Weeding Out the Pharisees

As a priest , I hear a variety of reasons for not going to church. Some are convincing, but most are not. The most common reason people give in my home country is this: "I don't bother going to church, Father . It's not worth it, because the place is full of hypocrites ". The clever answer is to say "One more will make no difference, so why not come and join us?"

Beyond clever answers , though, what is it that makes people view practising Catholics as hypocrites? Various famous people have given eloquent answers. Mahatma Gandhi admired Jesus Christ, but thought Christians seemed to fail miserably at putting into practice the values Jesus taught. Just a hundred years ago a man died after writing some bitter criticisms of Christianity: he was Friedrich Nietzsche, the philologist and philosopher whose sombre Lutheran childhood had convinced him that Christianity ought to have liberated people, but in fact made them miserable and mean-minded.