The modern Catholic Church has a problem when it comes to evangelization. It's not easy to see the exact source of the problem, or how to fix it, but it's easy to see that there is a problem by noticing the result: when it comes to evangelization, the Protestant churches are eating our lunch. The Protestant churches, particularly the Evangelicals, are running circles around the Catholic Church... not only converting non-believers, but poaching Catholics right left and centre, particularly in Latin America.

The Church, both in its hierarchy and its laity, is sounding the alarm bells, and admonising all Catholics to evangelize more, and to be on their guard, but nothing is happening. Or if it is happening then the ramp-up is so slow as to be imperceptible to me.

What is the problem? Why don't Catholics step up to the plate and bring in new converts? Why don't they evangelize their fellow Catholics and inoculate them against Protestant claims?

Not to say that the Protestant churches are evil or bad... simply that a lot of things they teach about the Church and a lot of their arguments about Scripture are somewhere between misunderstandings and downright myths. Catholics everywhere should at least know that Mary is the Mother of God, and that the Church has been saying that for somewhere near 1,800 years. We should see Protestant churches for what they are: well-meaning youthful upstarts, full of their own energy and potential, but lacking experience and wisdom. As well, we should be taking our wisdom out to non-believers, telling them, "We're the wise ones. We're the ones who have studied Christ for 2,000 years." In a scientific, studious age, we're the university professors and the Protestants are the marketing whizzes: we're substance and they're style, and they're winning. Why?

I see several things holding the Catholic Church back when it comes to evangelization.

1. The Catholic laity looks to the Church hierarchy—bishops, priests, deacons, and religious—for theology. The consciencious Catholic laity doesn't feel qualified to evangelize because they don't feel properly prepared. They look to priests and bishops to evangelize, but there are too few of them to do an effective job.
2. Lay evangelization requires oversight by the Church hierarchy, to ensure that the laity isn't spreading non-Catholic ideas. Many Catholics believe outlandish things, and some of them are busy evangelizing. In other words, the unconciencious laity need to be kept in check, to ensure that they don't spread falsehood. However, the Church struggles to keep control even over its own priests, some of whom give homilies and permit liturgical practices that fly directly in the face of Church teaching. There simply aren't enough bishops to keep tabs on what the priests are saying, let alone a hundred times more laity.
3. There is a pervasive attitude amongst the Catholic laity that evangelization isn't necessary for salvation. They have been taught since they were children that simply being baptized, confessing their sins, and showing up to Mass is sufficient. Being normal human beings, they do only what they have to in order to achieve what they must. Yes, priests homilize that we should evangelize, but nobody tells us that we must evangelize in order to be saved, so we don't bother.

As with all human behaviours, these are not necessarily bad things. In fact, some of them are the reasons that the Church has maintained its integrity through the centuries. If we throw out deference to the hierarchy, Church oversight of evangelization, and the teaching of the minimums necessary for salvation, then we throw the baby out with the bathwater, and we become, in effect, another Protestant church that teaches only part of the Truth.

So we, the Church, are left with a tricky balance. We need the bishops, priests, and religious to monitor what the laity are doing in the way of evangelization. Otherwise, each Catholic lay person will go out and preach their own personal version of the Truth, and some of the versions I've heard personally are pretty silly: the Pope blesses weapons of war; euthanasia is permissible in certain circumstances; contraception isn't permitted but it should be; Christ didn't want us to suffer; the list goes on and on. However, this necessarily limits how many can evangelize, and using what means. Faced with this barrier, many Catholics just don't bother.

On the education front, the Church has only recently released a Catechism that attempts educate the faithful as to why she teaches what she teaches. I have no beef with the Baltimore Catechism. In fact, I wish that RCIA would bring it back into use, because in my opinion catechism has fallen too much into the touchy-feely, let's-all-hug-and-be-brothers-and-sisters-in-Christ direction, and many new Catholics enter the Faith without a solid foundation of the basic Truths that we are all to believe.

The problem with the old learn-by-numbers approach to Catechism is that it wasn't conducive to evangelization. If all you do is memorize answers to questions, you're stuck (and vulnerable) when a Protestant comes along and asks you a question that wasn't in the Catechism, such as "Where in the Bible does it say that Mary is a Virgin?"

On the other hand, the new approach has some Catecumens entering the Faith hearing a lot about the "Virgin Mary" or "Immaculate Conception" but not really knowing what those things mean. We need a mixed approach: memorization of a few core truths and important prayers, all within the context of the newer teaching approach that is more appealing to more people.

Anyway, I believe that the new Catechism promulgated by John Paul II was the Church's response to the evangelization crisis. The new Catechism attempts to say why the Church teaches what she does. It goes beyond the question-and-answer, memorization approach to catechism, and takes a step in the direction of turning the laity into catechists, which is exactly what we need.

Except that most Catholics don't even have a copy, let alone read it. Mea culpa, I have copies of both the full Catechism and the Compendium, and I have not yet read either one through cover to cover. Of course, my reading time is compressed into five minutes here or ten minutes there, may be three times a week, but that's not the Church's fault.

Recently, Benedict XVI exhorted all Catholics to read the Bible. One of his goals is to see a Catholic Bible in every Catholic household. It's a good start, but then as a priest friend of my wife's said once, "If you ask a Catholic to lend you his Bible, it will smell of dust, because it sits on the bookshelf. If you ask a Protestant to lend you his Bible, it will smell of sweat, because he always carries it under his arm." It's one thing to get Bibles into households; it's another thing to get Catholics to read them.

Even with the Church's attempts to get the right tools in the hands of Catholics, it's unclear how to rouse them to use those tools to further God's Kingdom on Earth. This requires a fundamental culture shift in the Catholic Church, but it's unclear how that shift should occur without damaging the deposit of Faith that has been entrusted to us.

We can see what Protestants do, in counterpoint to the above three Catholic points:

1. Each Protestant individual is taught that he or she—illuminated by the Holy Spirit—is the sole determiner of the meaning of Scripture. If a Protestant reads a Scripture passage and prays over it, then whatever meaning comes to mind is the Truth, and that's that. There is no need to confer with the rest of the church. If the individual disagrees with the church, then he or she is free to leave and find a more agreeable group of people, or form his or her own religion. (Of course, this is not true of all Protestant denominations, only of the ones most successful at evangelization.)
2. The Protestant church itself does not overly concern itself with what its members are saying. Apart from a few fundamental truths, variation in Christian teaching is of little concern. If one person preaches that the Holy Spirit comes from the Father, and another preaches that He comes from the Father and the Son, the difference passes unnoticed. The only measure of success or failure is how many new people come through the doors, drawn in by the laity. The laity are free to use any means at their disposal to spread their version of the Word of God.
3. Since there are no sacraments (again, not universally true, but certainly true of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals), there is no practical way to achieve salvation other than reading Scripture and evangelizing. The spiritual side is still the same—accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour—but the practical side is learning and evangelization, not attendance at Mass or participating in sacraments, which is exactly why Protestants are so good at learning and evangelization: it's their road to salvation.

In summary, Protestant evangelization is sloppy and disorganized, but it is taught as a fundamental part of the Christian faith. Because of all three of these things it has a wide reach and is highly successful.

Catholic evangelization, on the other hand, has heretofore been careful and organized, and had only a limited effect. Certainly in terms of pure numbers it has been less successful than Protestant evangelization. Yes, we do win converts from outside Christianity, and from Protestant faiths, but they pale in comparison to the numbers of both non-Christians and Catholics that the Protestant churches draw in.

Ideally, evangelization should be careful, organized, and wide-reaching, but it's unclear how to achieve that, and it's unclear how to give up either oversight or organization without having it devolve into a Protestant-style melee.

Or, as we say in the computer programming industry, "Fast, cheap, good: pick two." So far, the Church, being a conservative institution, has chosen quality and care over market penetration. Something has to change, but what?