The Importance of Non-Catholic Friendships (Part 2)

This is part two of a series on friendship. Part one can be found here.

A few weeks ago, I wrote some reflections on the importance of cultivating Catholic friendships, friendships with people who challenge and encourage us to live according to our faith. Today, I am writing about the other side of the coin: why it’s important to maintain friendships with non-Catholic people, both Christian and otherwise.

For most of my life, I had more non-Catholic friends than I did Catholic friends. It’s at least partially because I went to public school for most of my life; generally speaking, people from every sort of background attend public schools, and so I knew few Catholics until I went to a Catholic college. Now, several years after graduating from that university, my circle of friends has a variety of people in it. My closest friend where I now live is agnostic, but he’s the hardest-working person I know; another close friend is a hard-to-classify semi-fundamentalist Evangelical who enjoys good-natured debates about theology. I’ve had a frustratingly hard time finding approachable Catholics for a while, but I have had amazing success meeting non-Catholics from all walks of life. Frequently, I find that my non-Catholic friends–sometimes intentionally, sometimes unknowingly–encourage me to grow in my faith more than a good number of the Catholics I know.

I’ve always had a high respect for my Protestant family and friends, as they value the Word of God greatly and concern themselves with getting to know the Lord on a personal level. They aren’t afraid to ask the deeper questions, especially about God’s personal love for each of us: what has God done for you lately? What would Jesus do? Even when we discuss theology and our differences in belief, we still come back to our starting point, the reminder that we both love God. Likewise, many of my atheist and agnostic friends aren’t afraid of engaging with questions on which we differ fundamentally. Sometimes we have discussions about belief in God, or other times we talk, even if not directly, about attributes of God: love for neighbor, seeking goodness in life, the importance of community and support for others. Other times we do have the more typical spirited arguments about the perceived irrelevance of Catholic morality, but even those debates happen in the context of friendship and mutual respect.

Relatedly, in my previous article reflecting on the importance of Catholic friendships, I noted that Catholic friendships can lead us to grow in our appreciation for God, especially when we encourage, challenge, and invite each other to take more action in our spiritual lives. Catholic friendships do have crucial unique aspects to them–after all, when was the last time that a non-Catholic friend directly encouraged you to go to Confession after a while away from the sacraments? It could happen, but it’s more likely for Catholics to encourage each other to do those distinctly Catholic things. But we do ourselves–and the world–a disservice when we close ourselves off and interact only with Catholics.

That’s part of the reason why Jesus himself tells his followers that they must shine before the world:

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”

Matthew 5:14

In these verses from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus instructs us that we “cannot be hidden”, that our “light must shine before others”. Likewise, Jesus sends his disciples out to the world, where they must be “shrewd as serpents and simple as doves” (Matthew 10:16). He does not instruct us to hide from the world or, as Pope Francis said during his recent trip to Slovakia, “to complain, to hide behind a defensive Catholicism, to judge and blame the evil world.”¹ So, then, how do we live in the world as Catholic Christians?

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Engaging with the other person as a child of God

It’s tempting to think that we necessarily need to preach to convert others, that, if we just use the right argument, we can convince them to become Catholic. Sometimes, yes, preaching and engaging in debates can help to dispel the trepidation and hesitancy of others regarding the faith, but many times we run the real risk of seeming… well, preachy, especially in our contemporary culture which sees Christianity as oppressive and hypocritical. Done properly, however, our action of living in the world and sharing the gospel with others ultimately benefits both us and the people whom God calls us to love. The quote often attributed to St. Francis sums it up well: Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.

When we engage with the non-Catholic people around us, we have to focus on encountering them as fellow children of God. If we look at them as some sort of conquest, in which we attempt to “snag” them for Christ by badgering them until they join the Church, we’re doing it very wrong. Instead, we should form real friendships with others, not solely for the purpose of a future conversion. When I graduated from college and had to find my way in that period of my life, I ended up getting a job at a restaurant, a massive cultural shift from the rather sheltered Catholic environment in which I had just spent the past four years of my life. As I’ve mentioned before, my new friends didn’t so much view Christianity with revulsion as they just didn’t see why it mattered to their lives. Even those who were nominally Christian, as was one of my best friends from that time period, didn’t really bring it up in normal conversations. If I had gone in there beating them all over the head with the Bible, I would have failed in two important ways: I would have proven all the negative stereotypes about Christians, and, crucially, I would have lost out on some incredible friendships which, even if my friends and I don’t share the same worldview, still edify and lead me to God in profound ways.

Relatedly, then, in our non-Catholic friendships, we demonstrate to others–and ourselves–the communal nature of the Trinity. If we build up true friendships with non-Catholic people, we’ll find common ground with them and appreciate them as they are, seeing in them the good God who created us all. They’ll appreciate the friendship, because it isn’t based on pestering them until they become Catholic but, through accompaniment and friendships, they engage with the love of God, regardless of whether they think in those terms specifically or just appreciate that this person who happens to be Catholic truly loves, values, and cares about me. (In fact, it’s frequently in those friendships that people who aren’t Catholic sometimes first look at the faith through us and realize that it’s not just about following rules, so it’s in our normal friendships that we can do our best evangelizing.)

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What we gain from non-Catholic friendships

Good, healthy friendships are a two-way street. When we build and maintain friendships with people who aren’t Catholic or even Christian, of course we show them the love of God through our actions. The reverse is also true: we can learn and gain much from these friendships. When we really and truly encounter other people, we see the Lord’s goodness in them too. These friendships allow us to engage the communion of the Trinity when we see the Image of God in others. I have learned much about sacrifice for others from my hard-working agnostic friend, I have been encouraged to read more of the Scriptures by my semi-fundamentalist friend, and countless other friends have shown me the goodness of God.

Close non-Catholic friends also help to keep us from becoming closed off to the world. I frequently fall into the trap of getting to wrapped up in Catholic news–liturgical quibbles, what some member of the clergy has said, niche theological terms–and time spent with my non-Catholic friends helps draw me out of the temptation to become insular and self-referential in my thinking, thinking too rarely of the rest of the world around me, thinking in terms of “us” versus “them”. Engaging with the rest of the world reminds us that we are all loved by God, and when we encounter others in a deeper way, we see why they believe or act as they do, and that encounter prevents us from becoming “defensive Catholics”, as Pope Francis said.² Encountering people who don’t view the world exactly as we do reminds us that we’re encountering real people, not just souls to “win”. Plus, how can we hope to build a culture of life based on Christ if we deliberately avoid engaging with the culture around us?

And of course, let’s not understate the importance of just having fun with people! When I get to hang out with my close agnostic friend, we usually end up working on our cars (the joys of project cars; some of you know how it is), tearing apart cars at the junkyard looking for parts, or going to local car shows. We don’t do anything “churchy”, but we still have a blast, and in those moments I believe that we encounter God in a unique and important way. There’s something very good and deeply human about enjoying time spent in the presence of others. I’m deeply grateful for good, wholesome friendships.

What about you? Do you have a close friend who doesn’t share your faith? What good things has God done for you in and as a result of that friendship? Share in the comments below!

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1. Pope Francis. “Apostolic Journey to Slovakia: Meeting with Bishops, Priests, Religious, Consecrated Persons, Seminarians, Catechists at the Cathedral of Saint Martin in Bratislava.” https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2021/september/documents/20210913-bratislava-religiosi.html

2. Ibid.