The knock on the door - pray that it's a double glazing salesman!

Every Sunday afternoon when I hear a knock on the door it sends a shiver down my spine. Am I about to be confronted with two followers of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect? Will I respond in a Christian manner and also convey to them that they are in gross error? (a difficult double act to achieve I find). Will I lose my cool and ask them to leave?
The trouble is, I just do not know the answer. You see, one part of me admires people who are strong enough in their faith to go out and evangelise on the doorstep. The other half despises the fact that they are not converting by example as Catholics do, or are supposed to do. They jab at my conscience and then it's very easy to send them packing ungraciously.

I do try to be as open and forthright with them as possible. My normal response is along the lines of: "Sorry but we are traditional Catholics and very happy with our position, thank you." Of course, that is a bit like holding a red raw fillet steak under a hungry Rottweiler's nose. They immediately come back with: "As Catholics you don't read the bible then?" To which my response is: "But we do, we read it every Sunday at least and it forms part of our liturgy". By then I may be getting a little fired up, much depends whether the JWs are a couple of meek old ladies or two blue suited horn-rimmed spectacled cocky males. I may then ask them if the Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian faith. To which they nod vigorously in assent. Then I state that they must then recognise the divinity of Jesus Christ. Now we are on rocky ground and they generally start looking at their watches and admiring the roses before making their fond farewells.

It is always wisest to open the door to JWs in case they make alternative approaches

I am not being triumphalist about this; I try very hard to offer them the easy route to the front gate but, if they don't take it they must accept that it is legitimate to question their beliefs.
But it still leaves me a little queasy. I wish I had the rhetoric power of Vincent McNabb OP or Columba Ryan OP.
Maybe the abrupt approach is best. Any ideas? - Christian ones that is?

Alpha is not better (ouch!)

I was coming out of the London Oratory recently on one of my rare visits to London when the heavens opened and I leaped into a handy taxi.
The cabbie was a sterotype of his kind, cockney, earthy and direct.
"You just come out of there Guv" he said, indicating the rapidly vanishing Oratory entrance. "Yes, why?" I responded.
"You was in the wrong place" Came the response. "You shoulda been in there" At that he pointed in the direction of The Holy Trinity Anglican Church, also in the Brompton Road.
He then went on to say that he was doing the Alpha Course for the second time  round at "the Trinity" and advised me to do the same. We finally parted on good terms (of course) but I did feel that I should know more about Alpha just like I sometimes speculate how little I know about Jehovah's Witnesses - something one should know but never gets around to reading  up.

Well, I googled Alpha extensively and am left with the conclusion that it is hard to pin down, a bit like candy floss, rather sweet and frothy but elusive. Nothing to get your teeth into. Finding a few online accounts of non Christian bloggers who had 'done' one of the courses it seems that you can go in at a number of levels.....the committed but ignorant go in at GCSE level while the more erudite might pitch in at A, UG or even Post Grad level.
But, what I read did not excite me in the same way as RE delivered by Sister Oliveria excited me. The holy Sister covered the history and geography and socio political structure  of the Holy Land, the Gospels and Epistles, Parables and Apologetics - and I was only 12 years old! That's the Dominicans for you!
So, next stop it's got to be the JWs..............who, according to a couple who appeared on my doorstep a few weeks ago are Christians. Mmmmm......so I asked them if they believed in the Divinity of Christ.............err, not actually Divinity "but he was a very good prophet."