“When you love the people with whom you disagree, and then you talk about the disagreements, then you’re able to persuade people, potentially,” Brooks points out. “Its your only shot at persuading people, is with love.” / Credit: EWTN News
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 11, 2025 / 09:40 am (CNA).
Best-selling author, Harvard professor and renowned social scientist Arthur Brooks says the missionary character and approach of Pope Leo XIV is one which all Catholics should emulate.
In an interview with “EWTN News in Depth,” Brooks called attention to the new pope’s track record of threading the needle of “speaking the truth in a spirit of love, and that’s a lot more of what we all need to emulate as Catholic people.”
This approach, Brooks said, is a winning one that gives him a lot of hope and optimism for Leo’s pontificate and the future of the Church, which he says is on the cusp of a revival.
Speaking with anchor Catherine Hadro, Brooks said all Catholics are called to missionary work grounded in joy, excellence, and clarity of purpose.
“We need to ask ourselves tomorrow as we go out: Am I being a good missionary or am I not? Is somebody going to say, I like the way that that person lives their Catholic faith or not? Is that attractive or is that unattractive? Those are the choices.”
A convert to Catholicism at age 16, Brooks says he considers himself a “secular missionary.” In a recent article in The Atlantic, he wrote that his secular writing, speaking and teaching is the principal way that he shares his faith publicly.
“My approach is basically to be open and easy and natural about my Catholic faith,” said Brooks, who is also the former president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute think tank.
The two best tools in secular evangelization, Brooks said, are friendship and excellence.
“Be a good friend, be a good person, all the time, impeccable in the way you treat other people and somebody people can rely on and actually love,” Brooks told Hadro.
“And two, be excellent in everything you do. Be the best at what you do…because people want to be around excellence and people want to have good friends,” he added.
Catholics, Brooks said, are called to “magnetize” their faith by “making it natural and normal and excellent” such that it draws people to the faith.
When it comes to speaking truth in a spirit of love, Brooks said we “have a moral obligation to call out things that are wrong when they’re wrong for the good of the person,” noting that when there’s grave sin “we have to call it out.”
“But we will be ineffective in doing so if we don’t do that with love,” he emphasized.
“When you love the people with whom you disagree, and then you talk about the disagreements, then you’re able to persuade people, potentially,” Brooks pointed out. “[Y]our only shot at persuading people is with love.”
In his 2023 book Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, Brooks offers practical strategies for both emotional and spiritual growth. The book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
He continues exploring these themes in his forthcoming book, The Happiness Files, in which he likens the pursuit of happiness to launching a start-up: deliberate, experimental, and mission-driven.
Watch the full “EWTN News in Depth” interview with Arthur Brooks below:
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