Story by Emily Clark

Photo by Kate Gombos

As a teenager, Bryan Mercier was filled with hate, pain and rage. He was angry, wore black to show it and competed to win every argument. His mother, he said, sent him to Franciscan University as a last resort to get his life straightened out. “It was pretty much an alternative to jail,” he remembers.

While in college, Mercier had what he calls a “St. Paul conversion,” as Jesus transformed him from a depressed youth into someone who sought to bring people back to the Church. 

Today, he is President of Catholic Truth, an organization that catechizes millions of people across the globe and teaches apologetics and faith formation. As part of The Forum for Catholic Discipleship Lectures, he spoke on September 17 to a gathering of the faithful at St. Catherine of Siena Parish about a topic so relevant to many: “How to Bring Lapsed Catholics Back Home.”

Following light refreshments and vespers led by Father Joseph Marcello, pastor of St. Catherine of Siena, Suan Sonna, Director of Apologetics, introduced Mercier. “He is a speaker to help us engage on a topic that is formative and will help us draw closer to God. There is such timeliness to this topic, proven by the number of you here in this church,” Sonna said, adding that each one present came because of a son, a sister, a friend or a godchild who drifted away or stopped going to Mass. “Bryan is relentlessly hopeful about the very people others have written off as hopeless.”

         Back in college, Mercier thought himself hopeless when he realized how little he knew about the faith and the God he had loved throughout his life, despite the dark times. While praying in front of an abortion clinic in Pittsburgh, he encountered groups of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Baptists and Evangelicals, all arguing with Mercier and his group about Catholicism and asking, “Why are you Catholic?”

         “I had no idea what to say, so I began researching,” he remembered. “It shook my faith because I didn’t know what I believed. I knew I loved Jesus, but I couldn’t explain it. I just knew it was right.”

After months of study came more knowledge and understanding of the faith, and with that, both confidence and an ego. Not only could Mercier answer every question and counter every argument, but he became upset and angry if people didn’t listen to him, even yelling at a woman outside another abortion clinic with such tenacity that she began to cry.

“She was laying on cement, sobbing. I saw my friend, who couldn’t even explain her faith to save her soul, sitting with this woman, listening,” he said. “What did she do to get through to her? Then God gave me a lightning bolt – you have been doing it wrong! It’s all about love, not about being right. I saw that in 3D. My friend showed her God’s love, like St. Anthony of Padua, who said, ‘If you do not have love, all of your efforts are in vain.’”

From then on, he said, there was no more sledgehammer, just effective arguments coupled with a knowledge base. “I match that with love, care, kindness and respect for people. You have to have both, but if you must err, err on love over knowledge,” Mercier said, reflecting on decades of experience, several books, countless videos and over 100,000 followers on Instagram. 

“Our example is the best witness you could ever have to bring people back to the faith,” he said.

In offering suggestions to his audience on how to bring beloved family and friends back to the faith, he said it starts with each of them. “You need a deep prayer life. If you want to bring people back, you need to pray to God and pray for them,” he said.

Many people say they have left the faith, but how are you going to help them if you don’t know why they left in the first place? he asked. Ask why, build relationships, love them, and they will begin to trust. They are part of what Mercier calls his “little ways of evangelization. These are little things you can do each day in people’s lives, like having religious art or crosses in your house.”

            He told the story of an 88-year-old homebound widow who would send cards with Bible verses to share her faith, and that of another woman who would leave pamphlets on the tables of relatives during visits to their homes. Invite people to Mass, to adoration, to confession. “To bring lapsed Catholics back, we must do it through our example,” he emphasized.

         Frances Capella, a parishioner of St. Catherine of Siena, said it hurts when she hears people say they don’t want or need to go to church. “But they are all good people, so I sometimes bring them holy cards and pray to St. Monica for them,” she said.

         “I have many family members who are lapsed Catholics,” said Diane, who also attended the talk but did not want her last name used.

“Siblings, children, they all had their sacraments and went to CCD. When they left the nest, they left the Church,” she said. “This is such a great topic, an important topic, to discuss.”

         The next lecture in this cycle, which will be offered in Spanish by William Albrecht, is titled “La Virgen María como Mediadora” and will be held at St. Peter’s Church in Bridgeport on November 12.