Convocation of Catholic Leaders: ‘More Than a Physical Location’

On Day Three, the convocation was given a powerful and poignant reminder as to the object of discipleship and the content of evangelization: Christ Jesus.

(photo: Catholic News Herald)

On this third and final full day of the “Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America” in Orlando, Florida, the more than 3,000 participants turned their focus to the peripheries. Under the title of “Work and Witness,” the day was notable for several seemingly unrelated but intersecting events: a Eucharistic Procession, the culmination of this year’s Fortnight for Freedom (the U.S. Bishops’ annual campaign to raise awareness about the need to safeguard religious liberty) and concentration on peripheries.

A closer look revealed, however, that all of those threads are in fact closely interwoven.

 

Lessons from the Peripheries

In Pope Francis’ vision for the Church’s great task of evangelization, the peripheries loom very large. It was logical and even essential that the where the first two days looked at “Unity” and “Missionary Discipleship,” the third day should focus on carrying that message, the joy of the Gospel out into the world. But if the message is for all, and if it is to reach the places where the Truth is needed most, then the peripheries cannot be a mere extra or luxury to be considered after other priorities are assessed and resources are deployed. It must be very much in the mind and hearts of Catholics if we are to live properly the call of the Gospel.

There is, of course, an essential starting point for this project of evangelization: How do we define the term? Day Three explored the many aspects of what Francis calls the periferia, the peripheries. As with charting the landscape of modern culture, this required honesty and frankness.

Two speeches were of particular importance on Day Three, the keynote addresses by Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus since 2000, and Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles.

The Supreme Knight Carl Anderson is one of the foremost figures in American Catholicism in leading the effort to preserve and defend the Christian presence in the Middle East. Certainly he looked at the need to extend our concerns to the peripheries across the globe, but he also admitted that the most difficult challenge may not be in reaching out to the world’s needs but in “reaching out to our own neighbors, going to this periphery. It requires us to go beyond our comfort zone to do more.”

This requires us, he said, to come to a better understanding of who we are today as a Catholic community and to remember the words of Pope Francis that we are to be an evangelizing community filled with joy, a community in a permanent state of mission.

The Supreme Knight provided a solid foundation for the address of the second keynote speaker, Archbishop José Gomez who offered a vision for the Church in the modern world and the lessons from the peripheries. He used several key points, starting with the teachings of Pope Francis and then moving on to our current moment and the call of missionary discipleship.

He noted that in 2013, at the time of his election, Pope Francis called on the Church to go out of herself and to the peripheries. With great insight, Gomez provided a clear understanding of what we mean exactly by the peripheries in the vision of the pontiff.  “We can see that for him,” the archbishop said, “the peripheries are sociological and geographical.” They are more than “a physical location…poverty is not just material but also spiritual.” The poor are right before us, and many are spiritually impoverished.

Hauntingly, he told the participants, “These peripheries are growing in the modern world…they are the new mission territories. And these are places where the Church does not like to go. Where we do not like to go.”  As Pope Francis wrote in Evangelii Gaudium (no. 20):

In our day Jesus’ command to “go and make disciples” echoes in the changing scenarios and ever new challenges to the Church’s mission of evangelization, and all of us are called to take part in this new missionary “going forth”. Each Christian and every community must discern the path that the Lord points out, but all of us are asked to obey his call to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the “peripheries” in need of the light of the Gospel.

In this current moment, he returned to Francis’ phrase that “Ours is not an age of change but a change of age.” We are living in a global and commercialized society, with advances in technology that are driving change even faster. At the same time, America is pulling apart and people are afraid for the future. At the heart of this crisis is the loss of the human person. “All the suffering we see in our society is rooted in the loss of the sense of God. The greatest poverty is not to know God.”

Coming to the heart of the matter, he asked, how do we respond to these realities? His answer was simple: Jesus.

 

Proclaiming Christ

On Day One, the participants of the convocation were asked to strive for the four-fold fulfilment of mission, joy, unity and discipleship. In virtually every speech they heard the importance of missionary discipleship and the urgency of the task of evangelization. On Day Three, the convocation was given a powerful and poignant reminder as to the object of discipleship and the content of evangelization: Christ Jesus. On Monday morning, the participants took part in a Eucharistic procession along the street of the Orlando Convention Center. Several thousand delegates marched solemnly in a public witness of faith and love. A public witnessing to Jesus as Lord.

Later in the afternoon, Archbishop William Lori was principal celebrant and homilist in the Fortnight for Freedom Mass. In his homily, Lori spoke about the dangers to religious liberty both at home and abroad.  Lori, the chair of the bishops’ committee on Religious liberty, noted that there are two kinds of persecution happening: the bloody kind, as in the Middle East, and the polite version as in the West.

Catholics today are being asked to go to the peripheries at a time when there are forces in the culture striving to push the Catholic faith – all faith – out of the public square. In effect, the believer is being forced into the peripheries as well. Should that happen, countless souls might be lost and the world deprived of both truth and love. Archbishop Lori summed up eloquently the full scale of the danger. “Without truth,” he said, “there is no freedom. Without freedom, there is no love.”

 

MORE READING:

Day 1 Recap

Day 2 Recap