? Because to some extent we all should, in the informal sense, be evangelists and catechists, as much as our various stations in life permit. Catechists have a special responsibility to be apologists, because they formally cooperate with their bishop and the priests in the exercise of the ministry of the Word (can. 759).

Not that catechists should assume the role of the "Catholic Answer Man," in the sense of claiming to have all the answers. But a catechist who cannot give honest, cogent answers to basic questions about Catholicism poses a potential stumbling block to a person 's faith. If a catechist does not know, people reason (rightly or not), who does? If any Catholic should be able to defend what he believes, how much more a catechist, whose job it is teach the faith of the Church? A catechist who cannot answer common objections to Catholic beliefs is like a pilot who cannot fly an airplane or a mathematician who cannot add.

Kinds of Apologetics

That, briefly, is the case for a recovery of apologetics. But what of apologetics itself? Traditionally, theologians have divided the subject into three main categories: Natural Apologetics, Christian Apologetics, and Catholic Apologetics.1 So-called Natural Apologetics concerns truths that are really preambles to faith; truths such as the existence of God, the spirituality of the human soul, the objective reality of right and wrong. These are truths which the articles of faith presume or rest upon. They are, at least in principle, knowable from the natural light of reason, hence the term Natural Apologetics.

Strictly speaking, Natural Apologetics is really one aspect of Christian philosophy. Why? Because the truths it concerns are philosophical, which means they can be known apart from divine revelation, even if revelation makes it easier for us to know them or to know them more clearly. We might also call Natural apologetics "Philosophical Apologetics," because it concerns philosophical issues that revealed theology presupposes.

As a branch of revealed theology, apologetics, whether Christian or specifically Catholic, explains and defends divinely revealed truths   truths knowable only by faith, not by reason apart from faith. Christian Apologetics proposes arguments supporting the truth of Christianity as such, e.g., the reality of biblical miracles, the Divinity of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ, etc. Catholic Apologetics, on the other hand, makes the case for the Catholic Church 's claim to have been founded by Christ and for other specifically Catholic doctrines such as the Papacy, the Seven Sacraments, the Immaculate Conception, etc.

Some examples might help to reinforce this distinction. Consider the Resurrection of Christ. Christian Apologetics marshals the evidence against purely natural explanations of the Resurrection, such as the idea that the apostles stole the body of Jesus from the tomb and then falsely claimed He had risen from the dead. It demonstrates, using history and common sense, the overwhelming improbability that the apostles would have perpetrated such an elaborate hoax, only to suffer persecution and die for it. This prepares someone, moved by grace, to accept the Resurrection of Christ, not merely as the most likely explanation for historical facts, but as certain and Divinely revealed truth.

Or consider the Catholic claim that Christ gave to His Church a teaching office (magisterium) to present authentically and authoritatively His doctrine to the world. That idea is contradicted by the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura   that the Bible alone is the rule of faith for Christians, apart from any authoritative teaching office. Apologetics shows how sola scriptura is self-refuting: the Bible nowhere teaches sola scriptura, hence on the principle that Christians should believe only what the Bible teaches they may not believe sola scriptura.

The Apologetical Parish

"That 's all fine," someone might object. "But can apologetics be useful in the parish?" Apologetics not only can but should be used in the parish. There are two broad approaches here. The first concerns answering parishioners ' questions about the Faith. The second approach is more ambitious: to form parishioners as apologists themselves.
The obvious place for the first approach is the parish 's ministry of the Word, and the one primarily responsible for that is the pastor. Sunday Mass affords an excellent opportunity for apologetics   although the homily should not to be reduced to an apologetics lesson. This is one reason it is urgent that seminarians and diaconal students receive training in apologetics and that seminars be given to priests and deacons to update and enhance their apologetics knowledge and skills. Obviously, if the clergy themselves cannot defend the Catholic Faith, it is unlikely that many of their parishioners will.

Yet clergy are not the only ones who can benefit from apologetics training. Directors of Religious Education and other catechists would too. Apologetics should be a standard component of pastoral ministry formation and catechist training. Furthermore, parish adult education/catechesis programs should provide apologetics sessions for the lay faithful, with speakers, both clergy and laity, addressing formally or informally various questions about the Faith. And most especially, apologetics should be an important component of parish RCIA programs. A growing body of materials   books, video and audio tapes, tracts and magazines   is available to help the RCIA inquirer or the catechumen learn the case for the Catholic Faith. Such materials should be fully employed in parish programs.

Apologetics should also be restored to Catholic schooling, whether in the parish or in the home. Young people should learn the rational grounds for their faith, not so they can be defensive about it, but so they can go forth in faith-filled confidence of the truth. Often young people otherwise disinterested in religion or even hostile to it can be hooked when they discover that the Catholic Faith is reasonable, not something which must be blindly accepted. Their youthful vitality can be channeled so that they have something to offer others   their faith in Christ   not just something to receive.

The second approach to apologetics in the parish goes much further. It involves training the lay faithful, equipping them to engage in apologetics in their daily life. This should be part of a larger formation of the laity to evangelize. Parishioners should be taught appropriate ways to enter into apologetical discussion with others, as well as how to answer questions others pose to them. They should know the biblical case for Catholicism and how to respond intelligently and charitably to anti-Catholic proof-texting and other forms of argumentation.

Of course some pastors and their DREs will dismiss the idea of training lay Catholic apologists as pure fantasy. "It would be hard enough getting lay people even to show up for a single apologetics talk, must less participate in classes to become apologists themselves!" they will object.

I am not suggesting it is easy in all instances. Even so, the average lay man or woman can learn to engage in apologetics. And parishes can design programs to entice people to participate. It is mainly a matter of providing the opportunity and then regularly pitching apologetics as relevant to the great questions of life: Is there a God? What does God expect of me? Is there a heaven to gain and a hell to avoid? Why be a Catholic when you can be anything else? Why do bad things happen to good people? How can I help bring my children (or my spouse) back from Fundamentalism? And so on.

As someone who has spoken on apologetics topics in hundreds of parishes across the country, I know it can be done because it is being done in many places.

Here is one of my favorite examples. Scheduled for an all-day Catholic Answers-sponsored apologetics session at a parish in New England, I was transported from the airport by a truck driver with little formal schooling. Yet he was an amateur apologist zealous for the Faith, and he explained to me at length his studies of the Church Fathers on some subtle theological point. He knew both sides of the argument. And he could explain Catholic teaching with a clarity rarely equaled by trained theologians. Apologetics had helped him understand and be confident about the Faith.

Conclusion

Every Catholic should have that kind of understanding and confidence. God 's truth is meant to be pondered over and made our own. It brings light to us so that, in turn, we may pass the light on to others. Apologetics is not the only source of that light, of course, or the only way to pass it on, but it is an important one.

Much of the responsibility for an authentic recovery of apologetics falls on bishops, pastors and catechists because they have the institutional means to train and energize the vast numbers of laity. Without the leadership of informed, visionary bishops, and other clergy and catechists trained in apologetics to form the lay faithful, the Church will face severe problems in fulfilling its commission to reach the next generation with the Gospel. The new and difficult questions the 21st century will pose require that effective clerical and catechist formation include apologetics. More than ever, priests, deacons, catechists and indeed all the faithful, must be prepared to give reasons for their hope in Christ (cf. 1 Peter 3:15).

Mark Brumley is the Managing Editor of The Catholic Faith magazine.

End Note

1 The threefold division of apologetics into Natural, Christian and Catholic Apologetics, though traditional, is not, perhaps, wholly satisfactory. The gap is vast between what Natural Apologetics treats naturally knowable truths such as God 's existence or the spirituality of the human soul   and what Christian and Catholic Apologetics concern Divinely revealed truths affirmed only by faith, even though the latter kinds of apologetics concern the credibility of divine revelation rather than demonstrate the truth of such dogmas directly. Furthermore, the terminological distinction between Christian and Catholic Apologetics can, if not carefully explained, leave the impression that the subjects treated in Christian Apologetics are somehow not truly Catholic or that matters of Catholic Apologetics are mere addenda to Christian Apologetics. With due respect to Protestant and Orthodox Christianity, however, apologetics is fully Christian when it is Catholic, even as Christian theology is fully Christian only when it is Catholic. This follows from the fact that the fullness of Christian revelation is found only in the Catholic Faith.

Some Apologetics Resources for Catechists
Adam, Karl, The Spirit of Catholicism, Steubenville: Franciscan University Press

Currie, David, Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Derrick, Christopher, Reflections of Being a Catholic, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Duggan, G.H., Beyond Reasonable Doubt, Boston, MA: St. Paul Publications

Drummey, James, Hayes, Edward and Hayes, Paul, Catholicism and Reason, Norwood, MA: C.R. Publications
Hahn, Kimberly and Hahn, Scott, Rome Sweet Home, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Howard, Thomas, On Being Catholic, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Keating, Karl, Catholicism and Fundamentalism, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Knox, Ronald, The Belief of Catholics

Kreeft, Peter, Fundamentals of the Faith, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Kreeft, Peter and Tacelli, Ronald, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press

Kreeft, Peter, Socrates Meets Jesus, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press

Kreeft, Peter, ed., Summa of the Summa, St. Thomas Aquinas, San Francisco: Ignatius Press

Madrid, Patrick, Any Friend of God 's, San Diego: Basilica Press

Most, William, Catholic Apologetics Today, Rockford, IL: Tan Books

Ray, Steve, Crossing the Tiber, San Francisco: Ignatius Press