As I write this column, I am embarking on a trip to Australia with the Word on Fire team. We’re heading halfway around the globe at the invitation of the Australian Catholic University, and my team will be with me to film the events. My intention is to produce a documentary on the New Evangelization as it is actually practiced. The documentary will feature the trip to Australia, as well as a journey to the United Kingdom and, after that, New York City. Those settings will provide the context, and a kind of lens, by which I hope to invite the Church to not only imagine the New Evangelization in the abstract, but also to see it in action.
My message during these adventures will be about laying out the basics of the Church’s proclamation. Announcing the Good News is a matter of giving testimony to the risen Jesus Christ, declaring that he is divine, celebrating the deep humanism of the faith, and, finally, insisting on the indispensability of the Church as the Mystical Body of the Lord. These matters, which have the power to transform our lives and culture, are not merely ideas that are to be discussed, but an invitation to share communion with the divine life itself. In other words, evangelization is not just talk; it is a way of life.
How, then, do we engage this way of life? How do we move evangelization from talk to action? I would like to propose some simple, practical strategies to make it happen.
First, deepen your knowledge of the Catholic tradition. We have in the Church an extremely smart, rich and profound history that comprises the incomparable Scriptures, treasures of theology, spirituality, art, architecture, literature and the inspiring witness of the saints. To know all this is to enter into a densely textured and illuminating world of meaning; not to know it deprives one of spiritual joy. If there is a first step in evangelization, it is to cultivate a passionate regard for knowing what the Church believes and how those beliefs have been a positive force for sustaining the human spirit.
You can’t share what you don’t know, and if you don’t know the full potential of what the Church has to offer, efforts at evangelization will go nowhere.
Second, let the language of the faith be naturally on your lips. Many Catholics, consciously or unconsciously, censor our own speech out of fear that interjecting religion into public discourse is offensive. To be sure, we should never be aggressive or overbearing in regards to our faith, but we should never acquiesce to social conventions that require a privatization of our faith either.
The faith must be all pervasive, invading and influencing every dimension of our lives: public and private, personal and professional. Allow your Catholic convictions to come to verbal expression. If this prompts a reaction or a question, so much better for the Church’s efforts at evangelization. How many people in your circle of acquaintances even know that you are a Catholic? I would submit to you that if the answer to that question is few to none, then you are not accomplishing your mission.
Finally, don’t be afraid to pray in public. How many times have you sat down with your family or friends at a restaurant and simply dug into your food without offering a word of thanksgiving? Again, you need not be ostentatious, but a simple, unaffected prayer, publicly offered, can be a powerful witness to the culture. Do you remember that sentimental but effective painting by Norman Rockwell depicting an elderly woman and her grandchildren bowing their heads in prayer before taking a meal in a truck stop? What I’ve always loved are the looks of bewildered admiration on the faces of the regular denizens of the place. Don’t underestimate the evangelical power of demonstrating your faith in public.
The Lord Jesus told his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all the nations. This call went out, not simply to the leaders of the Church then and now, but to all of us, the baptized. There is a danger that too much talk about evangelization can reduce it to an idea rather than a way of life.
Editor’s note: This column is courtesy of Catholic News Agency.
Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry Word on Fire
and the Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture at
University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein. He is the creator and
host of a new 10-episode documentary series called Catholicism
and also hosts programs on Relevant Radio, EWTN and at WordonFire.org.
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I applaud the efforts of anyone seeking to re-evangelize the laity. I just want to remind the author that the biggest mistake the Church can make is to use the tools of the World to evangelize the World. Knowledge, sermons, seminars, documentaries, slide-shows, videos, surveys, polls, 1-2-3 steps to xyz, etc. are superficial tools that have been used for now decades and proven to be ineffective tools in front of a culture of death. I believe it is a mistake to aim or desire to go back to the ‘good-ol-days’ 50-60 years ago, when the churches were still full. What the Church needs is to go back to the primitive Church, when the laity was ready to give up their lives for their faith in martyrdom. The Church of 50-60 years ago didn’t do their job otherwise we wouldn’t have a crisis of faith within the Church, with a Fr. Jenkins and a Sr. Keehan in it, we wouldn’t have a pedophilia stigma, we wouldn’t have openly homosexual clergy, we wouldn’t have nuns openly defying the teachings of the Church, no matter how great it is the temptation to look the other way, we have to acknowledge that the so-called ‘faith’ lived 50-60 years ago were myopic/blind or ignorant at best. We need saints, people like St. Paul, full of courage, fearless and eloquent. Ready to suffer persecution or even martyrdom for the sake of the Gospel, the Truth and Love for the Lord. We do not need priests or Bishops ready to tell ‘others’ to be saints.
Alexis, great comment. Agreed.
Father,
I think this is a great idea. I love the"Catholocism” series.I believe we need to use every way possible to evangelize, and that you are taking advantage of a particular gift to you from God to use current “film” media. I would love to see a TV station that primarily showed Catholic documentaries like yours. The History channel and others constantly put their slant on the bible and the Christian faith, but these technically well done presentations distort the faith.
Bill
@Alexis: I am 85 yrs old and I lived the 50 or 60 yrs ago as you mentioned and I was ignorant. I did not know there were gay priests, I did not know that Bishops were deceiving, I did not know that priests were pedophiles, I did not know the politics of the Vatican, I did not know Bishops or Cardinals had “children on the side”, I did not know that Nuns were abused by priests & other nuns. I did not know a lot of things. I thought the Catholic Church was perfect. As one Nun told us in grade school “the closest people to God were priests” and I believed her. I learned so much about the problems the Catholic church is having by getting a computer. 50-60 yrs. ago, all these things were not spoken of. Why doesn’t the Catholic church excommunicate people like Jenkins and Keenan. Why are they still known as part of the Catholic church? Why do you still use their Catholic titles.
People don’t simply join “the Church.”. They join a parish. Is the Parish vibrant - and not only religious. Are people connected socially as well as spiritually? Is the whole person being fed?
Alexis: Good thought…however, I take issue with your last staement:
“We do not need priests or Bishops ready to tell ‘others’ to be saints”.
I say: Yes, we do!! AND WE NEED EVERY CATHOLIC REGARDLESS OF VOCATION—to be willing to be ridiculed and persecuted for their faith—because of their great LOVE for the faith, and salvation given to us by Jesus! Yes, many before us have missed the mark…and so have I, on many occassion!WE NEED to CORRECT and ADMONISH each other when we are wrong, and that includes Fr. Jenkins and Sr. Keehan with our letters; and pray for the scales to fall from their eyes. Many of us are so well meaning, but terribly mis-informed due to the horrendous formation we receive in the late 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. We must be compassionate and patient with each other and pray for each other; BUT NONETHELESS STILL stand up and speak the truth. Not either/or..but both/and.
@Sue. That’s a great point too. I think excommunicating is a big deal, I’d like to understand why they don’t do that also. as for the names? My guess is that you can’t decide to stop calling people by their religious names without first having the Church do so, otherwise it could spiral to me being the ultimate judge of whose catholic enough or not. As un-catholic as these people are. I guess the bishops could denounce their views, but if they don’t first try to reach out to them privately, it would be alienating and hostile. Anyways, would love to see an article on this.
@Sue: I am not scandalized by the sins within the Church. As an 85 years young lady you should know that by now. Sins do not scare/scandalize me. We are all sinners. Who would dare cast the first stone? Didn’t Christ come for the sinners? What terrifies me is the inability to call sin a sin by the Catholic Media and public figures. All this political correctness in the Church is destroying our Catholic Faith from within. The Church has been following the progressives thought and their antics to use them within the Church. The progressives believe that psychology is better than spiritual direction, psychology becomes the 5th gospel, couples do not go to the priest when problems in the marriage arise, children are prescribed sedatives if they misbehave, divorce, broken homes, etc. The liberals believe that socialism would provide a better more just society, socialism enters the mind of the Church, Fr. Jenkins/Sr.Keehan are the byproduct of this mentality.
btw: I still use the Catholic titles for Fr. Jenkins and Sr. Keehan out of respect for them as persons and because I know they are sinners, like me. As sinners we all have the right to make mistakes and we all can convert or repent or ask forgiveness. As I am given a chance to be forgiven, it is the Christian thing to give them that chance as well. Fr. Jenkins and Sr. Keehan are more than sinners though, and this is no fault of their own. This is a Catholic Church public-image problem; an intangible message that for as long as Fr. Jenkins and Sr. Keehan have their jobs or positions of authority, between the lines the Church is saying that it is OK to abort, that a fetus is not a person, etc. better yet, that the comfort/good of the many is more important than the life of a person, which btw it is contrary to Church teaching. The Church may deflect or trivialized the argument, but the writing is in the wall. I do not ask for their excommunication, but they should not serve as public leaders within the Church.
I believe it is good for you and for all the laity, that the idea of the ‘clerical members’ of the Church being ‘holier than thou’ is dismantled; the Church is made of weak human beings; it is time that the laity embraces reality, our weaknesses, and we should not be scandalized of one another. But it is a mistake to infer that therefor everything the Church stands for is a lie, to undermine their authority and voice in the world, worst of all to further divide the Church or call for disobedience/schism. This is the time to unite and call/encourage the Church to mature and that the Church starts talking to the laity like the adults we are. Gone are the days when we could believe that ‘the closest people to God are priests”. The point in my first comment is that it is a MISTAKE to aim or desire to go back to those days. I repeat, we need saints, fearless leaders, unafraid neither of the media backlash (persecution) nor of calling a spade a spade. It was St. Paul and the Apostles who started the first Christian Communities that fearlessly gave their blood as witness to the Lord in martyrdom that conquered the hearts and minds of the Roman Empire and convinced them that God is Love… not blogs, surveys, documentaries, YouTube videos, etc. All these are superficial tools. In the history of the Church none of these have changed the lives of anyone, it has always been the saints who have effectively called the Church to conversion. Christ came as a person, he didn’t send an email, or a scroll. Christ spoke to the people fearlessly one on one. Christ loved the sinner and denounced the hypocrisy of the clergy of the time. But above all Christ DIED, persecuted, by the sins of all of us. If the clergy doesn’t want to be persecuted, go one on one with the laity or fearlessly speak about the truth, they should consider the line of work they have chosen and stop pursuing mirages or fantasies promised by technology or the progressive rhetoric = the easy way out.
@Barbara: I have no disagreement with what you said. But my statement, in light of this article, was: 1) to denounce the use of worldly, fashionable steps, to tackle a problem that is more profound and 2) to remind the author of this article of the immortal words of St. Francis, who successfully evangelized his generation and the Church by saying: “Go and evangelize everyone you meet; use words if necessary”... i.e. we have plenty of priests and Bishops and USCCB that remind us to be Catholic and what is the right thing to do, but we have Fr. Jenkins and Sr. Keehan that dishearten and discredit all their efforts.
I witnessed Bishop Krenn in St. Poelten Austria who thought he could challenge the media in the style of Jesus taking on the pharisees. He has suffered greatly for it. The fact that the persecution of christians is escalating is a sure sign that the re-evangelisation is starting to happen. Maybe the surest sign. It is a scary prospect but St.Paul, St. Stephen, St. Peter and many more lived a christian life but died a horrific death
Albert: Christ died a horrific death as well. If you are persecuted for being a faithful Christian, I say: “Blesses are you!”
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