[Michael Miller]

I like the way Karlo Broussard from Cathoilc Answers handles this question. Like him, I would ask some clarifying questions… “what do you mean by that?”, and “how does your ‘not spiritual, but religious’ view play out in your day to day life?” If they are willing to talk about their personal spirituality, they’ll likely share that they don’t think it’s important to belong an organized religion, but it’s OK to pursue “God” and spiritual truths (however they view truth.)

At this point, I would get into the issue of objective truth, and begin to explain why we believe Jesus is divine, a historical account of the establishment of his Church, and then show that the Catholic Church is that historical church. If Jesus, who is divine, founded the Catholic Church, then we are obligated to be a part of it.

[Michael Miller]

[Michael Miller]

I agree. I would wait too.

[Michael Miller]

I watched Trent Horn’s short video about how Catholics would refute reincarnation, which was helpful. I would craft my argument with one of his very logical points in mind:

“Figuring out life and who we are and where we fit in can be very challenging. I’ve found that my Catholic faith really helps give me some very reasonable answers to big questions like, is there reincarnation, or do we just have one soul and live once? An early Catholic thinker, Tertullian, came up with a very logical argument which makes a lot of sense to me. He says that if the living come from the dead, just as the dead proceed from the living, then there must always remain an unchanged amount of souls. We know that there has been a gradual growth of population over the years. So if our population is always growing, there needs to be new souls coming into existence. There aren’t enough “dead souls” to fill the new babies being born! I know you feel like you’re C.S. Lewis, but feelings often change and can be deceiving. I feel many different ways from one day to the next. But if we rely on truth and logic to answer this question, I think we’ll see that reincarnation just doesn’t make sense.”

[Author]

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