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Posted on 10/15/2013 1:40:28 AM PDT by markomalley
At 12 o’clock this morning, the Holy Father Francis received in audience -- in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Vatican Palace --, the participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.
Here is a translation of the Pope’s address to those present.
* * *
THE HOLY FATHER’S ADDRESS
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I greet you all and thank you for what you do at the service of the New Evangelization, and for the work for the Year of Faith. My heartfelt thanks! What I would like to say to you today can be summarized in three points: primacy of witness; urgency of going out to encounter; pastoral program centered on the essential.
In our time we often witness an attitude of indifference to faith, regarded as no longer relevant in man’s life. New Evangelization means to reawaken the life of faith in the heart and mind of our contemporaries. Faith is a gift of God, but it is important that we Christians show that we live the faith in a concrete way, through love, concord, joy, suffering, because this elicits questions, as at the beginning of the journey of the Church: Why do they live like this? What drives them? These are questions that go to the heart of evangelization, which is the witness of t faith and charity. What we need especially in these times are credible witnesses who with their life and also with the word render the Gospel visible, reawaken attraction for Jesus Christ, for God’s beauty.
So many people have fallen away from the Church. It’s a mistake to put the blame on one side or the other, in fact, it’s not about talking about fault. There are responsibilities in the history of the Church and of her men, in certain ideologies and also in individual persons. As children of the Church we must continue on the path of Vatican Council II, stripping ourselves of useless and harmful things, of false worldly securities which weigh down the Church and damage her true face.
There is need of Christians who render the mercy of God visible to the men of today, His tenderness for every creature. We all know that the crisis of contemporary humanity is not superficial but profound. Because of this the New Evangelization -- while calling to have the courage to go against the current, to be converted from idols to the only true God --, cannot but use the language of mercy, made up of gestures and attitudes even before words. In the midst of today’s humanity the Church says: Come to Jesus, all you who labor and are heavy laden and you will find rest for your souls (cf. Matthew 11:28-30). Come to Jesus. He alone has the words of eternal life.
Every baptized person is a “cristoforo,” a bearer of Christ, as the ancient holy Fathers said. Whoever has encountered Christ, as the Samaritan woman at the well, cannot keep this experience to him/herself, but has the desire to share it, to bring Jesus to others (cf. John 4). It is for all of us to ask ourselves if one who meets us perceives in our life the warmth of faith, sees in our face the joy of having encountered Christ!
Here we move to the second aspect: the encounter, to go out to encounter others. The New Evangelization is a renewed movement towards him who has lost the faith and the profound meaning of life. This dynamism is part of the great mission of Christ to bring life to the world, the Father’s love to humanity. The Son of God “went out” of his divine condition and came to encounter us. The Church is within this movement; every Christian is called to go out to encounter others, to dialogue with those who do not think the way we do, with those who have another faith, or who don’t have faith. To encounter all because we all have in common our having been created in the image and likeness of God. We can go out to encounter everyone, without fear and without giving up our membership.
No one is excluded from the hope of life, from the love of God. The Church is sent to reawaken this hope everywhere, especially where it is suffocated by difficult existential conditions, at times inhuman, where hope does not breathe but is suffocated. There is need of the oxygen of the Gospel, of the breath of the Spirit of the Risen Christ, to rekindle it in hearts. The Church is the house whose doors are always open not only so that everyone can find welcome and breathe love and hope, but also because we can go out and bring this love and this hope. The Holy Spirit drives us to go out of our enclosure and guides us to the fringes of humanity.
In the Church all this, however, is not left to chance or improvisation. It calls for a common commitment to a pastoral plan that recalls the essential and that is “well centered on the essential, namely on Jesus Christ. It is no use to be scattered in so many secondary or superfluous things, but to be concentrated on the fundamental reality, which is the encounter with Christ, with his mercy, with his love, and to love brothers as He loved us. A project animated by the creativity and imagination of the Holy Spirit, who drives us also to follow new ways, with courage and without becoming fossilized! We could ask ourselves: how effective is the pastoral of our dioceses and parishes? Does it render the essential visible? Do the different experiences, characteristics, walk together in the harmony that the Spirit gives? Or is our pastoral scattered, fragmentary where, in the end, each one goes his own way?
In this context I would like to stress the importance of catechesis, as an instance of evangelization. Pope Paul VI already did so in the encyclical Evangelii nuntiandi (cf. n. 44). From there the great catechetical movement has carried forward a renewal to surmount the break between the Gospel and the culture and illiteracy of our days in the matter of faith. I have recalled several times a fact that has struck me in my ministry: to meet children who cannot even do the Sign of the Cross! Precious is the service carried out by the catechists for the New Evangelization, and it is important that parents be the first catechists, the first educators of the faith in their own family with their witness and with the word.
Thank you, dear friends, for this visit. Good work! May the Lord bless you and Our Lady protect you.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,Someone isn't going to like that!
There are those who will be offended by him saying: What I would like to say to you today… (nb: regardless of what follows, they'd be offended by him saying those words themselves)
They can get over themselves.
Matthew 28:16 - 20 is called "The Great Commission" because all Christians are commanded to 'go'.
Matthew 28:16-20
King James Version (KJV)
16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.
18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
You're absolutely right and that evangelical attitude is one thing that Catholics can and should adopt (and adapt).
Though I personally think that one of the greatest tragedies is when I encounter an "ex Catholic" who has so many things wrong about Catholicism. When I see that, I want to b**ch-slap the person's parents and his/her religion teachers for falling down on the job.
You're looking through revisionist lenses
And we still are!
Leaving aside your little snark about "taught to be Catholics and not Christians"…
Not at all. I feel that way about people who weren't taught to be Catholics.
A few obvious examples: artificial birth control, divorce/remarriage, and homosexuality.
When kids hear one thing at church and then have the parents say the exact opposite at home, who's the kid going to believe? Or, even worse, when the kid doesn't hear anything at all about it in church (or religious education) and hear the exact opposite of Church teaching at home?
As an anecdote: there has been more than one time when teaching about the permanence of marriage that I've had parents extremely upset with me (on a couple of occasions to the point of going to the Religious Education director trying to get me fired). Why? Apparently it wasn't charitable for me to teach that a person who was divorced and remarried was living in a state of adultery and should not receive Holy Communion (unless, of course, the first marriage was annulled -- i.e., formally recognized as an invalid marriage). Particularly when little 7th grade Johnny or Susie brought the subject up then with his/her divorced/remarried parents.
Or when I run into somebody who went through Catholic school from K-12 and who knows literally everything (in their mind) about Catholicism. When something specific comes up, they refuse to listen because, well, they know everything that can be learned. Especially when their assertion of what the Church teaches is exactly 180° out of phase with what the Church actually teaches.
Oh, and by the way, sometimes they end up as Baptists...but usually, they end up as atheists or agnostics.
Francis is a perfect fit to carry on the destruction of what used to be known as the Roman Catholic Church. He is a proven adherent to the new religion established as a result of the infamous Vatican II.
His words appear to be deliberately obfuscous in an attempt, perhaps, to cause eggheads to parse and muddle through them in order to regurgitate something the Novus Ordo folks will accept.
You pose contrasts that never were so you can establish a point to argue from.
Two by two
???
Yes.
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