Re-Evangelization All Over Again

In one of the recent newsletters of Our Sunday Visitor (Jan. 15, 2012), a column by Msgr. Francis Mannion (pg. 19) answered questions about the reality of hell. Now, he believes there is one. But he also says that anyone who has loved or been loved will not end up there. He said he heard this idea "about 1970" and has believed it since then.

It doesn't surprise me this idea circulated in the 70's. All you need is love, right? This has been a pervasive idea among Christians. Of course love is a wonderful reality, an amazing characteristic of our Divine God. But we must also remember that Jesus Christ came to Earth for our redemption because of our sins. He is our true hero, for He overcame a terrible ordeal to win the victory. And he asks us to believe in Him so we may have everlasting life with Him (John 3:16 NABRE).

The idea that all religions are the same is called "indifferentism." Evangelicals kept free of this ideology for a while, but mainstream Protestants and many Catholics subscribe to the idea that one spiritual path is as good as another. Some theologians subscribe to "universalism," in which we are all acceptable. A part of this group may say this is due to Christ's redemptive act which included everyone, but some would not even go so far as to say we needed Him, but that God simply loves all of us and we are all just on different journeys to the great universal oneness of love we will all eventually experience. However, indifferentism is not new and was mentioned by Pope Gregory XVI in 1832. He quoted St. Augustine from an even earlier time (born 354 AD): “The branch has the same form when it has been cut off from the vine; but of what profit is the form, if it does not live from the root?” (20. St. Augustine, in psalm. contra part. Donat.)

A Church document called "Nostra Aetate" (proclaimed by Pope Paul VI in 1965) says though there may be some parts of truth in all religions, the whole Truth culminates in Jesus Christ. If you know Him, there is no reason to follow another religion. To me, Christianity is a combination of being able to read the Truth in the Scripture and experiencing it with Christ.

Love is a wonderful thing, but many people have loved some people and hated others. Criminals have loved. Did past tyrants and dictators love their children? Probably, at least to some degree. Are they prepared for or worthy of heaven? Remember, heaven is perfect.

There must be a way we are able to be righteous in heaven, and we are told how that can be. The Apostle Paul tells us: 20...no human being will be justified in His sight by observing the law; for through the law comes consciousness of sin. 21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, though testified to by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; 23 all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. (Romans 3:20-23 NABRE),

John Paul II and Benedict XVI have called for a re-evangelization of the Church. I went through a time of doubt and even disbelief myself, influenced by these kinds of theology I have mentioned. Yet it is really worth thinking about the afterlife. The more I read the Bible and prayed, the more I believed you really do have to believe in Jesus Christ, that He was God, and that He came to save us from our sins to enter heaven. God the Father made Him the center of our lives and our hope, and He truly is.

People say a good God would not let people who never heard of Him go to hell. It is God's business how to handle that and should not be used as some excuse to not believe. Christians have faith that God is just, and things would not come out right if there was no justice. But He is also merciful. Each human being who has heard about Christ and has the opportunity to learn must work on their own soul to believe. Hopefully, they will come to do so, and then can help others do the same. The idea that we don't need to believe in Christ to get to heaven, which in my opinion is implied by Msgr. Mannion, is the very reason we need evangelization and re-evangelization.

Learn from Mistakes

Recently I wrote about Fr. Robert Spitzer, a priest and physicist who is trying to bring science and religion together. He was in a conference at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization in Denver, CO, reported by the Catholic News Agency HERE. The point in my previous post was that not everyone believes in God even though they know the science.

But, Fr. Spitzer makes a different point which is just as important. Not everyone knows the science. One should at least have the chance to make up one's own mind about whether DNA, proteins, the cell, and life itself could have come about by chance, and that is not happening. Amazingly in this day and age, science is being censored.

I had a very nice presentation last week about Intelligent Design Theory to about 50 persons. These people heard privileged information. They heard the numbers for the improbabilities of the origins of life. They heard what high school and even college students don't. And even Christian college students don't hear the facts though they point to God!

These students will have to seek out their own facts. And they can find them. The internet will have them. There are books (also censored!) that have them. The latest, bound to be great book about them is by Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperCollins Publishers, 2009). The book is very readable for anyone who has the desire and patience to try to learn.

Many Christians in the scientific community do not seem to want to admit that God may have created life directly. They are embarrassed by the history of the Galileo affair, where the Church denied for centuries the centrality of the Sun in our Solar System. They forget that the ancient scientific community put the Earth in the center just as well as the Church. The Church reacted against this scientific novelty as well as their own ideas of doctrine.

The Church, which includes all Christians, must learn from mistakes, to not inhibit learning. To stifle facts is to deny that reason and faith go hand in hand.

Proof of God

I've been writing about the progress of science and how it has replaced some of the ideas of the ancient philosophers. Yet the Church believes God is accessible to humans through reason. That is still true, but I think science is changing the details of how He is found through reason. Aristotle thought the universe was eternal. Now there is evidence of a Big Bang, which means there was a beginning to the universe. Aristotle promoted the idea of "spontaneous generation," in which living things continually arise from non-living. Biologist Louis Pasteur in the 1800's proved that life now comes only from other life (Wikipedia biography HERE).

Our new findings of cell complexity and specificity point to a Creator. Anyone who knows the details of the cell and the vast numbers involved in the improbability that it would form by chance should surely recognize that only an intelligence could make such a thing.

A recent article about Fr. Robert Spitzer, "New astrophysical discoveries leave little to no room for Atheism," Catholic News Agency, Sept. 30, 2009, reports on a conference at the John Paul II Center for the New Evangelization in Denver, CO.  Fr. Spitzer brings the latest in cosmology to religious people to show how science and theology can fit together. He speaks about the amazing fine-tuning of the universe, and how in many ways it may not have formed the way it has.

Yet, at the bottom of the CNA article about Fr. Spitzer are comments which various persons have left, and they show that these commenters do not accept what Fr. Spitzer is saying. They give alternate theories which include infinite universes, so that ours is nothing special. They mock the priest's reasoning. (2019 Update: the article is still accessible but the comments are no longer there.)

This mindset is common in our day and is very telling. The point I have been trying to make in the last few posts is that proof of God in scientific terms does not get to the very bottom of belief. The Apostle Paul wrote of the problems even in his day,

20 Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse;
21 for although they knew God they did not accord him glory as God or give him thanks. Instead, they became vain in their reasoning, and their senseless minds were darkened.

Romans 1 (NABRE).

The people to whom Paul refers made false idols from wood and stone and worshiped them. In our day the falsehood is in a mindset that puts materialism as the base of being and scientific research as the only answer to life's questions. Yet Paul's words are as true today as they were then when it comes to the rejection of God by some people. It is interesting that Paul states in verse 21, "although they knew Him." We may think that disbelief comes from not knowing, but Paul does not think so. There is something else going on, and the word "vain" describes their reasoning. Eventually, their minds were darkened, and things went downhill from there.

As I said in a previous post, faith is a gift from God. It is a precious gift, and I believe He gives Christians important roles in the process of bringing more persons to Himself. Some people have come to faith by perceiving the wonders of nature, and that is fine. But I don't think the wonders of nature are going to convince everyone. In that case, Christians can pray for unbelievers and share what Christ has done for us in our lives and our hearts. God has many facets, and we should try to learn more about them ourselves as we help others understand.

Evangelii Nuntiandi 2

Last post I commented on Pope Paul VI's 1975 encyclical, Evangelii Nuntiandi (On Evangelization in the Modern World). To continue, he commented on economic matters as pertaining to the Church. The 1970's were a turbulent time in the developing world. People were becoming restless for justice, and Liberation Theology was spreading. This point of view followed Marxism to some degree. It taught that the struggle against poverty may sometimes have to take the form of physical action against upper classes. Unfortunately, some of this philosophy led to armed conflict, as in the case of several Central American countries with disastrous results.

In this encyclical, Paul makes clear that the Church has been and continues to be a force in human development. He says, "But evangelization would not be complete if it did not take account of the unceasing interplay of the Gospel and of man's concrete life, both personal and social" (Sec. 29). And, "Between evangelization and human advancement--development and liberation--there are in fact profound links" (Sec. 31).

However, he continues "We must not ignore the fact that many, even generous Christians who are sensitive to the dramatic questions involved in the problem of liberation, in their wish to commit the Church to liberation effort are frequently tempted to reduce her mission to the dimensions of a simply temporal project" (Sec. 32).

Though the small groups which comprise Liberation Theology often study the Bible, they do it with an agenda of seeking a theological basis for political revolution. We may all have some pre-conceived ideas of what Christ did and said, but we need to keep our eyes open and hearts humble to gain the true wisdom that is available to us through the Bible and Church teachings.

The Pope continues in Sec. 32 to explain that if the Church were interested only in temporal matters, the objective would not be unique and the ideology could be molded into the political fashion of the day or be subject to temporal power as easily as governments can be. The Church has a unique mission, and that is to proclaim the Gospel.

The encyclical goes on to describe various roles of persons in the Church, such as bishop and priest, religious and lay persons and how they relate to evangelization. An interesting theme throughout the encyclical is that the people of the Church itself need constant evangelization.

My husband and I belong to a writing group. We read some of our writing out loud to the rest of the group so we can hear their critiques and opinions. It can be helpful to get reactions from others, but the comments are not always on the mark. One lady reacts to most of my reading in a standard way--she says I am preaching to the choir. Of course, our Christian writing can often have the tendency to get heavy-handed, but on the other hand, Christians themselves like to think about God and enjoy when the same message is employed in different ways. I found this encyclical to reinforce the fact that we need to keep repeating the message, sometimes to each other. Then all believers can take that message to others.

I enjoyed re-reading this encyclical on evangelization in the modern world. It faces temporal reality, but points us to the reality of things beyond.

Evangelii Nuntiandi

Since reading Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, I've been wanting to re-read Pope Paul VI's 1975 encyclical, Evangelii Nuntiandi. Benedict's third encyclical is in large part about the relationships between human charity and world economics. Pope Paul's focuses on evangelization.

Paul makes note that the encyclical is released 10 years after the closing of the Second Vatican Council and one year after the Third General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which had been devoted to evangelization.

Pope Paul begins,

1. There is no doubt that the effort to proclaim the Gospel to the people of today, who are buoyed up by hope but at the same time often oppressed by fear and distress, is a service rendered to the Christian community and also to the whole of humanity (Sec.1).

The encyclical elaborates on this introductory theme. What I didn't remember from reading before was that the bishops were looking to the Pope at that time for a "fresh forward impulse" for a "new period of evangelization" (Sec. 2). The Pope explores what has happened in our day to the "hidden energy of the Good News." This is still a question with which our Church continues to grapple, and so the encyclical is worthwhile reading for all of us.

Paul makes no bones about the importance of evangelization:

Such an exhortation seems to us to be of capital importance, for the presentation of the Gospel message is not an optional contribution for the Church. It is the duty incumbent on her by the command of the Lord Jesus, so that people can believe and be saved. This message is indeed necessary. It is unique. It cannot be replaced. It does not permit either indifference, syncretism or accommodation. It is a question of people's salvation. It is the beauty of the Revelation that it represents. It brings with it a wisdom that is not of this world (Sec. 5).

Certainly belief in that urgency is a factor in the energy we put into evangelization. Another factor, says Paul, is the constant need for the Church itself to be evangelized:

The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself. She is the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love, and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love. She is the People of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols, and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the "mighty works of God"[41] which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by Him and reunited. In brief, this means that she has a constant need of being evangelized, if she wishes to retain freshness, vigor and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel (Sec. 15).

(Footnote [41]. Cf. Acts 2:11; 1 Pt 2:9.)

The Pope talks about living a good life in order to witness as a Christian (Sec. 21). However, he said evangelization is not complete without the proclamation of the name of Jesus Christ, and explanation that He came to offer salvation to all. It is upon each of us to accept that, be converted and in turn proclaim that Good News to others (Sec. 22).

Interestingly, Pope Paul also felt compelled to address economic problems in his letter. The bishops, especially of the Third World, even then were seeking support from the Church for the oppressed peoples of the underdeveloped countries, many of them Catholic. I will pick up discussion of the encyclical at this point in the next post.

Cardinal Dulles

I gave a short introduction in the last post to my interest in the New Evangelization in the Catholic Church. There are perhaps many ideas of how to develop this new approach to teaching and re-teaching the faith. I am excited by the prospects. I read about it a few years ago, when I was a student in theology at Aquinas College. The book was The New World of Faith by Avery Dulles, S.J. (Huntingdon, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 2000). Avery Dulles was created Cardinal in 2001 and died in 2008.

In the book on page 111, he explains that evangelization has always been a part of the Christian faith, but there are several reasons that the late Pope John Paul coined the term "New Evangelization."

For one, the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's renewed the call to the laity to be part of the preaching church. In particular, we are called to

join the profession of faith to the life of faith. This evangelization--that is, the proclamation of Christ by word and the witness of [our] lives--acquires a special character and a particular effectiveness because it is accomplished in the ordinary circumstances of the world. (Documents of Vatican II, "Lumen Gentium", no. 35)

I think this applies to our modern world and the current scientific situation in an interesting manner, and I hope to elaborate in various ways in the future.

Another reason Dulles gives for the "new" part of evangelization is that many Catholics have fallen away from the faith, and should be "re-evangelized." There are young people who were not brought up in the teachings of the Church, and older ones who became disillusioned or convinced that religion is a myth. I think science, or better said the modern mind-set associated with science, it is a big part of this falling away. I think there are good reasons to evaluate what is happening and correct certain misconceptions. Also, we tend to act in ways we don't even realize, and our un-thought-out words and actions give away deeper values.

Some say that it is important that America continue to be first on the scientific forefront. They worry that with the introduction of Intelligent Design theory, we will lose our edge and be relegated to scientific backwaters. We may not be able to continue to produce Nobel Prize winners. Surely it is important to continue the scientific quest for medical cures and other legitimate needs. But whether Americans win the Nobel Prize or not is certainly not the best reason to motivate our actions.

The new evangelization may mean for some a "re-catechization." I found a great section in the latest Catechism of the Catholic Church (St. Paul Books and Media, 1994). It says:

To adore God is to acknowledge, in respect and absolute submission, the "nothingness of the creature" who would not exist but for God. To adore God is to praise and exalt him and to humble oneself, as Mary did in the Magnificat, confessing with gratitude that he has done great things and holy is his name. The worship of the one God sets man free from turning in on himself, from the slavery of sin and the idolatry of the world (sec. 2097).

Evangelization in our day must consider the current scientific mindset of scientists and their influence on the general population. Research and inquiry are of course important, and our scientists are smart and sincere. Many scientists are not religious and some of the more vocal ones are outright obnoxious, loudly disdaining religion. But many science promoters who say they are religious still come across as caring more about science than religion. It is not the details of science that are the problem here. It is the mindset that says Nobel prizes and even money grants are so important that other considerations must take a back seat.

This does not even take into account whether what scientists say is right or wrong. Priorities we set show through in our speech and actions, whether we be religious or not.