Bestselling author, Harvard professor and renowned social scientist Arthur Brooks says now is the time to invite people to the faith, because this is “the moment for the American Catholic Church.”
Catholics, Brooks said, must have “the entrepreneurial zeal to go out and get souls and to promise people what they really, deep down, want.” “It’s very important, but the reason it can fail the way it does is we don’t have the guts for it. We don’t have the stomach for it. We don’t have the heart for it.”
In an interview with “EWTN News in Depth” on April 10, Brooks talked about the growing number of Catholics. He also shared what is driving people to church and how the church can reach new people in natural and simple ways.
While the numbers of baptisms and confirmations are rising, Brooks said Catholics “can’t just rest on their laurels,” because there are still “trends going in the other direction with respect to people coming into the Church,” he said.
The Pew Research Center “shows us that out of every 100 Catholics who came to church last year, 840 left. These are not good statistics. But what we see is really encouraging is that a lot of young people, especially young men, are coming to the church looking for a sense of transcendence and really looking for real life community,” he said.
People want meaning, because “the feeling of meaninglessness is characteristic of why people are feeling depression, anxiety, loneliness, addiction,” Brooks said. “And people are starting to fight back.”
Brooks said: “They’re beginning to recognize that the little friend in their pocket, the supercomputer that is their smartphone, is not doing them any favors because it’s mediating their relationships with other people and they want a real life.”
“We need meaning, and we have these natural questions: ‘Why am I alive? What would I give my life for? Why does my life matter?’ …And we’re starting to realize after about 15 years that you can’t Google these questions,” he said.
“People feel like there’s something big going on,” he said. “The youth of today, they long for something bigger and bigger. And if we’re not feeding that, we’re not feeding our sheep. Then we’re not following the teachings of Christ.”
Bring back boredom, but not in a ‘bad way’
In his latest book, “The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness,” Brooks discusses how he wants to bring back “boredom.”
“We have real protocols in the Catholic Church that give us moments of peace, that give us moments of perspective that most people don’t have,” he said. Catholics have prayer, Mass, and Communion to provide us with these moments throughout the day.
“The first thing I do is I wake up very early, then I exercise, and then I go to Mass every day,” Brooks said. “I’ve been a daily communicant for a long time and so has my wife. And we end the day, even when I’m on the road…we say the rosary together on the phone before bed.”
“These are moments like this,” and “when I say boredom, I don’t mean boredom in a bad way,” he said.
“I’m not implying at all. I’m talking about spaces. I’m talking about turning on structures in the brain called the default mode network that you need to understand your life. ‘When do I understand my life the most?’ When I am in Holy Mass. ‘When do I understand it most?’ When I’m talking to God,” he said.
This time spent in prayer can actually benefit brain function, because “when you have these spiritual experiences, you have access to only certain parts of your brain where you need to find meaning and love your life.”
“There has been a lot of research on this,” he said. “This is not speculation. There’s a ton of neuroscience research that shows you only have access to certain parts of your brain where you need to find meaning and love your life when you have these spiritual experiences.”
Evangelism should be ‘as natural as wearing your shirt’
Brooks also discussed his personal conversion and how people can invite others to the church through simple methods of “friendship and excellence.”
“When I was 15, I experienced a musical journey at the Guadalupe Shrine in Mexico City,” Brooks said. “I came to the church when I was 16. I went and told my parents, ‘I’ve found out I’m Catholic.'”
“I come from a good, strong, Christian background, good Christian background. I had missionaries on both sides of my family. And my parents looked at each other and they said, ‘I think this is better than drugs.’ They just thought it was rebellion, but the truth is that I was called into it. I really was,” he said.
As people come to church now the question is: “‘Do you want to go deeper?’ I have something deeper. I have something even deeper. I have something that has more historical significance. I have something that has more structure. Come with me, come with me… You’re hungry and I’m going to give you real food,” he said.
He said, “It’s the only thing that can fill this hollowness in our lives. It’s the only thing that can take us out of the simulation.” “People know it in their hearts, and we just have to show them it. We have to take them by the hand and bring them with us.”
As a professor, Brooks said he uses his role to guide students but does not impose his beliefs and convictions on them.
He said, “The first day of class at Harvard I told them, my Catholic faith is the most important thing in my life. And then I go ahead and teach them science.”
“The science of human happiness is what I teach. And they look at it and they say, ‘You know, it’s not strange. It’s not strange with him. He’s doing a good job with his life… His family life is good too. He loves his wife very much. He has children and grandchildren. That’s apostasy. That’s how apostasy really works,'” he said.
He said, “Live your life and live it the right way and let people see your Catholic faith and don’t make it weird… just make it as natural as wearing your shirt. That’s the thing. And that’s what I’m trying to do every day.”
“When my students come to me in office hours, the No. 1 question they ask me is not about my paper, my term project. The No. 1 question they ask me is, ‘How do I fall in love, how to stay in love, how to start a family?’ Of course, university doesn’t teach them this, but it’s the most important thing in their lives,” Brooks said.
“No. 2, ‘How do I find my faith?’ Brooks said. “What do I do to get their trust? They want to lead. You know, that’s what it means to be a shepherd… We all have the ability to really influence other people. And the question is, ‘Am I influencing other people to get them a little closer to heaven? Am I breaking down the door that the Holy Spirit can or can’t get in with His wisdom?'”
