The Vatican made the Pontifical Council for New Evangelization official last week, as the Register’s Edward Pentin noted here.
That brought to mind other recent news about creative Catholic outreach: St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson joined Facebook. You can also follow him on Twitter @abp_carlson.
Magdalen College in New Hampshire announced a new name and efforts for the New Evangelization.
And earlier this month St. John’s Catholic Newman Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign hosted its second “24 Hours of Grace.” St. John’s Chapel was open for 24 hours for adoration; priests were available for confession. Priests also took to the university’s quad to hear confessions, and students and Fellowship of Catholic University Students (Focus) missionaries answered questions about the faith. The results: Many students returned to the practice of their faith, according to the Newman Center.
Now that’s New Evangelization!
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Thank you for bringing these laudable efforts to our attention!
I am curious as to how it was judged that students at UI had “returned to the practice of their faith” following the 24 Hours of Grace? It seems that it would take a bit longer than three weeks to make that determination.
The concluding remark, “Now, that the New Evangelization!”, struck me as
curious, because the article focuses on efforts to draw back into the fold fallen-away Catholics—most praiseworthy, to be sure—but the term New Evangelization has nothing to do with spreading the
Catholic Faith to non-Catholics, and especially to non-Catholic
Christians or to Jews. In fact, the conciliar Catholic Church eschews
such missionary activities. I know several Catholic converts personally who had to (I’m not exaggerating) fight their way into the Church because
priests were opposed to even considering their interest in converting to
the Catholic Church. There’s a well-known story about a Romanian Orthodox
bishop who appeared one day at the Vatican (in the 1980’s) expressing a
desire for conversion to the Catholic Church and was flatly refused,
by senior Curial officials, no less! It’s at least partly strange, this
‘new evangelization.’
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