What is the New Evangelization? (Part 2)

Last time [see Part 1, below], I presented a few things that I learned in a conversation at St. Pius Catholic Church in Appleton that I felt really needed to be addressed here, in particular that older generations of faithful Catholics don't always understand what the New Evangelization is or why it is so important. I feel that a detailed explanation is necessary because the New Evangelization involves the whole Church. We all need to be committed to fulfilling the call put out by Blessed John Paul II, whether on the front lines as missionaries, catechists, and DREs or as prayer warriors and supporters of their efforts. SPIRITUS is just one of the organizations that carries out the New Evangelization directly every day, and we can't do it by ourselves!

In a nutshell, the New Evangelization is a fulfillment of the mission Christ gave the Twelve Apostles to "go and make disciples of all nations", but it focuses specifically on those who have already heard some part of the Gospel and have either lost it (the seed was choked out by weeds), never become rooted in it (the seed was sown on rocky ground), or had it snatched away before they could truly receive it (the seed was eaten by birds). The New Evangelization uses "new" methods that are actually straight from the Bible.

First, we as evangelizers have to find out where the people we talk to are. Just as St. Paul in Athens began his testimony by speaking to the Greeks about the true nature of the "unknown god" they already worshiped, we also meet the youth and young adults right where they are. The most common difficulty we have encountered in our work with teens isn't that they don't know enough of what the Church teaches (though to be sure, this is frequently the case); it's that they don't even think there's a reason to consider that God exists! We have to come to them in their doubts and show them that faith truly does affect our lives before they will even listen to what we have to say about God.

Second, we can't just force students to accept the truth. If we simply stood up and read them the Catechism, many would not understand it, and even those who did would not accept most of what we told them. Jesus recognized this, and preached in parables. Even to His closest followers, much of what He said was clear only after the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Like Jesus, we speak in terms that are understood and do not try to force students to learn what they aren't yet ready to comprehend. (That said, we are always faithful to the Magisterium of the Church and are careful to not give the impression that we believe in heresies when the truth is hard to understand.)

Third, we don't merely evangelize. We teach others to spread the Good News just as we have given it to them. St. Paul and the Apostles did this, fulfilling the Great Commission, and it is because of them that we have a Church today! We refer to this as discipleship, and it is one of the primary goals of our bi-weekly Bible studies (Inspire! and Teen Disciples).

I hope this post gives you a better understanding of the New Evangelization and why it is so critically important to the future of the Church. But also remember that the most important thing you can do for us as a SPIRITUS team and for the Church as a whole is to keep praying!

-Jared

What is the New Evangelization? (Part 1)

Last night, SPIRITUS dropped by St. Pius X Catholic Church in Appleton to attend Fr. Girotti's talk on his book A Shepherd Tends His Flock. While the talk was great and I would highly recommend his book (I'd buy it myself, if I had more spending money!), the most significant thing that happened last night for us was a great conversation we had with one of the other guests in attendance, a woman with a great love for the Catholic Church who had converted from Lutheranism and told us about several young people in her life with a great need to hear the truths the Church teaches.

This woman was looking for a place where she could send her son's girlfriend to learn about the Catholic Faith. She told us that there just aren't enough opportunities for young adults who have never heard the truth to learn it from the Church in a nonthreatening setting. RCIA is a fantastic place to learn about the Faith, but it's hard to convince a nonbeliever to go through a class that is designed with the idea that everyone who signs up for it is planning to enter the Church. And bringing a nonbeliever into Mass is tricky business at best, especially when there's a good chance that the homily is going to be about something other than basic apologetics; most nonbelievers or even Protestants would be more confused than enlightened by their first experience of the Mass!

What she really wanted was some kind of apologetics or catechesis class for adults who have neither a solid background in the Faith nor a desire to enter the Catholic Church at this point in their lives. In other words, this woman wanted to know where she could send someone who was merely curious about the truth.

The good news is that SPIRITUS now has a way to reach out to exactly the kind of person she described to us. It's called Inspire! and it's a Bible study for young adults. At Inspire! Bible studies on the first and third Monday of every month, members of SPIRITUS join other young adults in three locations (our home base at Mt. Tabor Center in Menasha, as well as locations in Green Bay and Fond du Lac) in getting to know Christ better by studying the Gospel of Matthew.

The bad news is that the woman we talked to had a hard time understanding how this would help her son's girlfriend learn the truths taught by the Catholic Church. After a Spirit-filled conversation, this is what became apparent to all of us:

1. There is a huge generation gap between the old and the young when it comes to faith and how we learn about it.

2. Old methods of catechesis aren't working on the younger generations.

3. This is largely because the youth are bombarded with so many distractions that make it impossible for them to recognize Truth when they hear it, distractions like media, materialism, and the pace of modern life. Youth and young adults today are trained to think in very concrete, rational terms. There is very little place in their lives for things they can't touch, see, and manipulate.

4. Young people are leaving and have left the Church in large numbers. They don't accept what they are told, but question everything. And if they don't feel that their questions are answered, they don't feel that they are being fed, and so they leave. Of course, many of them are trained to be so skeptical that they are barely willing to accept anything the Church says!

5. There is a huge need for what Blessed John Paul II called the New Evangelization, in which new methods are used to preach the Gospel to all peoples (particularly in areas where the Faith was once strong, but has now been weakened by secularization) in ways that they can understand and accept it.

6. The older generations of faithful Catholics don't always understand what the New Evangelization is or why it is needed.

It is this last point that I really want to address, and I'll discuss it in depth next time.

[To be continued]

-Jared