Fr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Editorial
December 09, 2011
The bishops of the United States of America are now in the midst of their ad liminavisits to the Vatican. Normally done every five years, these visits not only give the bishops of the world an opportunity to make regular joint pilgrimages to the tombs of SS. Peter and Paul, but to inform the pope and his chief collaborators about the pastoral challenges in their respective regions and to receive support and guidance to help them meet those challenges. It is customary for the pope, having received tomes of documentation prior to their visit and reviewed it within the scope of the mission of the universal Church, to respond with one or more addresses, depending upon whether the bishops of a country come all together, as happens with small countries, or in a waves of groups of bishops, as occurs with the United States episcopacy, broken down into 15 different groups. To the U.S. bishops, Pope Benedict has decided to give five formal reflections that he hopes the bishops will find “helpful for the discernment” they are continually called to make for their “task of leading the Church into the future.” It’s expected that all five will touch on “the urgency and demands of a new evangelization” in the United States. We will be focusing on these addresses as they’re delivered over the course of the year.
The first reflection was delivered November 26 in the presence of the bishops from the state of New York. In it, Pope Benedict suggested that the necessary pre-condition for the Church to fulfill her mission of the re-evangelization of the increasingly secularized American culture is for all in the Church first to be re-evangelized, because we can only present the Gospel credibly to others when we know it and are living it. Evangelization cannot be viewed simply as a task to be undertaken “ad extra,” to those outside the Church, he stressed. “We ourselves are the first to need re-evangelization,” he emphasized, a process that involves conversion and believing in Christ and the Gospel that sets us free. “As with all spiritual crises, whether of individuals or communities,” the Holy Father said, “we know that the ultimate answer can only be born of a searching, critical and ongoing self-assessment and conversion in the light of Christ’s truth. Only through such interior renewal will we be able to discern and meet the spiritual needs of our age with the ageless truth of the Gospel.”
In speaking about the conversion needed in the Church in the United States, it’s unsurprising that Pope Benedict began by turning to the “scandal and disorientation caused by the sexual abuse crisis of recent decades.” But he also indicated that the Church’s ongoing conversion “to ensure the safety of our children and to deal appropriately and transparently with allegations as they arise” is meant to help the entire country achieve a similar metanoia. The sexual abuse of minors is a “scourge that affects every level of society,” he said, and the Church’s efforts ought to “help the broader community to recognize the causes, true extent and devastating consequences” so that “all institutions, without exception” will be held to the same “exacting standards” to which the Church is “rightly held.” Re-evangelization always involves conversion, and conversion requires not only hatred of sin but a firm resolution never to sin again. The Church’s repentance and reparation, her protection of children and new transparency, are meant to be a catalyst for all institutions and individuals to unite in the recognition not only of the great evil of sexual abuse but formulate a stringent social game plan to prevent it and punish those who engage in it and enable it.
Pope Benedict then turned to the crucial need for an adequate formation of Catholics to know what they believe and why, and to receive support from the Church to live according to the truth. “The obstacles to Christian faith and practice raised by a secularized culture,” he said, “cannot be underestimated.” Immersed in this culture, “believers are daily beset by the objections, the troubling questions and the cynicism of a society that seems to have lost its roots, by a world in which the love of God has grown cold in so many hearts.” This can lead to a “quiet attrition.” Once a separation of faith from life begins to occur, eventually the faith weakens and that leads to spiritual tepidity and eventually frigidity. He commended the U.S. bishops for their development of a shared pastoral vision to respond to the rupture of life from faith that has been occurring with regard to the institution of marriage and to participation in political life.
But he said that it’s not enough that the bishops be united in a shared pastoral strategy. The whole Church, he said, must be committed. “The renewal of the Church’s witness to the Gospel in your country is essentially linked to the recovery of a shared vision and sense of mission by the entire Catholic community” and to a “consistent witness at every level” of the life of the Church. He stressed the importance of Catholic educational institutions, from universities to schools to Religious Education programs to parishes. “Young people have a right to hear clearly the Church’s teaching and, most importantly, to be inspired by the coherence and beauty of the Christian message, so that they in turn can instill in their peers a deep love of Christ and His Church.” He was phrasing his message in a positive way, but he was plainly implying that one of the major issues in the recent past that has led to the urgent need for a re-evangelization is because many Catholic educational institutions have not been teaching the faith fully, clearly and coherently. This not only has short-changed and confused students who have a right to the truth, but sent them out to spread the confusion rather than spread and live the true faith. For the Church to carry out the new evangelization, we must return to this “shared vision and sense of mission” and “consistent witness at every level,” especially in the Church’s educational institutions.
The third aspect of internal renewal and re-evangelization that Pope Benedict raised had to do with the importance of the Mass. He noted that the Church in the United States is now beginning to use the revised translation of the Roman Missal and said that this is a great opportunity to “inspire an ongoing catechesis that emphasizes the true nature of the Liturgy and, above all, the unique value of Christ’s saving sacrifice for the redemption of the world.” Once we lose a sense of the sacrality of the Mass, he implied, it’s easy to lose a sense of the sacredness of all of human life and activity. The Mass is not merely a liturgical rite, but the entrance into the saving sacrifice of Christ. Once the Mass is marginalized, Christ and the salvation He brings are likewise marginalized. “A weakened sense of the meaning and importance of Christian worship can only lead to a weakened sense of the specific and essential vocation of the laity to imbue the temporal order with the spirit of the Gospel,” Pope Benedict said. The corollary is also valid: the stronger the understanding and practice of true Christian worship, the stronger the sense of mission to imbue the temporal order with the salt, light and leaven of the Gospel. The new translation and the catechesis that continues to accompany it, therefore, are important components of the new evangelization, renewing the Church from within, and then, hopefully, bring that renewal out into the streets and neighborhoods.
The present situation of the Church in the United States, Pope Benedict said, can be seen, despite its many challenges, “in positive terms as a summons to exercise the prophetic dimension” of the Church has a whole. Many people of good will in American society are seeing a “troubling breakdown in the intellectual, cultural and moral foundations of social life and a growing sense of dislocation and insecurity, especially among the young, in the face of wide-ranging societal changes.” They are, consequently, looking to the Church “for wisdom, insight and sound guidance in meeting this far-reaching crisis.” Pope Benedict is counting on the whole Church in the U.S. to give a consistent, credible and compellingly prophetic response to this crisis. That response begins with the interior renewal of re-evangelization that is meant to make us individually and a body more united to Christ and therefore more capable of transmitting to others the truth, hope, love and salvation He has brought to the world.