The First Rule of Evangelization

As I wrote a few days ago in a Patheos column, the first rule of evangelization: don't be a jackass [].

An excellent apologist helpfully pressed me on the point. I'm going to post a revision of my reply here, but what occasions this is the grotesque spectacle of Catholics running down the Pope on hearsay, these critics making clear that whatever sins they grapple with, they can't be as bad as homosexual activity. Jackassery.

We do in fact have some hard truths to say to the world, but we cannot say them with credibility until we become more saintly, more obviously committed to universal reconciliation, more obviously embodying the preemptive, unilateral, and asymmetrical love of the Spirit-filled follower of the Crucified. It is jackassery to give the impression that homosexual activity is some extreme moral horror, when we do not welcome refugees, when we calumniate and detract in our gossip, when we live in bourgeois bubbles insouciant to the precarious conditions of those hard-pressed in life, when we rashly judge others from the standpoint of a justified pharisee—all sins weightier than sexual sin; it is jackassery when we refuse to countenance reasons behind differing political positions, behaving savagely in online conversations in the name of Christianity; it is jackassery to advocate publicly for the integrity of marriage, when we say not a word about domestic abuse, when we don't do a thing to press for reconciliation in marriages falling apart right before our eyes, when we allow those washed out of marriages to wither away in social isolation; it is at least jackassery (if not straight up psychosis) to think that evangelization essentially involves telling the world that most people go to hell.