Catholic Cool

It's Catholic Schools weeks and the Atlanta paper has a big article today about how the demand for a Catholic education is growing. They mentioned one reason is that the Catholic "flock is increasing." A decade ago there were about 300,000+ Catholics in Atlanta and now there are over 800,000. They didn't specify any reasons for the increase but I guess they just assume (and assume that readers assume) that it's because Catholics have lots of babies.

But I know better.

The Catholic church has a brilliant strategy for recruiting new members. While other churches beg prospects with lots of sales-pitch-style pressure, the Catholic church plays hard to get. Also, other religions take anyone with a pulse and the registration process is speedy. Catholics are picky and you have to go through a rigorous nine-month training program just to join.

See, when you make it harder to join something people are more likely to want to join. For instance, "Auditions for the dance team will be held on Friday. Only four spots available" is much more enticing than "Join the dance team! No talent necessary!" Everybody wants to be part of an elite group.

That's why, over eight years ago, I accidentally became Catholic. It sounds impossible: "Oops, I'm a new religion!" But yes, it happened to me. Not that I regret becoming Catholic. I'm totally down with it all--the saints, confession, the rosary. (Okay, I hardly ever pray the rosary or go to confession but I feel guilty about that which makes me 100% Catholic.)

I grew up Episcopalian but I didn't get confirmed as a teenager because I didn't want to have to carpool with this other guy to take the classes. Fast forward to 2001 and Frank and I were trying out different churches in Dallas--one week we'd do Episcopalian and one week we'd do Catholic. They're pretty much the same, really.

On a trip to San Diego at Easter time, we attended the vigil mass and saw adults being confirmed. "So it's not too late for me!" I thought. When we returned to Dallas I called one of the Episcopal churches and asked if they had adult confirmation classes. They said no. I called a Catholic church and they said they had them on Thursday nights. That was my favorite TV night. (Life was so funny before DVRs!) I called another Catholic church, St. Rita's, and they offered confirmation classes on Tuesday nights. Perfect. I signed up.

The first night of class the Deacon said, "I can't believe so many of you want to be Catholic!" (This was during all the priest scandal stuff.) "Now, some of you might take a few classes and decide, 'I'd rather be Jewish. I'd rather be Baptist.' And that's fine. Being Catholic isn't for everybody."

After this intro I learned two things:
1. By signing up for confirmation classes at a Catholic church I was actually signing up to become Catholic. Who knew?
2. If they were going to be this no-pressure about it, I totally wanted to be Catholic.

For the next nine months of classes I learned about the religion, met other prospective Catholics and really enjoyed our weekly lectures. It was more like a college classroom setting than a preachy-church setting. And never, ever did the Deacon bad-mouth another religion. I had visited other churches with friends growing up where the minister or preacher spent the entire sermon ridiculing other faiths. That feels very brainwashy to me.

But at the Catholic church it's more like, "This is who we are. Take it or leave it. And if you want to take it, you're gonna have to take classes. And by the way, we don't really care if you join. We've got plenty of people."

And that's how I became part of the flock.