Evangelii Nuntiandi 66: The Whole Church Evangelizes

We have reached a new phase of this 1975 document with today’s post. Here we transition to a longer section (67-72) in which we will look at, in turn the pope, the bishops, women and men in religious life, lay people in the world, the family, and young people before examining qualities such as collaboration, formation, and attitude (73-74). After pondering the role of the Holy Spirit (75) we will wrap up with a discussion of the qualities of evangelizers (76-80) and then a final encouraging word from Pope Paul VI (81-82). The end is in sight. But that gets ahead of ourselves.

So, who’s responsible for evangelization? You should know the answer by now. Every believer:

66. The whole Church therefore is called upon to evangelize, and yet within her we have different evangelizing tasks to accomplish. This diversity of services in the unity of the same mission makes up the richness and beauty of evangelization. We shall briefly recall these tasks.

First, we would point out in the pages of the Gospel the insistence with which the Lord entrusts to the apostles the task of proclaiming the Word. He chose them,[Cf. Jn 15:16; Mk 3:13-19; Lk 6:13-16] trained them during several years of intimate company,[Cf. Acts 1:21-22] constituted[Cf. Mk 3:14] and sent them out[Cf. Mk 3:14-15; Lk 9:2] as authorized witnesses and teachers of the message of salvation. And the Twelve in their turn sent out their successors who, in the apostolic line, continue to preach the Good News.

And while the Holy Father pointed out the Twelve and their successors, the Gospel call to witness to Christ is really the responsibility of all. Over the next week, we’ll look at how that responsibility is optimally exercised.

 

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 65: The Role of Peter’s Successor

Affirming the role of the Bishop of Rome …

65. It was precisely in this sense that at the end of the last Synod we spoke clear words full of paternal affection, insisting on the role of Peter’s Successor as a visible, living and dynamic principle of the unity between the Churches and thus of the universality of the one Church.[Paul VI, Address for the closing of the Third General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops (26 October 1974): AAS 66 (1974), p. 636] We also insisted on the grave responsibility incumbent upon us, but which we share with our Brothers in the Episcopate, of preserving unaltered the content of the Catholic faith which the Lord entrusted to the apostles. While being translated into all expressions, this content must be neither impaired nor mutilated. While being clothed with the outward forms proper to each people, and made explicit by theological expression which takes account of differing cultural, social and even racial milieu, it must remain the content of the Catholic faith just exactly as the ecclesial magisterium has received it and transmits it.

The point of contention usually centers on outward forms deemed needful by Rome. And in its reception (or lack thereof) by people, the modern distrust of authority and the cource of that authority being European/First World. Authority, of course, is tied up with the deepest notions of a bleiever turning herself or himself over to God. And to the authority figures within any branch of Christianity. With many individuals, and in certain strains of many human cultures, it is a far more difficult persuasion than it used to be a century or more ago. The challenge remains heavy on the pope and on the pastors and evangelists of the Church: what is essential to Christ, and what are aspects historical, human, and reformable?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 64: Warnings Against Breaking Away

If the last sections have been optimistic about the possibilities of universal/individual collaboration, Pope Paul offers serious cautions to those who sever ties with the universal Church:

64. But this enrichment requires that the individual Churches should keep their profound openness towards the universal Church. It is quite remarkable, moreover, that the most simple Christians, the ones who are most faithful to the Gospel and most open to the true meaning of the Church, have a completely spontaneous sensitivity to this universal dimension. They instinctively and very strongly feel the need for it, they easily recognize themselves in such a dimension. They feel with it and suffer very deeply within themselves when, in the name of theories which they do not understand, they are forced to accept a Church deprived of this universality, a regionalist Church, with no horizon.

True of some Christians, but not all. In the intervening forty years, I’d say some aspects of church life almost invite the breaking away, and we’ve seen schisms on both the traditional and progressive side of Roman Catholicism. For as many people who feel the need for a universal connection, I’d say there are others who value the intellectual and pragmatic aspects of flying with a flock of like-minded believers.

The real spiritual danger is avoiding extremism of any kind, something that the balance of other individual Churches, in addition to the universal, can assist us.

As history in fact shows, whenever an individual Church has cut itself off from the universal Church and from its living and visible center- sometimes with the best of intentions, with theological, sociological, political or pastoral arguments, or even in the desire for a certain freedom of movement or action- it has escaped only with great difficulty (if indeed it has escaped) from two equally serious dangers. The first danger is that of a withering isolationism, and then, before long, of a crumbling away, with each of its cells breaking away from it just as it itself has broken away from the central nucleus. The second danger is that of losing its freedom when, being cut off from the center and from the other Churches which gave it strength and energy, it finds itself all alone and a prey to the most varied forces of slavery and exploitation.

These are two significant dangers. We see the increasing tendency online for conservative Catholics to split and divide, and for various factions to align under certain leaders.

The second danger can be more subtle. But it involves cutting oneself off from unpleasant and challenging input, but that which might be rather healthy to engage.

The more an individual Church is attached to the universal Church by solid bonds of communion, in charity and loyalty, in receptiveness to the Magisterium of Peter, in the unity of the lex orandi which is also the lex credendi, in the desire for unity with all the other Churches which make up the whole- the more such a Church will be capable of translating the treasure of faith into the legitimate variety of expressions of the profession of faith, of prayer and worship, of Christian life and conduct and of the spiritual influence on the people among which it dwells. The more will it also be truly evangelizing, that is to say, capable of drawing upon the universal patrimony in order to enable its own people to profit from it, and capable too of communicating to the universal Church the experience and the life of this people, for the benefit of all.

This is true. One single factor comes to mind: that a small, splintered, narcissistic remnant will not be attractive to all believers. I’d venture to say that any community, parish, diocese, internet, universal Church, that does not attract all kinds of people with all sorts of gifts, abilities, and sensibilities, has already veered, even if slightly, into the ditch and off the track of catholicity and universality.

Your comments?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 63: Communicating to the Listeners

We all struggle with the risk of losing something in translation. It is a failing of human communication. We do not always say what we mean. People do not always hear what is proclaimed.

63. The individual Churches, intimately built up not only of people but also of aspirations, of riches and limitations, of ways of praying, of loving, of looking at life and the world, which distinguish this or that human gathering, have the task of assimilating the essence of the Gospel message and of transposing it, without the slightest betrayal of its essential truth, into the language that these particular people understand, then of proclaiming it in this language.

The transposition has to be done with the discernment, seriousness, respect and competence which the matter calls for in the field of liturgical expression,[Sacrosanctum Concilium 37-38: AAS 56 (1964), p. 110; cf. also the liturgical books and other documents subsequently issued by the Holy See for the putting into practice of the liturgical reform desired by the same Council.] and in the areas of catechesis, theological formulation, secondary ecclesial structures, and ministries. And the word “language” should be understood here less in the semantic or literary sense than in the sense which one may call anthropological and cultural.

This is the key paragraph:

The question is undoubtedly a delicate one. Evangelization loses much of its force and effectiveness if it does not take into consideration the actual people to whom it is addresses, if it does not use their language, their signs and symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask, and if it does not have an impact on their concrete life. But on the other hand, evangelization risks losing its power and disappearing altogether if one empties or adulterates its content under the pretext of translating it; if, in other words, one sacrifices this reality and destroys the unity without which there is no universality, out of a wish to adapt a universal reality to a local situation. Now, only a Church which preserves the awareness of her universality and shows that she is in fact universal is capable of having a message which can be heard by all, regardless of regional frontiers.

Legitimate attention to individual Churches cannot fail to enrich the Church. Such attention is indispensable and urgent. It responds to the very deep aspirations of peoples and human communities to find their own identity ever more clearly.

These days, it seems there’s a swing to an emphasis on the preached message, rather than the adaptation for the listener. Still, there’s an attractiveness in the optimism that Christ is the answer to human longing. That aspiration is well-addressed by an engaged local community.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 62: Churches, Universal and Individual

The relationship between universal and the individual Church can be a marvelously productive and fruitful one. Or it can be derailed by tension and suspicion. At any rate, I found this section to be rather rich and full of potential discussion points.

First, we are reminded that the universal Church is “incarnate” in the local Church. What does that mean? Is it wishful thinking on the part of Rome and the pope? Incarnate suggests a tangible, physical, “embodied” reality. The document also speaks of things not as “embodied,” like culture, vision, history. How would you say the universal is found tangible in the local?

62. Nevertheless this universal Church is in practice incarnate in the individual Churches made up of such or such an actual part of mankind, speaking such and such a language, heirs of a cultural patrimony, of a vision of the world, of an historical past, of a particular human substratum. Receptivity to the wealth of the individual Church corresponds to a special sensitivity of modern man.

This next paragraph is careful to suggest that the Church does not consist of the sum of parts:

Let us be very careful not to conceive of the universal Church as the sum, or, if one can say so, the more or less anomalous federation of essentially different individual Churches. In the mind of the Lord the Church is universal by vocation and mission, but when she puts down her roots in a variety of cultural, social and human terrains, she takes on different external expressions and appearances in each part of the world.

And it can be difficult not to see the Catholic Church as Rome plus Marquette plus Manila plus Melbourne plus Manchester plus … . Pope Paul alludes to the cultural and spiritual variety that one finds as one travels among other believers from place to place. Over the past fifty years, perhaps the Catholic laity experience this in a way our forebears never did. Do we Catholics have a stronger sense of a universality because of the access to travel? Or perhaps we come home more satisfied (self-satisfied?) than before.?

Thus each individual Church that would voluntarily cut itself off from the universal Church would lose its relationship to God’s plan and would be impoverished in its ecclesial dimension. But, at the same time, a Church toto orbe diffusa would become an abstraction if she did not take body and life precisely through the individual Churches. Only continual attention to these two poles of the Church will enable us to perceive the richness of this relationship between the universal Church and the individual Churches.

Two poles, not in tension we hope, but in a complementariness. That Church, wholly “diffused” through the world, is that what some of us expect? Pope Paul seems to be saying that the particular distinctiveness of a local Church is just as important as that universal dimension. I’d say that the best expression of the Church balances between a hierarchical institution putting its mark everywhere, and the congregational aspect that so easily can be adrift and straying from a greater whole.

This would be one aspect of the Body in which hewing to a middle gray does us better than a clear leaning to either the worldwide or the local expression. Find that right middle ground, that right mix of both “poles,” places us in the center where we ideally find Christ and place ourselves in a universal, catholic Body much broader and more glorious than our particular concerns. How to achieve that balance? We spend a lot of time fussing about it, don’t we?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 61: A Universal Church

The next five sections state and develop the theme of the catholicity of the Church. Where do we get such an audacious and bold notion? From the Gospels themselves:

61. Brothers and sons and daughters, at this stage of our reflection, we wish to pause with you at a question which is particularly important at the present time. In the celebration of the liturgy, in their witness before judges and executioners and in their apologetical texts, the first Christians readily expressed their deep faith in the Church by describing her as being spread throughout the universe. They were fully conscious of belonging to a large community which neither space nor time can limit: From the just Abel right to the last of the elect,[Saint Gregory the Great, Homil. in Evangelia 19, 1: PL 76, 1154] “indeed to the ends of the earth,[Acta 1:8; cf. Didache 9, 1: Fund Patres Apostolici, 1, 22] “to the end of time.”[Mt 28:20]

This is how the Lord wanted His Church to be: universal, a great tree whose branches shelter the birds of the air,[Cf. Mt 13:32] a net which catches fish of every kind[Cf. Mt 13:47] or which Peter drew in filled with one hundred and fifty-three big fish,[Cf. Jn 21:11] a flock which a single shepherd pastures.[Cf. Jn 10:1-16] A universal Church without boundaries or frontiers except, alas, those of the heart and mind of sinful man.

Those of us with the pope often confront the matter of which identifies us: being Roman or being Catholic? Or catholic?

The first and original quality of the Church before large-C, is our catholicity, our universality. Sinful minds and hearts, as Pope Paul suggests, limit our reach, our abilities, and our vision. In the next few posts, we’ll look at sections 62-65 and explore the notions of being different, being apart, and being one–and how these impact our evangelical efforts. After all, our mandate from the Lord knows no limit in space (Acts 1:8) or time (Mt 28:20).

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 60: Two Convictions

These two convictions are really the same quality. Evangelization is an ecclesial act carried out in Communion with the Church.

60. The observation that the Church has been sent out and given a mandate to evangelize the world should awaken in us two convictions.

The first is this: evangelization is for no one an individual and isolated act; it is one that is deeply ecclesial. When the most obscure preacher, catechist or pastor in the most distant land preaches the Gospel, gathers his little community together or administers a sacrament, even alone, he is carrying out an ecclesial act, and his action is certainly attached to the evangelizing activity of the whole Church by institutional relationships, but also by profound invisible links in the order of grace. This presupposes that he acts not in virtue of a mission which he attributes to himself or by a personal inspiration, but in union with the mission of the Church and in her name.

From this flows the second conviction: if each individual evangelizes in the name of the Church, who herself does so by virtue of a mandate from the Lord, no evangelizer is the absolute master of his evangelizing action, with a discretionary power to carry it out in accordance with individualistic criteria and perspectives; he acts in communion with the Church and her pastors.

We have remarked that the Church is entirely and completely evangelizing. This means that, in the whole world and in each part of the world where she is present, the Church feels responsible for the task of spreading the Gospel.

This is not only about those “institutional relationships;” evangelization is also a cooperation with the grace of Christ. What does this mean? To be totally honest, we cannot excise aspects of the Church we dislike or about which we harbor serious disagreements. Seekers may be drawn to the individual faith witness of an individual: a friend, a lay person, a priest, or a religious. They might be attracted to the overall charism of a faith community. It might be an intellectual path, too. But all of these aspects combine to form a living Body, the Church. Difficult teachings and difficult people are part of the salvific path.

I appreciate the inclusion of those “profound invisible links in the order of grace.” If we bristle at sharing “our” evangelical ministries with far-away Rome or bishops, we should respond with humility to the notion that God works his grace independently of our skilled or clumsy attempts at sowing the seed of the Word. We evangelize not to gain personal disciples, but to pass them on to the Church (the whole Church, not just the parts we like) and to Christ.

Comments?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 59: Who Evangelizes?

With thissection we move from the topic of who is the target of evangelization and delve into the persons who possess the mission of doing it.

59. If people proclaim in the world the Gospel of salvation, they do so by the command of, in the name of and with the grace of Christ the Savior. “They will never have a preacher unless one is sent,”[Rom 10:15] wrote he who was without doubt one of the greatest evangelizers. No one can do it without having been sent.

But who then has the mission of evangelizing?

The Second Vatican Council gave a clear reply to this question: it is upon the Church that “there rests, by divine mandate, the duty of going out into the whole world and preaching the gospel to every creature.”[Dignitatis Humanae 13; Lumen Gentium 5; Ad Gentes 1] And in another text: “…the whole Church is missionary, and the work of evangelization is a basic duty of the People of God.”[Ad Gentes 35]

We have already mentioned this intimate connection between the Church and evangelization. While the Church is proclaiming the kingdom of God and building it up, she is establishing herself in the midst of the world as the sign and instrument of this kingdom which is and which is to come. The Council repeats the following expression of St. Augustine on the missionary activity of the Twelve: “They preached the word of truth and brought forth Churches.”[Saint Augustine, Enarratio in Ps 44:23: CCL XXXVIII, p. 510; cf Ad Gentes 1]

In a word, everybody. In EN 60, we will read that this is not an individual mandate. It operates with an intimate connection to the Church as a whole. And from there, we will look at the responsibility of “Churches,” of their continuing apostolic task to spread the Gospel everywhere.

But for now, it is sufficient to say that the Vatican II tradition (as stated in Ad Gentes 35) is that the entire People of God are responsible. As we’ve already read, individuals, by their life’s witness. But also their support of the particular charisms that engage new believers. I would think that would include cultivating their own gifts, as well as helping advance the gifts of others.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 58: Base Communities

Different names today: small groups and RENEW groups and such in the US. Base communities in Latin America. Parishes are mostly successful (still) in the States, so small groups come and go within the fabric of a faith community. Maybe they are less important and vital if the parish is alive. And to the South, small groups are essential for keeping the Church alive when there is no clergy available to lead the people.

58. The last Synod devoted considerable attention to these “small communities,” or communautes de base, because they are often talked about in the Church today. What are they, and why should they be the special beneficiaries of evangelization and at the same time evangelizers themselves?

According to the various statements heard in the Synod, such communities flourish more or less throughout the Church. They differ greatly among themselves both within the same region and even more so from one region to another.

The good:

In some regions they appear and develop, almost without exception, within the Church, having solidarity with her life, being nourished by her teaching and united with her pastors. In these cases, they spring from the need to live the Church’s life more intensely, or from the desire and quest for a more human dimension such as larger ecclesial communities can only offer with difficulty, especially in the big modern cities which lend themselves both to life in the mass and to anonymity. Such communities call quite simply be in their own way an extension on the spiritual and religious level- worship, deepening of faith, fraternal charity, prayer, contact with pastors- of the small sociological community such as the village, etc. Or again their aim may be to bring together, for the purpose of listening to and meditating on the Word, for the sacraments and the bond of the agape, groups of people who are linked by age, culture, civil state or social situation: married couples, young people, professional people, etc.; people who already happen to be united in the struggle for justice, brotherly aid to the poor, human advancement. In still other cases they bring Christians together in places where the shortage of priests does not favor the normal life of a parish community. This is all presupposed within communities constituted by the Church, especially individual Churches and parishes.

And in Rome’s eyes, the worrisome:

In other regions, on the other hand, communautes de base come together in a spirit of bitter criticism of the Church, which they are quick to stigmatize as “institutional” and to which they set themselves up in opposition as charismatic communities, free from structures and inspired only by the Gospel. Thus their obvious characteristic is an attitude of fault-finding and of rejection with regard to the Church’s outward manifestations: her hierarchy, her signs. They are radically opposed to the Church. By following these lines their main inspiration very quickly becomes ideological, and it rarely happens that they do not quickly fall victim to some political option or current of thought, and then to a system, even a party, with all the attendant risks of becoming its instrument.

The difference is already notable: the communities which by their spirit of opposition cut themselves off from the Church, and whose unity they wound, can well be called communautes de base, but in this case it is a strictly sociological name. They could not, without a misuse of terms, be called ecclesial communautes de base, even if while being hostile to the hierarchy, they claim to remain within the unity of the Church. This name belongs to the other groups, those which come together within the Church in order to unite themselves to the Church and to cause the Church to grow.

These latter communities will be a place of evangelization, for the benefit of the bigger communities, especially the individual Churches. And, as we said at the end of the last Synod, they will be a hope for the universal Church to the extent:

- that they seek their nourishment in the Word of God and do not allow themselves to be ensnared by political polarization or fashionable ideologies, which are ready to exploit their immense human potential;

- that they avoid the ever present temptation of systematic protest and a hypercritical attitude, under the pretext of authenticity and a spirit of collaboration;

- that they remain firmly attached to the local Church in which they are inserted, and to the universal Church, thus avoiding the very real danger of becoming isolated within themselves, then of believing themselves to be the only authentic Church of Christ, and hence of condemning the other ecclesial communities;

- that they maintain a sincere communion with the pastors whom the Lord gives to His Church, and with the magisterium which the Spirit of Christ has entrusted to these pastors;

- that they never look on themselves as the sole beneficiaries or sole agents of evangelization- or even the only depositaries of the Gospel- but, being aware that the Church is much more vast and diversified, accept the fact that this Church becomes incarnate in other ways than through themselves;

- that they constantly grow in missionary consciousness, fervor, commitment and zeal;

- that they show themselves to be universal in all things and never sectarian.

On these conditions, which are certainly demanding but also uplifting, the ecclesial communautes de base will correspond to their most fundamental vocation: as hearers of the Gospel which is proclaimed to them and privileged beneficiaries of evangelization, they will soon become proclaimers of the Gospel themselves.

Seven interesting points, possibly directed at the emerging communities outside of Europe and influenced by marxism. But it may be illustrative to consider these points with other groups: internet Catholics, traditionalist communities.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 57: The Duty to Preach to the Heart

Too often westerners, especially Americans speak of rights. The flip side to this is the reality of duty and responsibility. Both are needed.

The Holy Father speaks of the right of every person to hear the Gospel:

57. Like Christ during the time of His preaching, like the Twelve on the morning of Pentecost, the Church too sees before her an immense multitude of people who need the Gospel and have a right to it, for God “wants everyone to be saved and reach full knowledge of the truth.”[1 Tim 2:4]

He also speaks of the duty of the entire Church to preach it:

The Church is deeply aware of her duty to preach salvation to all. Knowing that the Gospel message is not reserved to a small group of the initiated, the privileged or the elect, but is destined for everyone, she shares Christ’s anguish at the sight of the wandering and exhausted crowds, “like sheep without a shepherd” and she often repeats His words: ”I feel sorry for all these people.”[Mt 9:36; 15:32] But the Church is also conscious of the fact that, if the preaching of the Gospel is to be effective, she must address her message to the heart of the multitudes, to communities of the faithful whose action can and must reach others.

Christianity is not a clique, or an enclave. The notion of a smaller, purer church goes against the very fabric of Christian duty. It might be that some of the people who receive preaching, baptism, and all are less than optimal in their words and actions. It doesn’t negate the Great Commission. Pope Paul VI doesn’t deny the need to care for the multitudes, those who are responsible for living the Christian life. Note the message is not for the mind, but for the heart. I would take that as less a kerygma aimed at emotions (affairs of the heart), and more a proclamation to the very core of human life (the innermost recesses).

Comments?

 

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 56: Non-Practicing Christians

The “new evangelization” seems focused on this other “sphere.” What Pope Paul VI said about it almost four decades ago:

56. The second sphere is that of those who do not practice. Today there is a very large number of baptized people who for the most part have not formally renounced their Baptism but who are entirely indifferent to it and not living in accordance with it. The phenomenon of the non practicing is a very ancient one in the history of Christianity; it is the result of a natural weakness, a profound inconsistency which we unfortunately bear deep within us. Today however it shows certain new characteristics. It is often the result of the uprooting typical of our time. It also springs from the fact that Christians live in close proximity with non-believers and constantly experience the effects of unbelief. Furthermore, the non-practicing Christians of today, more so than those of previous periods, seek to explain and justify their position in the name of an interior religion, of personal independence or authenticity.

I’m not convinced these characteristics are all that new. While it is true that people other than aristocrats have the means and freedom to be mobile these days, in previous eras, it was not unknown that wars would force whole elements of populations into the status of refugees. Did pogroms and other persecutions dilute Judaism over the centuries into irrelevance?

Church history is also full of success stories of missionaries working with whole populations resistant to Christ. Was St Patrick at a competitive disadvantage for attempting to convert an island of pagans? And it must be conceded that many Catholics have exuded qualities of interiority and independence in a search for authenticity–or more accurately, a search for the Living God.

Perhaps the erosion from a near one-hundred percent Christian veneer to ninety or eighty is insufferable to some Christians. I suspect some saints would chuckle at the “disadvantage” we face in fractional impurities. And given relentless human weakness and inconsistency, I suspect that unchristian witness has always found its way into even the highest and supposedly purest realms of earthly religion.

Thus we have atheists and unbelievers on the one side and those who do not practice on the other, and both groups put up a considerable resistance to evangelization. The resistance of the former takes the form of a certain refusal and an inability to grasp the new order of things, the new meaning of the world, of life and of history; such is not possible if one does not start from a divine absolute. The resistance of the second group takes the form of inertia and the slightly hostile attitude of the person who feels that he is one of the homily, who claims to know it all and to have tried it all and who no longer believes it.

The “new evangelization” will not be easy. The difficulties is presents are much more subtle than the opposition Christians face, say, in Muslim lands. Inertia and hostility? These happen in close human associations: families and workplaces come to mind. The solution? Forging relationships. Seeking reconciliation. Admitting fault. These would be among the “proper means and language” mentioned below.

Atheistic secularism and the absence of religious practice are found among adults and among the young, among the leaders of society and among the ordinary people, at all levels of education, and in both the old Churches and the young ones. The Church’s evangelizing action cannot ignore these two worlds, nor must it come to a standstill when faced with them; it must constantly seek the proper means and language for presenting, or representing, to them God’s revelation and faith in Jesus Christ.

Relationships. Authentic relationships with people–not the kind of stuff you can forge through theology or the new media so much. If the “new evangelization” gets bogged down in apologetics and information, I see a crash-and-burn in the future.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 55: Unbelief in the Modern World

Do you think the Church views unbelief as a problem new to this generation? Long before the cult of celebrity hit atheism, it was recognized as a challenge to the modern proclamation of the Gospel.

55. Also significant is the preoccupation of the last Synod in regard to two spheres which are very different from one another but which at the same time are very close by reason of the challenge which they make to evangelization, each in its own way.

The first sphere is the one which can be called the increase of unbelief in the modern world. The Synod endeavored to describe this modern world: how many currents of thought, values and countervalues, latent aspirations or seeds of destruction, old convictions which disappear and new convictions which arise are covered by this generic name!

From the spiritual point of view, the modern world seems to he forever immersed in what a modern author has termed “the drama of atheistic humanism.”[Cf. Henri de Lubac, Le drame de l'humanisme athee, ed. Spes, Paris, 1945]

If Father de Lubac is right–and I lack the original reference to confirm–he might be suggesting that unbelief is always a human intellectual or spiritual flaw. In any event, I think the proper course of action is to emphasize belief in Christ, rather than present the Church as mainly being about the tearing down of alternate systems. What we preach is confrontational enough, I would think. And if Christ is preached effectively, the fruits of such a proclamation will be evidence enough of a stance against atheism.

On the one hand one is forced to note in the very heart of this contemporary world the phenomenon which is becoming almost its most striking characteristic: secularism. We are not speaking of secularization, which is the effort, in itself just and legitimate and in no way incompatible with faith or religion, to discover in creation, in each thing or each happening in the universe, the laws which regulate them with a certain autonomy, but with the inner conviction that the Creator has placed these laws there. The last Council has in this sense affirmed the legitimate autonomy of culture and particularly of the sciences.[Cf. Gaudium et Spes 59] Here we are thinking of a true secularism: a concept of the world according to which the latter is self-explanatory, without any need for recourse to God, who thus becomes superfluous and an encumbrance. This sort of secularism, in order to recognize the power of man, therefore ends up by doing without God and even by denying Him.

I don’t think the contemporary world has changed much. On the other hand, it might be that the strains of secularism and atheism, if always with us, have been freed from a veneer of Christianity. And that may be better for the fruitfulness of the Gospel in the long run. If Christianity is compulsory, or even strongly advised, then can we be sure that religion is not being used as a cloak of deceit by those whose real aims are contrary to the Gospel?

New forms of atheism seem to flow from it: a man centered atheism, no longer abstract and metaphysical but pragmatic, systematic and militant. Hand in hand with this atheistic secularism, we are daily faced, under the most diverse forms, with a consumer society, the pursuit of pleasure set up as the supreme value, a desire for power and domination, and discrimination of every kind: the inhuman tendencies of this “humanism.”

In this same modern world, on the other hand, and this is a paradox, one cannot deny the existence of real steppingstones to Christianity, and of evangelical values at least in the form of a sense of emptiness or nostalgia. It would not be an exaggeration to say that there exists a powerful and tragic appeal to be evangelized.

I certainly agree with Pope Paul VI on this point. The past forty years have found some people perhaps less welcome in the Church to seek a cure for this interior emptiness. That might be a theme worth exploring, but not for me today. Any thoughts, from y’all out there?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 54: On Christians

Did Pope Paul have anything to say about reclaiming Christians?

54. Nevertheless the Church does not feel dispensed from paving unflagging attention also to those who have received the faith and who have been in contact with the Gospel often for generations. Thus she seeks to deepen, consolidate, nourish and make ever more mature the faith of those who are already called the faithful or believers, in order that they may be so still more.

The following words were written almost four decades ago. Do today’s alarmists have a problem with plagiarism?

This faith is nearly always today exposed to secularism, even to militant atheism. It is a faith exposed to trials and threats, and even more, a faith besieged and actively opposed. It runs the risk of perishing from suffocation or starvation if it is not fed and sustained each day. To evangelize must therefore very often be to give this necessary food and sustenance to the faith of believers, especially through a catechesis full of Gospel vitality and in a language suited to people and circumstances.

Pope Paul is shortchanging other means of nourishment. Catechesis is definitely important. But the life of liturgy, prayer, and spirituality is a more universal tangent for believers. The experience of knowing God trumps the knowing about God.

The Church also has a lively solicitude for the Christians who are not in full communion with her. While preparing with them the unity willed by Christ, and precisely in order to realize unity in truth, she has the consciousness that she would be gravely lacking in her duty if she did not give witness before them of the fullness of the revelation whose deposit she guards.

We share the preparation for unity: a significant distinction for a church that some members see that all the work toward unity is to be borne by others. Not so.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 53: Seeds of the Word

The real “deeps” of evangelization engage believers with the world’s billions of non-Christians. Sounds scary, but maybe it’s not. Hindus, Buddhists, and even pagans already seek God, pray, possess spiritual and religious traditions. What do you think of the saint’s testimony that non-Christian religions contain “seeds of the Word”?

53. This first proclamation is also addressed to the immense sections of (humankind) who practice non-Christian religions. The Church respects and esteems these non Christian religions because they are the living expression of the soul of vast groups of people. They carry within them the echo of thousands of years of searching for God, a quest which is incomplete but often made with great sincerity and righteousness of heart. They possess an impressive patrimony of deeply religious texts. They have taught generations of people how to pray. They are all impregnated with innumerable “seeds of the Word”[Cf. Saint Justin, I Apol. 46, 1-4: PG 6, II Apol. 7 (8) 1-4; 10, 1-3; 13, 3-4; Florilegium Patristicum II, Bonn 1911, pp. 81, 125, 129, 133; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata I, 19, 91; 94; S. Ch. pp. 117-118; 119-110] and can constitute a true “preparation for the Gospel,”[Ad Gentes, 11; Lumen Gentium 17] to quote a felicitous term used by the Second Vatican Council and borrowed from Eusebius of Caesarea.

Such a situation certainly raises complex and delicate questions that must be studied in the light of Christian Tradition and the Church’s magisterium, in order to offer to the missionaries of today and of tomorrow new horizons in their contacts with non-Christian religions. We wish to point out, above all today, that neither respect and esteem for these religions nor the complexity of the questions raised is an invitation to the Church to withhold from these non-Christians the proclamation of Jesus Christ. On the contrary the Church holds that these multitudes have the right to know the riches of the mystery of Christ[Cf. Eph 3:8] – riches in which we believe that the whole of humanity can find, in unsuspected fullness, everything that it is gropingly searching for concerning God, man and his destiny, life and death, and truth. Even in the face of natural religious expressions most worthy of esteem, the Church finds support in the fact that the religion of Jesus, which she proclaims through evangelization, objectively places man in relation with the plan of God, with His living presence and with His action; she thus causes an encounter with the mystery of divine paternity that bends over towards humanity. In other words, our religion effectively establishes with God an authentic and living relationship which the other religions do not succeed in doing, even though they have, as it were, their arms stretched out towards heaven.

This seems clear. Believers respect non-Christian traditions. We confront the difficult questions. But we have no need to back off from telling others what the reason is for our hope.

This is why the Church keeps her missionary spirit alive, and even wishes to intensify it in the moment of history in which we are living. She feels responsible before entire peoples. She has no rest so long as she has not done her best to proclaim the Good News of Jesus the Savior. She is always preparing new generations of apostles. Let us state this fact with joy at a time when there are not lacking those who think and even say that ardor and the apostolic spirit are exhausted, and that the time of the missions is now past. The Synod has replied that the missionary proclamation never ceases and that the Church will always be striving for the fulfillment of this proclamation.

The responsibility we have is for the good of others. We have a mandate from Christ. We all share the call to live a life attractive to others, if not preach Christ explicitly. But the end is not only our obedience to God, but also the ingathering of seekers into Christ.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 52: Sorting Fish

A brief section which acknowledges that the situation of many baptized believers is not very different from those who have never known of Jesus:

52. This first proclamation is addressed especially to those who have never heard the Good News of Jesus, or to children. But, as a result of the frequent situations of dechristianization in our day, it also proves equally necessary for innumerable people who have been baptized but who live quite outside Christian life, for simple people who have a certain faith but an imperfect knowledge of the foundations of that faith, for intellectuals who feel the need to know Jesus Christ in a light different from the instruction they received as children, and for many others.

Among my colleagues in RCIA, this reality calls for an effort many describe as “sorting fish,” in which people who want to be Catholic are assessed in terms less of their status in the Church, and more to the extent they know and live the Gospel. Many unbaptized persons have more knowledge of Jesus, and often live lives more congruent to that of baptized Christians who have never had an opportunity to live their faith more fully.