Franciscan at Home

On October 12, 1962, the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, bore the headline “Chief Aim of the Council: To Defend and Promote Doctrine.” Indeed, the day before, Pope John XXIII delivered his long-anticipated address opening the Second Vatican Council. His words were uplifting and set a tone of openness to dialogue and appreciation for the benefits of progress.

Vatican II, he said, was to be “predominantly pastoral in character” and focused on the Church relating effectively to the modern world, since “she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate.” At the same time, the Council was to “to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral,” for “the Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers.” The Holy Father charged the Council with transmitting the Church’s teachings in the language of God’s 20th Century flock. In 2012, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Council and the 20th year of one of its spiritual offspring: the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

One of the preoccupations of the catechetical movement since the Second Vatican Council has been for the Church’s faith to be seen as clearly ‘relevant’; catechesis must be seen to address our ‘real needs’. And one might think that the urgency with which the Church reiterates today the need for a ‘new evangelisation’ is a further reinforcement of such a message. The Church, it might be thought, is asking us to focus upon understanding what our culture and society today most need; and to do this she must seek ‘new methods’ and must do so with a new ardour and commitment.

There is, of course, a sense in which we can affirm this desire for ‘relevance’. And it is also of course true that catechesis must always seek to announce the Gospel in a manner that engages our deepest needs. Nonetheless, the call to ‘relevance’ can easily be misdirected as a request that the Church’s attention focus upon relevance for me. I want the Church to concentrate upon me - upon my wishes, my aspirations, my hopes and my desires. Let me put the point in a way that sounds less self-centred: we understand the renewal of catechesis to be a call to focus upon us – upon our community and its wishes, desires and aspirations. Translated in this way, then, the call to a ‘Catechesis of Relevance’ means, in effect, ‘I want the Catechism to be about me and about our community.’

If this is how we understand the task of catechesis today, then the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be found to be frustratingly disappointing. For the Catechism is primary about God. ‘God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself’ opens the first paragraph of the text and the closing paragraphs climax upon the glory of the God who will be ‘all in all’. God is the alpha and the omega of the Catechism. He is the beginning, the end, and the centre.

What is urgently needed for the New Evangelisation, wrote Blessed John Paul II in Christifidelis laici, is a ‘mending of the Christian fabric of society’. And then: ‘for this to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations.’ Pope Benedict XVI echoes this call in Ubicumque et semper, the Apostolic Letter establishing the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelisation.

Catechesis in Poland

In each Catholic community the essential features of a Catholic approach to formation need to take root in the local soil, a soil that is specific to that environment. The challenges to the local church always revolve around how to engage fruitfully and creatively with this environment, so that Christians can come to maturity in an authentic way.

New catechetical movements are underway, especially movements to serve the new evangelization. There is a renewed effort being put forward in the area of catechetics from all over the world. A number of the “new movements” themselves have a strong commitment to catechesis. Another example of a “catechetical movement” is the Amicitia Catechistica, or ‘Catechetical Friendship’, of Franciscan University in the United States, Maryvale Institute in England, and Notre Dame du Vie in France. These three institutions have a special devotion to the work of catechesis. If we take a quick look at the recent history of catechesis in the Church, we can see this renewal has been gathering pace for a while.

The picture is a complex one, with solid tracks of renewal alongside wrong-turnings. Even before Vatican II, alongside many healthy currents of renewal, other fundamental shifts were taking place in the areas of philosophy, biblical interpretation, theology, and liturgy. Some of these trends encouraged an anthropocentric outlook. In the area of philosophy, for example, this can be traced back at least to the period of the Enlightenment. Once philosophy removed classical metaphysics from the equation, theology and liturgy also suffered. In his book The Mass and Modernity, Fr. Jonathan Robinson identifies what happened in the liturgy. “The liturgy is no longer primarily the worship of God, but a celebration of our needs and ‘our own life experience’.”[i] He quotes Cardinal Danneels, a progressive Belgian bishop who wrote, “It is the liturgy which must obey us and be adapted to our concerns, to the extent of becoming more like a political meeting or a ‘happening’. We are celebrating our own life experience!”[ii]

Msgr. Michael Wrenn, a special consultant for religious education to John Cardinal O’Connor, writes of this period,

“Basically what occurred in catechesis was a shift from God to man; from supernatural faith to more human concerns; from proclaiming the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ and everything that follows from that to espousing a purely human kind of effort featuring a struggling humanity trying to save itself by political means from oppression and injustice.”[iii]

As is well known, at the time of the Second Vatican Council the Church adopted a less critical attitude towards the world. Dialogue appeared to be replacing apologetics. Winning the argument gave way to a sharing of hearts and minds. Although the Council documents make some tough statements about the state of the world the overall impression is that of a Church addressing the world in positive tones. “Let us reason together,” seems to be the main form of address.

But in fact the Church does not teach that the importance of dialogue does away with the fundamental duty of preaching the gospel and seeking conversion. And the recent conclusions of the Synod on New Evangelisation contained clear reaffirmations of the need for a renewed apologetcs and a clear proclamation of the Gospel.

So is it perhaps time to look again at our attitude to the world? And why should it be so important? Well, first of all, few would deny that in the western world there is massive ignorance of Christian truth. Secondly a more upbeat, less self-apologising approach to evangelisation has been emerging in the Church for some time now.

Approximately 5 years ago, while teaching at a Conference on Catechetics, I was approached by an older gentleman who asked me a very simple question: “What is truth and what does it have to do with what we teach?” I responded, simply—“everything, because the ‘what’ you speak of is a ‘Who’—the Person of Jesus Christ’. To this day, I recall leaving that dialogue with a renewed interest in probing the question of truth, in particular, the importance of truth as it relates to catechesis. Five years later, I am still probing in light of the new evangelization, and my studies have me going back to the immensely popular figures of Blessed John Paul II and the Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict XVI, while reflecting into the meaning of Pilate’s inquiry: “what is truth?” helps bring into focus the essence and meaning of truth; what is at the heart of what we are contemplating. He states: “In Christ, God entered the world and set up the criterion of truth in the midst of history (Christ as the Truth). Truth is outwardly powerless in the world…Yet, in His very powerlessness, he is powerful: only thus, again and again, does truth become power”.[ii] For Pope Benedict XVI, the cross is the definitive sign of truth, because it is the definitive sign of God’s powerlessness, which ‘again and again’ produces power.

Interestingly, it was on his first Apostolic Pilgrimage to Poland that John Paul II used the phrase “new evangelization” for the first time during his pontificate. On that summer day in Mogila, Poland, John Paul II celebrated Mass at the Shrine of the Holy Cross. While reflecting upon the meaning of the cross in Polish history, in particular at the turn of the second millennium, he stated: “Where the cross is raised, there is the sign that evangelization has begun...With it we were given a sign that on the threshold of the new millennium, in these new times, these new conditions of life, the Gospel is again being proclaimed. A new evangelization has begun, as if it were a new proclamation, even if in reality it is the same as ever. The Cross stands high over the revolving world”.[iii] In these words, John Paul II has a challenge to all the Christian faithful setting out to respond to the Church’s call to proclaim the truth in the spirit of the new evangelization: embrace the cross as the epicenter to the new evangelization.

So we have this call ‘to commit to reflect upon the meaning of truth’ along with this obligation to see the cross as a principle constituent to the new evangelization and profound revelation of truth. What does all of this mean for us as Catholics and catechists? We must seek the proper attitude that is necessary for these interlocking towers of the cross and the truth to take root in our heart. So where are we to turn? The first beatitude.

At the recent Synod in Rome on New Evangelisation and the Transmission of the Christian Faith, the Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity made this Intervention, which illustrates how the work of love united to an exposure to the Christian faith is the first step of evangelization.

Your Holiness, Dear Synod Fathers, my dear fathers, brothers and sisters,

Our Mother Teresa is known for the work done for the poor. Not all are immediately aware of the aim of our work that is ‘to bring souls to God and God to souls’. When asked by the Minister of Social Work about the difference between his work and her work, she responded: ‘You do it for something, we do it for Someone’.

‘To evangelize or to be evangelized, that is the question.’ Pope Benedict XVI communicates to us in his Apostolic Letter on the Year of Faith that ‘people are able to evangelize only when they have been evangelized.’ Further we hear from Blessed John Paul II in Christifideles Laici (CL), his Apostolic Exhortation on the Laity, that the lay faithful are ‘personally called by the Lord from whom they receive a mission on behalf of the Church and the world.’ As lay faithful during this Year of Faith, each one of us is given a mission. It is the mission of the Church: to evangelize. Before we can evangelize, however, we first must be evangelized ourselves.

At our reception of the Sacrament of Confirmation, the Bishop in attendance laid his hands on us and said, ‘Let us pray to our Father that he will pour out the Holy Spirit to strengthen his sons and daughters with his gifts and anoint them to be more like Christ the Son of God.’ We were given specific gifts that are to be used on our mission. We are not merely laborers who work in the vineyard but we ourselves are a part of the vineyard (CL, 8). A vineyard is comprised of nothing more than a vine with its branches. If Jesus is the vine and we the branches, then who we specifically are as people is the vineyard. We must take a look at the vineyard this Year of Faith to see how much fruit is being born within it.

And Preparing for the Baptism of the Child

Archbishop Kurtz explains how "The Blessing of the Child in the Womb,” approved on 8 December 2011 by the Congregation for Divine Worship for use in the United States of America, can be a pastoral moment of first evangelization of the child and of new evangelization of the family.

"The Blessing of the Child in the Womb” was approved on 8 December 2011 by the Congregation for Divine Worship for use in the United States of America. This blessing is a pastoral moment of first evangelization of the child and new evangelization of the family. Warmly extending the love of Christ to families as they prepare for the birth of their child, this sacred gesture is both a positive and hope-filled way to announce to society the great gift of human life as well as a gracious invitation for the parents to begin steps for the baptism of their child, once born.