At the 2025 Heroic Men conference (amongst the plethora of things taken away by this once-treading-water Catholic man) was an aside by Father Deacon Andrew Bennett.
He challenged the audience to not live solely as “Catholic Lite”.
For whatever reason this one sentence and what it meant really stuck with me. What does this really mean? What are the costs for doing this? Is my faith not merely something to be held onto privately?
Perhaps the most perverse of the questions I put to myself, what if the profession of my faith offends someone?
I have been blessed with a great career, under a dynamic employer who has provided me the tools and training I require to perform my duties in a manner defensible and transferable to a worldwide stage.
I have no complaints with them, save the recognition that I discovered about my Catholic Lite-fused reflection; I have been serving two masters.
Contrary to the warning of our Lord that “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth”, Matthew 6:24, that is exactly what I had been doing.
I’d been beating that “go along to get along” drum, and adhering to the “religious neutrality” policy (that seemingly only applied to Christians), to ensure that my “Catholicism did not offend” the sensibilities of those around me.
While my motivation in my employ is far from chasing wealth, I can definitely point out the pursuits of two other worldly desires in the form of honour and power that produced this mindset in me.
In chasing these desires what did I do? I put my lamp under a bushel making sure that I did not offend.
I conformed to the behaviours and practices of my secular, and at times militantly atheist peers, opting to enjoy wide acceptance and a smooth day to day existence rather than stand firm in the truth.
While at the time, and on the surface now, that may have seemed prudent, there was indeed a cost. In exchange for shallow and transactional friendships, I no doubt made myself lukewarm to the Lord.
As I continued to unwind things further, I found that this mindset seeped into my homelife.
Church did not have the primacy it had in my youth under my parent’s roof. Catholicism was simply now one thing amongst many that formed our family identity, and sadly not the most important.
Attendance at mass was dependant on the demands of the social itinerary with friends with whom the topic of faith, was at best, a bit of colour during conversations about hockey and vacations.
When protests against the church arose, an accountable defense were the furthest things from my mind as I opted to shrug my shoulders indifference or join in on the pile on to maintain social status and the perceptions of others.
The Spirit led me to make a conscious decision to unapologetically drop the “lite” and embrace my faith.
In the workplace I used the blunt instrument “protections” of other faiths and ideologies to unapologetically demand my space as a Catholic and be afforded the same respect doled out to others.
Has there been a cost? Undoubtedly. I don’t get the same volume of visitors to my office and have others jump back like a vampire touched by sunlight when they see Chesterton’s biography of Saint Thomas Aquinas prominently on my desk.
Invitations to the social gatherings have also slowed, and typically include ribbing when I do get them. That said the benefits have immeasurably outweighed the costs as promised by our Lord.
My family life is the most faith-centered and thriving it has ever been, with my wife “patching over” from a Protestant denomination.
Having seekers and atheists approach me to query about the faith and Holy Catholic church has been more fulfilling than any promotion or award could ever be.
While my journey back to being on fire for the Lord and his church started a couple years before my attendance at that 2025 mens conference, (with due credit to a tattoo artist Anglican priest shaking my fetters off the Holy Spirit within me as he plied his trade), I do lament the time with the Lord that I lost.
I can’t be worried anymore about the meaningless things of this world.
It’s not worth practicing ‘Catholic Lite’ if it means missing opportunities to live in gratitude for God’s clear blessings in my life.