It's very old news and they did have a field day with it
Awake 1987 3/22
IN MANY lands people are doing just that. For example, at Bologna, Italy, church authorities, with the pope’s approval, held a congress to study how to combat the success of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Catholic Church raised a “cry of alarm,” according to La Repubblica, because every year ten thousand Catholics become Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The Jesuit Giusseppe De Rosa said that “from a religious point of view the most dangerous are Jehovah’s Witnesses. They come fully trained; they always have the Bible in their hand.”
In an editorial dealing specifically with Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Jesuit magazine La Civiltá Cattolica of February 18, 1984, wrote:
“The first reason for the spread of the movement lies in the propaganda techniques [that is, in the preaching work]. The work on the one hand is painstaking, carried out from door to door by people who are scrupulously trained in this work and strongly convinced . . .
“The second reason for the success of the JWs is in the attractive force of the jehovist message, in being able to cater to the needs, demands, and expectations of the people of our times. First of all, it fulfills the need for certainties, something very much appreciated at a time when all is uncertain and unsteady. . . . Above all, it is an absolutely certain revelation of the future, and therefore all who accept it are freed from all fear and anxiety and can face the future with joy, with the certainty of surviving the ruination of God’s tremendous judgment day for a wicked world and to live in eternal happiness on earth. Secondly, the jehovist message helps in overcoming the anxiety of the individual in the face of this world’s woes, announcing that the overturning of today’s unbearable situation is near, and that soon, therefore, there will be a new era, a new world will be born from which all the wicked who are now triumphant will be eliminated. . . .
“The third reason for the success of JWs is that the movement gives its members a precise and strong identity, and it is a place for them where they are welcomed with warmth and a sense of brotherhood and solidarity.”
The Vatican document analyzed people’s needs at the present time, and the foregoing quote from the Jesuit magazine La Civiltá Cattolica showed that it is the message of Jehovah’s Witnesses that is fulfilling those needs. This is further evidenced by the Catholic writer Vittorio Messori in his recent book Scommessa sulla morte (A Bet on Death), in which he writes:
“It makes you think when you realize that one of these apocalyptical sects—Jehovah’s Witnesses—is the fastest growing confession, or religion, in the world. It is among the most practiced religions in many lands . . . and it is perhaps in first place when it comes to fervor, zeal, activism, ability to make proselytes.
“Neither is their ever more accentuated presence limited to lands of Christian tradition, but it reaches the whole of the world where, in the name of Jehovah, and in a very short time, results are obtained that are often superior to those of Catholic, protestant, and orthodox missionaries in centuries of work.
“This impressive force of expansion is incomprehensible only to the one who does not want to admit that . . . Jehovah’s Witnesses’ way of reading the Bible evidently meets real needs that other theologies no longer fill.
“One cannot avoid the issue by insinuating that the Witnesses prosper because they play on fear. Just the opposite: Unlike the ‘official’ churches, they deny the existence of hell, preaching annihilation for the wicked and unbelievers, definitive disappearance after death. An unpleasant prospect, perhaps; but certainly less terrorizing than the threat of terrible pains for all eternity.”
Yes, the God of Jehovah’s Witnesses is a loving God, not one that strikes people with terror.
The following quotation is taken from the Catholic magazine Mondo erre of March 1986: “It ought to be said that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the first to live the faith they preach: They don’t get angry, they don’t smoke, they don’t accumulate riches, they keep out of political discussions, . . . they pay the taxes, they follow a virtuous and honest life-style, they are happy and obliging. All of this has made them well liked.”