By Gretchen Keiser

Al Boudreaux, a 43-year-old aerospace engineer from Tennessee who is also married and father of two children, spent three and a half years writing and perfecting a book on Catholic conversion experiences and now travels frequently as a lay evangelist to speak at parish renewals.

Susan Blum, a Florida housewife who went to her first evangelization meeting six years ago, has since sparked a national Catholic evangelization magazine and a long and varied list of parish and archdiocesan programs to reach Catholics who have stopped going to church.

A small monastery of cloistered nuns in Birmingham, Alabama, provoked by a controversy with the local television station, started their own television network to broadcast Christian programs and to reach lonely people all over the country with the message of God’s unconditional love.

Those were three stories that emerged during the three day national Catholic Lay Celebration of Evangelization held in Atlanta Nov. 7 to 10 and sponsored by nine southern dioceses and archdioceses.

While there were many workshops addressing different ways that parishes could evangelize inactive Catholics and people who belong to no church at all, there were also many stories that showed the effectiveness of individuals who were willing to take risks in faith.

Keynote speaker Mother Angelica, who founded the Eternal World Television Network in Birmingham, Alabama without being versed in satellite communications or having the capital that she was told she must have, said, “We must do the ridiculous so God can do the miraculous.”

A similar thought was presented by Father Alvin Illig, the Paulist priest who is the founder and director of the Paulist Fathers’ National Catholic Evangelization Association.

Summarizing the history of the Catholic Church in the United States, Father Illig noted that there are about 70 million baptized Catholics in the country -- approximately 29 percent of the population -- and about 52 million of them are considered active Catholics, participating in parish life. The observation has been made, Father Illig said, that the “two largest churches in the United States are Catholics and inactive Catholics.”

To further illustrate the potential power of the church pollster George Gallup once called the “sleeping giant” of evangelization, Father Illig noted that there are “two and a half times more parishes” in the United States than there are McDonalds hamburger stands.

Despite the numerical strength of the Church, and the freedoms of religion, press and assembly in the United States, Father Illig said, “There’s one ingredient missing and that’s the fire of the Holy Spirit who gives us courage so that we launch out into the deep...the Holy Spirit who fires us with wisdom...who gives us perseverance in good times and bad.”

“We have been given an awful lot. Will we let our light be put under a bushel basket?” Father Illig asked, ending his talk with a prayer to the Holy Spirit.

The conference, which is the East Coast regional version of similar celebrations hosted around the country annually, was held in Atlanta for the first time and co-hosted by the archdioceses and dioceses in Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida.

Father Dan O’Connor, pastor of Sacred Heart parish in Atlanta and local coordinator of the event held at the Atlanta Hilton Hotel, said the intent of the celebration was “to give people confidence that ordinary Catholics like themselves have gifts” to use to spread the Gospel message of God’s love for all people.

“The spirit of the celebration is always the same -- lay men and women enthusiastic to do the work of the Spirit, recognizing that they are called to evangelize and eager to learn a variety of ways within their own parishes that they can evangelize,” Father O’Connor said. This year’s celebration marked the tenth anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s letter, “Evangelization in the Modern World.”

Some 800 people, primarily from throughout the Southeast, but including some from as far away as Canada and the Virgin Islands, attended the conference. The figure included about 200 priests, deacons and diaconate candidates who attended a one day preaching workshop on Nov. 7 that encouraged the development of good homilies and focused on communication skills.

Father O’Connor called the 800 figure “good,” although he said he had hoped more than 1,000 would attend.

The aspect of this particular conference, the seventh annual lay celebration, that struck him, Father O’Connor said, “is the possibilities for the Church in the South where the layman has always been involved.”

While other areas of the country may have relied heavily on priests and religious to do the work of the Church, Father O’Connor said, “the layman has always had to do more here because there weren’t enough priests and religious.”

“Now as the Church (in the South) is growing there are more and more opportunities to witness,” he said.

Several speakers focused upon the unique aspects of Catholic evangelization, as distinct from the Gospel outreach of other Christian denominations.

Father Illig mentioned the qualities of faithfulness to the Church’s teaching authority, the sacramental nature of the Church, and its Marian quality of spirituality.

“As Catholic evangelists, you and I cannot be lone rangers,” he said. “We must be ecclesial. We are in union with the Holy Father and the bishops in this extraordinary endeavor.”

Then, he said, “Catholic evangelization culminates in the Sacrifice of the Mass. If it is not pointed toward the Eucharistic encounter with Christ, it is not Catholic evangelization. Evangelization is both Scripture and sacraments. It is never either/or.”

Susan Blum, the founding editor of the magazine Catholic Evangelist and a convert to Catholicism, told of her experience as a college student 23 years ago, stepping into a campus chapel to get out of the weather and finding herself in the midst of an incomprehensible Latin Mass. Unknowing, she said, she sat through the Mass and watched the priest elevate the host. “All I can tell you,” she said, “is it was as if the atmosphere actually changed and I felt the Lord Jesus come to me and wrap his arms around me and I wept silently.”

The experience led to her seeking instruction and joining the Church. Describing programs in her Florida parish, Mrs. Blum encouraged participants to “use ingenuity and the creative gifts God has given you” and to take risks.

“I don’t believe in barriers,” she said. “You either go over them, under them, around them or through them.”

Some of the programs described by Mrs. Blum included a parish “welcome home” for inactive Catholics which began with newspaper ads saying “We’re sorry” to those who may have been hurt by the Church in the past, and a program of monthly Communion breakfasts in which speakers give testimonials to Christ which draw over 300 people a month, 30 to 40 percent new people.

Other programs described in dozens of workshops that participants chose from included parish programs that evangelized through sacramental preparation for marriage and baptism; a Scripture study program sparked by lay people in the Diocese of Little Rock, Arkansas which is now being distributed nationally; parish models of reaching out to inactive Catholics and forming neighborhood communities and special programs such as those to migrant farmworkers.

In the workshop, “Knocking on Doors--Home Visitation Ministry,” Mrs. Blum and Father Robert Deshaies of the Catholic Evangelistic Center in Worcester, Mass., discussing the methods and value of home visits. Mrs. Blum said the initial reaction when her parish in Boca Raton, Fla., started such a program was amazement and suspicion: “Do you want money?” and “Are you here to check on us, to yell at us?”

“Our response was that we were there simply to share faith. Then the suspicion and surprise turned to gratefulness that we had come.”

Home visitors, Mrs. Blum and Father Deshaies stressed, undergo a 16-week training program where they are taught to present the Gospel simply, confidently and joyfully.

“If you go into a home with a deep love of Jesus and the Church they will sense this. The invitation (we bring) focuses on an invitation to Christ. It must also be an invitation to the Eucharist and to community...we invite people to pray for conversion.”

Then, Mrs. Blum said, the visitor turns over the individual to the pastor and the catechists. “We cannot be personal pastor to everyone we visit.”

The need to touch personally is the “missing element in the faith life of many people,” the evangelists said.

Dr. John Klem, in his workshop, “Evangelization -- Some Practical Looks,” displayed the animation and fervor of a popular TV preacher. Smiling, gesturing, clutching the Bible, shouting, bending, jumping he converted the audience with his first words. They never lost the enthusiasm.

To evangelize, he said, think PRIDE.

P is for people. Start where people are. Listen to the voice of the Father and move with that kind of clarity, “You can be used wherever you are.”

R is for risk; “You’ve got to reach out beyond where you’ve been.”

I is for imagination. Begin to think about what the possibilities are. Let God expand revelations of love, dignity and grace. I is also for inspiration -- let Him inspire. I is for involvement, “get into something and let the Holy Spirit keep you involved.”

D is for doing. “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

E is for expanding the potential God has placed within you and working together with everybody else.

Dr. Klem is professor of educational psychology at Ball State University, Muncie, Ind.

In another major presentation, Gertrude Morris, director of the National Office for Black Catholics, called upon evangelists to “clothe what we say by what we do,” becoming active in the “war on poverty, the war on torture, the war on war.”

Speaking of her involvement in a prison ministry program, she said, “You do not bring Christ...You meet him there...He is already there with the forgotten as he promised us he would be.” A special award, the 1985 Paulist Fathers’ National Award for Catholic Lay Evangelization, was given to James F. Walsh, Jr. of Nashville, Tenn., who was recognized for more than 35 years of service to the Church.

An assistant district attorney in Tennessee, Walsh has taken part in parish and diocesan evangelization efforts and took a five-month leave from his job to work with the Paulists on a research project. He has conducted over 30 inquiry forums for people considering entering the Church and through his guidance over 1,500 people have come into the Church.