My wife and I first met Carlene shortly after we moved to Halifax. She was dating a friend of ours and it felt as though we hit it off with her right away. She was chatty, friendly, and a deep conversationalist who wasn’t afraid to talk about things beyond your average party small talk. When my wife gave birth to our daughter, Carlene came over not long after with homemade soup and an offer to help out in any way we needed.

Every Sunday night my wife and I gather with our community to end the Sabbath with prayer. We really enjoyed hanging out with Carlene so we decided to invite her to join us, hoping that we’d be able to get to know her a bit better. That eventually turned into an invitation to join us for our Monday night small group. She fit into our community almost immediately and became one of our close friends.

Carlene was Protestant, which didn’t bother us - she was such a wonderful friend and that was all that mattered. Not too long into our process of getting to know her though we found out that she was intrigued by the Catholic faith of her boyfriend and our small group community. She started reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church and asking us questions every week. She shared with us what she loved about Catholicism and what she was still struggling to accept.

The whole time, my wife and I certainly hoped that she would eventually enter into the Catholic Church but we faced a dilemma - we sincerely believe that there is something good, true, beautiful, and full to life in the Catholic Church but we didn’t want to push Carlene and risk losing her friendship if she felt pressured or manipulated by us. The last thing we wanted was for her to feel like she was a project rather than a friend.

From the conversations that I’ve had with my Catholic friends who want to be evangelistic, this is not an unfamiliar tension. We love our non-Catholic and non-Christian friends and because we love them we want to be able to share fully with them in the faith we are convicted of. At the same time, it can start to feel disingenuous or even manipulative when we try to be intentional about our evangelistic efforts. As a result, we can feel caught between a moral rock and a hard place - we know that we are called to evangelize but we don’t want to coerce our friends and family through subtle tactics.

How then do we propose the Gospel rather than impose it? How do we evangelize without manipulation, share the Gospel without coercion, and reveal the love of God without losing the love of our friends?


There are three principles that can be of use here:

1 - Make love the end goal

The end goal in all relationships is always love. As St Thomas Aquinas said, to love is to “will the good of the other.” Of course, willing for our friends to experience and encounter God is “willing for their good” but it’s important not to entirely conflate love with conversion. There is more to love than introducing someone to Jesus. If we make loving the whole person, Christian or not, our end goal it feels much less like we have some kind of “agenda” and our moments of witness feel more genuine than contrived or manipulative.

2 - Fiercely guard the free will of those we accompany

Since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has repeatedly emphasized that even though evangelization is the central mission of the Church, the Gospel is never something that can be forced on another person. The message of Jesus Christ is always something proposed, never imposed. People should be invited to “come and see” (John 1:39) and discover for themselves what is so beautiful about the faith. When my small group was journeying with Carlene, we made sure to tell her over and over that while we loved Catholicism and would have loved to be Catholic with her, she needed to be certain that that was a decision she wanted to make, wholeheartedly.

3 - Don’t give up on them

At the end of the day, conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. Our first responsibility is to love, and then to witness the Gospel in our lives. If the Holy Spirit moves through us to bring that person into relationship with Him then wonderful! If we don’t see visible fruit in the lives of our friends and families however, we should not abandon them. Continue to make love your aim and entrust the rest to the work of the Holy Spirit.

This past Easter, our small group had the great joy of seeing Carlene enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. I can genuinely say that getting to be one of the people in dialogue with her throughout her journey was a joy and not a burden. It’s always possible for evangelization to be this way if we approach our task the way Jesus did - with humility, gentleness, and above all love.