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Rereading the signs of the times

22 Jul 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

After Christ sent them out to preach and teach in his name, the apostles “gathered together with Jesus” to discuss “all they had done and taught,” this Sunday’s gospel relates.In 1962 successors to the apostles gathered in Rome from around the world and, after much discussion over several years, produced a fresh set of church teachings. Last Sunday Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholics to reread—or, for many, read for the first time—the documents of the Second Vatican Council, saying they "contain an enormous wealth for the formation of a new generation of Christians and for the formation of our consciences."Speaking at a Mass in Frascati, Italy near the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, Benedict said going back to the work produced by the council 50 years after it began was essential to the New Evangelization, which is how the pontiff has characterized the church’s mission in today’s world."Therefore, read it and read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and in this way rediscover the beauty of being Christians, of being church and living the great ‘we' that Jesus formed around himself in order to evangelize the world," said the pope. Source: A news bulletin by The Tablet (UK)

Vatican II benedict xvi second vatican council new evangelization

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New evangelization begins close to home, says pope

14 Oct 2012 - Preaching the News for Sunday

In this Sunday’s gospel Jesus encourages his followers to get their priorities in order and be willing to sacrifice “for my sake and for the sake of the gospel.” Pope Benedict XVI formally opened the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization in Rome on Sunday with a “universal call to holiness” aimed at Christians worldwide.“Holy men and women bloom among the generous missionaries who announce the Good News to non-Christians, in the past in mission countries and now in any place where there are non-Christians,” the pope said in his homily for the October 7 opening Mass in St. Peter’s Square.Over the next three weeks the gathering of bishops will map out a new strategy of evangelization for the contemporary world. The pope explained that the focus of this evangelization will be those people “who, though baptized, have drifted away from the church and live without reference to the Christian life.”Benedict also named two new doctors of the church, conferring one of the church’s highest distinctions on 16th-century Spanish preacher Saint John of Avila and 12th-century German mystic Saint Hildegard of Bingen. They join the ranks of only 33 other church doctors who have been singled out over the course of church history for their contributions to and influence on Catholic thought.Homily hint: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has made available a statement on the New Evangelization that provides a useful starting point for discussing this year-long initiative with your congregation. Click for a copy of the statement, Disciples Called to Witness: The New Evangelization, also available in Spanish. Sources: Articles by David Kerr for Catholic News Agency and the Associated Press

benedict xvi new evangelization hildegard of bingen john of avila

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Church and social media

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Communication is about communio, fellowship. That means it is the work of the Holy Spirit. Yet how frequently do we see social media, including social media in the church, as a work of the Holy Spirit? Twitter feeds, Facebook, journalism, public relations—aren’t these privileged places where the work of the Holy Spirit is being done today? That is surely why Pope John Paul II prophetically described the New Evangelization as “new in its methods.” Few aspects of contemporary life exhibit as many new methods as social media. Certainly, newspapers and magazines are being buffeted by the dramatic changes provoked especially by the internet. Yet for all that, too often we go slowly, and that is both a fact and complication of the relationship of social media to the church today. Church magazines and newspapers have not disappeared, weekly parish bulletins are still printed and distributed, and investments in new forms of social media have simply not taken off in usage as expected by some. Here’s the problem: Most church leaders and Mass-attenders are just not early-adopters and nothing is going to make them so. Many can even be located at the other end of the spectrum—resistant to change. It would be a massive waste of energy and investment to expect that situation to change. The bulk of church approaches to new media have tended to simply adapt what already exists in traditional media—which is mere duplication: Existing readers remain, and only a very small minority move to adopting online forms of existing church media. Such readers would have mostly continued to read in the traditional form. The much bigger problem is how to reach entirely new generations and unreached persons with new means and products while simultaneously continuing the current forms. That makes unusual demands on social media specific to a church context. Perhaps it is time to ask those older readers of newspapers, magazines, church bulletins, and the like for ongoing, long-term investment in enterprises built for new forms of social media and designed for non-reached younger readers. The vast number of older readers cannot and ought not be asked to change their habits. Yet they cannot pass on the faith of the church by simply paying for the existing media and its ongoing maintenance. There must be creative new products and new networking to build the body of Christ in our time. That is the New Evangelization. And that is definitely the work of the Holy Spirit. © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

social media communications new evangelization

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New opportunities, “New Evangelization”

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Today the church has fewer and fewer of the “grandmothers and grandfathers” of the faith who came of age in a previous time and who can share their formation in the current era of the life of the church and the nation. We are losing a great deal of the commitment and witness of that generation, but we are also living increasingly in an age of a blank slate when we need to write the future. The church has experienced both a great loss—the disappearance of past cultures of faith—and has a great opportunity—to build up a new culture of faith, particularly in a broader culture that is no longer so sure of itself and the rejection of God and religion that once marked intellectual life so virulently. There is also the potential to make common cause with other persons of faith from across the Christian tradition and beyond into all religious traditions and all persons of good will. Rather than moving to the barricades of squabbles long past, the church has the chance to spread the gospel anew and make the world a more just and humane place. That is the task of every generation and, especially during a world-historical turning point such as today's, it is the task of the New Evangelization. © 2012, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

new evangelization

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Society and the church

Short essays about observed trends in Roman Catholic life - Pastoral trends

Re-ligare, the source of the word for “religion,” means to “reconnect.” A big question in church life today is precisely how church connects to the larger society. Is the “church” part of official society? That was the ruling understanding since the time of Saint Augustine—up to the 1960s! The idea was that Catholicism would ideally connect to a culture in every bit as official a way as the government or the army. That concept flowed logically from the principle of one faith and one baptism but contrasts completely with an understanding of the independent modern person and free association. The church cannot live protected any longer within official society, and the Second Vatican Council recognized that some 50 years ago. In a time marked by an extensive globalization, formerly officially and quasi-officially Christian societies have embraced pluralism, and other societies where Christianity has never been embraced officially can only be swayed by appeal to the principle of religious freedom grounded in the primacy of a well-formed conscience. Such pressures have moved the world church with lightning speed toward a location within civil society as one voluntary association among many—special to be sure, but still a voluntary association. This development fit with how religion has always worked in the United States. Not surprisingly it was a great American Catholic theologian, Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., who was so crucial to Vatican II’s embrace of religious freedom. This shift means that the church in the United States offers something special to the world church today. It also means that the structures and understandings of the church universal face a great lag as they work though the accumulated structures and understandings of more than 1,500 years of being church. Critical questions must be asked, ones at the center of an effective New Evangelization. What must change if the church neither is nor aspires to be among the official powers of society? In the past that official status has given it a presence as a monopoly but also produced the real problem of being a “lazy monopoly” where the need for evangelization was much less. On the other hand, what must the church do if it is not be become a purely voluntary association within civil society or the so-called nonprofit sector where it ultimately has to offer a product or message or service to be bought and sold like any other good? What if religion, and the church, is really located and sustained within the symbolic universe of human culture instead? Whatever their roles in society, religion and the church are now and have always been an essential piece of human self-understanding and symbolic life—Truth with a capital “T”: not dominating as in official society nor competing as in civil society but redeeming, as in the gospel. © 2013, Bryan Froehle.

Authors Bryan Froehle

new evangelization society

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