Evangelii Nuntiandi 74: Interior Attitudes

Pope Paul begins to address the final theme of this document. We’re not talking about specifics. There are no programs. No vetted speakers. No founding of schools or internet sites, and no special “year” is being called. I think there’s wisdom in looking to the personal, spiritual, and other “interior” issues that will lead the Church to be effective, and individual disciples to be more fine-tuned in their efforts. This message is for everyone, not just bishops:

74. We would not wish to end this encounter with our beloved brethren and sons and daughters without a pressing appeal concerning the interior attitudes which must animate those who work for evangelization.

“Animate” presumes the work of the Holy Spirit. As always, good evangelical Catholics rely on the grace of God, not human genius and communication skills.

In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the name of the Apostles Peter and Paul, we wish to exhort all those who, thanks to the charisms of the Holy Spirit and to the mandate of the Church, are true evangelizers to be worthy of this vocation, to exercise it without the reticence of doubt or fear, and not to neglect the conditions that will make this evangelization not only possible but also active and fruitful. These, among many others, are the fundamental conditions which we consider it important to emphasize.

Two things strike me in this short but rich passage.

Ne timeas — don’t be afraid. It’s one of God’s most common messages in the Bible. Everybody is cautioned: Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the apostles, the psalmist, the patriarchs–God is very aware our own fear does us in more times than we care to count.

Attention to the conditions that will make evangelization active and fruitful. In other words, preparation, discernment, and more preparation. It is far from enough to have the right message if we have not prepared the listeners. It is far from enough to dump good seed on the ground from an airplane. We need water, nutrients, depth, cultivation, the right days of the growing season. I think there’s no worry that we avoid hard work or hard messages if we are cultivating listeners properly. One of the Church’s great weaknesses is that we trust how we communicate the message altogether too much. We have the truth. Our truth vibrates the eardrums of non-believers. Mischief managed and now it’s time to pray the rosary. I don’t think that’s how it’s done.

 

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 73: Lay Ecclesial Ministries

Lay people are everywhere, including laboring with the clergy with their God-given charisms:

73. Hence the active presence of the laity in the temporal realities takes on all its importance. One cannot, however, neglect or forget the other dimension: the laity can also feel themselves called, or be called, to work with their pastors in the service of the ecclesial community for its growth and life, by exercising a great variety of ministries according to the grace and charisms which the Lord is pleased to give them.

Forty years ago, this was an occasion of joy for the pope–to see people working, collaborating, and serving together:

We cannot but experience a great inner joy when we see so many pastors, religious and lay people, fired with their mission to evangelize, seeking ever more suitable ways of proclaiming the Gospel effectively. We encourage the openness which the Church is showing today in this direction and with this solicitude. It is an openness to meditation first of all, and then to ecclesial ministries capable of renewing and strengthening the evangelizing vigor of the Church.

Not only does the Church recognize these ministries today, but it acknowledges their Biblical foundations in the New Testament. The Holy Spirit called, and people responded:

It is certain that, side by side with the ordained ministries, whereby certain people are appointed pastors and consecrate themselves in a special way to the service of the community, the Church recognizes the place of non-ordained ministries which are able to offer a particular service to the Church.

A glance at the origins of the Church is very illuminating, and gives the benefit of an early experience in the matter of ministries. It was an experience which was all the more valuable in that it enabled the Church to consolidate herself and to grow and spread. Attention to the sources however has to be complemented by attention to the present needs of (humankind) and of the Church. To drink at these ever inspiring sources without sacrificing anything of their values, and at the same time to know how to adapt oneself to the demands and needs of today- these are the criteria which will make it possible to seek wisely and to discover the ministries which the Church needs and which many of her members will gladly embrace for the sake of ensuring greater vitality in the ecclesial community. These ministries will have a real pastoral value to the extent that they are established with absolute respect for unity and adhering to the directives of the pastors, who are the ones who are responsible for the Church’s unity and the builders thereof.

Pope Paul VI acknowledged the strong role of the laity in evangelical ministries forty years ago. Notice his language of appreciation (“special esteem”) and also his sense of lay ministry as a consecration of time, energy, and life:

These ministries, apparently new but closely tied up with the Church’s living experience down the centuries – such as catechists, directors of prayer and chant, Christians devoted to the service of God’s Word or to assisting their brethren in need, the heads of small communities, or other persons charged with the responsibility of apostolic movements- these ministries are valuable for the establishment, life, and growth of the Church, and for her capacity to influence her surroundings and to reach those who are remote from her. We owe also our special esteem to all the lay people who accept to consecrate a part of their time, their energies, and sometimes their entire lives, to the service of the missions.

Formation is essential for lay ministry, and the pope singles out public speaking as a skill of great importance:

A serious preparation is needed for all workers for evangelization. Such preparation is all the more necessary for those who devote themselves to the ministry of the Word. Being animated by the conviction, ceaselessly deepened, of the greatness and riches of the Word of God, those who have the mission of transmitting it must give the maximum attention to the dignity, precision and adaptation of their language. Everyone knows that the art of speaking takes on today a very great importance. How would preachers and catechists be able to neglect this?

We earnestly desire that in each individual Church the bishops should be vigilant concerning the adequate formation of all the ministers of the Word. This serious preparation will increase in them the indispensable assurance and also the enthusiasm to proclaim today Jesus Christ.

Formation of the laity is a huge task. Consider not only catechists, but the millions of parents. I remember my mother’s example in this, to cite one possibliity. Though not a Catholic, she opted to train as a certified CCD catechist in the days when my siblings and I were being prepared for baptism. She wanted to be “ready for questions” as they arose.

The overall responsibility belongs to the bishop. Keep in mind that ministers of the Word also include lectors and cantors in the liturgical sphere. And for any lay person who feels any urge or hint to speak with others about the faith, a grounding in the Scriptures would seem to be indicated.

Any readerds seeing anything else of importance in this section?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 72: Young People

This was a focus of the last pope: Catholic youth.

72. Circumstances invite us to make special mention of the young. Their increasing number and growing presence in society and likewise the problems assailing them should awaken in every one the desire to offer them with zeal and intelligence the Gospel ideal as something to be known and lived. And on the other hand, young people who are well trained in faith and prayer must become more and more the apostles of youth. The Church counts greatly on their contribution, and we ourself have often manifested our full confidence in them.

Every generation seems to find new ways to alienate young people. Whatever “confidence” a pope offers may well be undercut in parish or school life. And the formation element is tricky. One young friend of mine, in the guise of the “new” evangelization understood he was obliged to proselytize, an action as a young teen, he didn’t feel at all competent to undertake. Or really very willing.

I have found teens, college students, and young adults, as individual persons to be very competent in any number of spiritual gifts and tasks, including evangelization. But it does take special care to guide young people, to ward off burn-out, and keep them balanced.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 71: The Role of the Family

The domestic Church also has a role to play in spreading the Good News:

71. One cannot fail to stress the evangelizing action of the family in the evangelizing apostolate of the laity.

At different moments in the Church’s history and also in the Second Vatican Council, the family has well deserved the beautiful name of “domestic Church.”[Lumen Gentium 11; Apostolicam Actuositatem 11; Saint John Chrysostom, In Genesim Serm. VI, 2; VII, 1: PG 54, 607-68] This means that there should be found in every Christian family the various aspects of the entire Church. Furthermore, the family, like the Church, ought to be a place where the Gospel is transmitted and from which the Gospel radiates.

This is simple enough. The title, “domestic Church” isn’t just a plum of a name. Every Christian family should indeed possess characteristics of the universal Church. And if evangelization is at the top of the list of apostolates for the whole Church, it figures that the family will be involved in evangelization. How is that? Read on:

In a family which is conscious of this mission, all the members evangelize and are evangelized. The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them.

We should not overlook the evangelizing qualities of children of all ages with their peers, certainly, but also parents who have lagged in the practice of the faith.

And such a family becomes the evangelizer of many other families, and of the neighborhood of which it forms part. Families resulting from a mixed marriage also have the duty of proclaiming Christ to the children in the fullness of the consequences of a common Baptism; they have moreover the difficult task of becoming builders of unity.

I’m glad that Pope Paul brought up this topic. It was Pope Benedict who described so-called mixed marriages as “laboratories of ecumenism.” Perhaps in such families, we can accomplish some of the long-aspired goals of the ecumenical movement, and begin to make true progress toward unity.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 70: The Role of the Laity

Evangelization by the laity is as varied as the gifts men, women, and children bring to the practice of their faith:

70. Lay people, whose particular vocation places them in the midst of the world and in charge of the most varied temporal tasks, must for this very reason exercise a very special form of evangelization.

Their primary and immediate task is not to establish and develop the ecclesial community- this is the specific role of the pastors- but to put to use every Christian and evangelical possibility latent but already present and active in the affairs of the world. Their own field of evangelizing activity is the vast and complicated world of politics, society and economics, but also the world of culture, of the sciences and the arts, of international life, of the mass media. It also includes other realities which are open to evangelization, such as human love, the family, the education of children and adolescents, professional work, suffering. The more Gospel-inspired lay people there are engaged in these realities, clearly involved in them, competent to promote them and conscious that they must exercise to the full their Christian powers which are often buried and suffocated, the more these realities will be at the service of the kingdom of God and therefore of salvation in Jesus Christ, without in any way losing or sacrificing their human content but rather pointing to a transcendent dimension which is often disregarded.

Commentary:

I would agree the primary task of pastors is to establish and develop churches. But it must be conceded, especially in mission territories, that lay people often serve the Church by developing and maintaining the ecclesial community, often at great personal cost, and sometimes even in spite of the seeming disregard of bishops.

The variety of possible tasks for the lay person means that a careful discernment is required to allow people to best use their best gifts, and to determine the needs not only of the local church, but also the situations in which we find ourselves. In this way, the possibilities may seem even more demanding than what is expected of clergy or religious who have particular tasks, charisms, and apostolates.

That said, it would seem most of us lay people evangelize in the context of our lives. This means three areas, more or less: our work, our “neighborhood,” and our culture, as we live in each of these.

The workplace is obvious enough.

The neighborhood may include the people who live on either side of us, across the hall or street, and in the vicinity of our homes. but it might also mean the social circles in which we exist: other school parents, civic organizations, dinner parties, and old friends.

By culture, I would see the circles of people in our recreational lives: concerts and sports, shopping and internet browsing, clubs and associations–and this might have some overlap with our social/neighborhood circles.

We have an acknowledgement that the “Christian powers” of the laity are often “buried and suffocated.” Clearly, the exhuming and breathing life into these powers is the responsibility of pastors.

There’s potentially a lot here for a local community to discern. What sorts of questions do you see arising from this section? Most of my readers are lay people. Do you find yourselves buried and suffocated? Or just not giving much thought to evangelization? Or perhaps focused on your own circles, and doing it naturally?

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 69: The Role of Those in Religious Life

Women and men in religious life have a role to play:

69. Religious, for their part, find in their consecrated life a privileged means of effective evangelization. At the deepest level of their being they are caught up in the dynamism of the Church’s life, which is thirsty for the divine Absolute and called to holiness. It is to this holiness that they bear witness. They embody the Church in her desire to give herself completely to the radical demands of the beatitudes. By their lives they are a sign of total availability to God, the Church and the (brothers and sisters).

The fact that the Church has religious orders is itself a witness to the results of evangelization. No problem there.

As such they have a special importance in the context of the witness which, as we have said, is of prime importance in evangelization. At the same time as being a challenge to the world and to the Church herself, this silent witness of poverty and abnegation, of purity and sincerity, of self-sacrifice in obedience, can become an eloquent witness capable of touching also non-Christians who have good will and are sensitive to certain values.

From the regard for celebrities like Mother Teresa to the anonymous witness of religious who serve in hospitals, schools, and other services to non-believers, we know that people notice the work of men and women in religious life.

In this perspective one perceives the role played in evangelization by religious men and women consecrated to prayer, silence, penance and sacrifice. Other religious, in great numbers, give themselves directly to the proclamation of Christ. Their missionary activity depends clearly on the hierarchy and must be coordinated with the pastoral plan which the latter adopts. But who does not see the immense contribution that these religious have brought and continue to bring to evangelization? Thanks to their consecration they are eminently willing and free to leave everything and to go and proclaim the Gospel even to the ends of the earth. They are enterprising and their apostolate is often marked by an originality, by a genius that demands admiration. They are generous: often they are found at the outposts of the mission, and they take the greatest of risks for their health and their very lives. Truly the Church owes them much.

So religious need not be in the high profile spots or front lines of preaching to people. And it should be said that religious both inside the cloister and outside of it are valued by the Church, as noted here by Pope Paul VI.

 

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 68: Bishops and Pastors

Bishops recently convened for a few weeks to discuss the “new evangelization.” Does that square with Church teaching on their role? Let’s see what Pope Paul said about it:

68. In union with the Successor of Peter, the bishops, who are successors of the apostles, receive through the power of their episcopal ordination the authority to teach the revealed truth in the Church. They are teachers of the faith.

We’ve seen elsewhere, especially in Christus Dominus, that one of the primary ministries of the bishop is preaching the Word. Communicating the Word is part of evangelization, and so the bishop, naturally, is a big part of any evangelical ministry.

Priests of all sorts are associated with the apostolic/episcopal ministry:

Associated with the bishops in the ministry of evangelization and responsible by a special title are those who through priestly ordination “act in the person of Christ.”[Lumen Gentium 10, 37; Ad Gentes 39; Presbyterorum Ordinis 2, 12, 13] They are educators of the People of God in the faith and preachers, while at the same time being ministers of the Eucharist and of the other sacraments.

The pope speaks to his bishops:

We pastors are therefore invited to take note of this duty, more than any other members of the Church. What identifies our priestly service, gives a profound unity to the thousand and one tasks which claim our attention day by day and throughout our lives, and confers a distinct character on our activities, is this aim, ever present in all our action: to proclaim the Gospel of God.[Cf. 1 Thess 2:9]

Pastors are identified as who they are by the ministry of evangelization, as realized in these various ways of serving through the Word and sacraments:

A mark of our identity which no doubts ought to encroach upon and no objection eclipse is this: as pastors, we have been chosen by the mercy of the Supreme Pastor,[Cf. 1 Pt 5:4] in spite of our inadequacy, to proclaim with authority the Word of God, to assemble the scattered People of God, to teach this People with the signs of the action of Christ which are the sacraments, to set this People on the road to salvation, to maintain it in that unity of which we are, at different levels, active and living instruments, and unceasingly to keep this community gathered around Christ faithful to its deepest vocation. And when we do all these things, within our human limits and by the grace of God, it is a work of evangelization that we are carrying out. This includes ourself as Pastor of the universal Church, our brother bishops at the head of the individual Churches, priests and deacons united with their bishops and whose assistants they are, by a communion which has its source in the sacrament of Orders and in the charity of the Church.

This “communion” within holy orders is sometimes strained these days. But when the clergy work together, especially in an area as essential to their identity, it can be a marvelous cooperation with grace.

 

Evangelii Nuntiandi 67: The Successor of Peter

What is the basis for Peter’s primacy? The early Acts of the Apostles, plus many confirmations from other popes and from medieval, post-Schism councils.

67. The Successor of Peter is thus, by the will of Christ, entrusted with the preeminent ministry of teaching the revealed truth. The New Testament often shows Peter “filled with the Holy Spirit” speaking in the name of all.”[Acts 4:8; cf. 2:14; 3:12] It is precisely for this reason that St. Leo the Great describes him as he who has merited the primacy of the apostolate.”[Cf. St. Leo the Great, Sermo 69, 3; Sermo 70, 1-3; Sermo 94, 3; Sermo 95 2: S.C. 200, pp. 50-52; 58-66; 258-260; 268] This is also why the voice of the Church shows the Pope “at the highest point- in apice, in specula- of the apostolate.”[Cf. First Ecumenical Council of Lyons, Constitution Ad apostolicae dignitaties: Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Bologna 1973, p. 278; Ecumenical Council of Vienne, Constitution Ad providam Christi, ed. cit., p. 343; Fifth Lateran Ecumenical Council, Constitution In apostolici culminis, ed. cit., p. 608; Constitution Postquam ad universalis, ed. cit., p. 614; Constitution Divina disponente clementia, ed. cit., p. 638.] The Second Vatican Council wished to reaffirm this when it declared that “Christ’s mandate to preach the Gospel to every creature (cf. Mk. 16:15) primarily and immediately concerns the bishops with Peter and under Peter.”[Ad Gentes 38]

The full, supreme and universal power”[Lumen Gentium 22] which Christ gives to His Vicar for the pastoral government of His Church is this especially exercised by the Pope in the activity of preaching and causing to be preached the Good News of salvation.

Vatican II speaks more of the responsibility of the Bishop of Rome, rather than strictly what is owed to the Holy Father by others. In terms of evangelization, it is about what the pope does for others, how the pope serves the cause of evangelization, and for this topic, less the things that some Catholics find more exciting about the person or the role.

 

 

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?

 

Professionals and Entitlement

Professor Ralph Martin’s commentary on post-conciliar evangelization, or the perceived lack of it, is interesting. I think he has one misdiagnosis:

(M)any Catholics were confused by the council’s laudable emphasis on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue into thinking that “maybe it doesn’t matter anymore whether people are Christians or not.

The theologian said that many Catholics today have adopted an attitude of “practical universalism,” which Martin described as a belief that “broad and wide is the way that leads to heaven, and almost everybody is going that way; but narrow is the gate the leads to hell, and hardly anybody’s going that way.”

This might be true of some people. It’s a complex thing. And complicated things often have two or more factors in play. My own sense is that mixed in with all of this is a continuation of two preconciliar themes.

One, that evangelization is for professionals. Bishop Sheen had high profile converts. Priests and RCIA directors do the heavy hitting in a parish. Lay people in the pews–many of them see evangelization as someone else’s ministry. Like a lot of things.

Two, I think we have an extension of a pre-conciliar mindset of Catholic entitlement. The extreme side of Professor Martin’s “practical universalism” is a practical triumphalism. We know we’re on the right track. We don’t chase after “lapsed” Catholics. If they don’t come back, it’s their own damned fault. Literally. Protestants, too. Catholics have all the answers, and surely other people have heard about it as much as we have. So if they don’t come to us, it’s their loss.

Before Vatican II, we didn’t have RCIA. In the US, it’s nearly universal in parishes. And we get a lot of people: engaged persons and newlyweds and those married for a long time to Catholics. We get people who are attracted by how we live. By what we do.

I’m a skeptic on placing too much blame on mistaken intellectual ideas. When I was in grad school, I was a member in a parish that had open Communion for non-Catholics. The pastor made that very, very clear. And we had people wanting to join the Church through RCIA, too.

I think we need a lot of ideas to solve the evangelization challenges, and not limit ourselves to a few.

 

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).