By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The Catholic Church is to preach the Gospel “always and everywhere,” according to a new encyclical letter from Pope Benedict XVI that establishes a council for promoting evangelization.
Spero News is reporting that the encyclical “Ubicumque et semper” establishes the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization to counter the trend toward loss of faith and the “de-Christianization” of secular nations.
” . . . I feel it appropriate to offer an adequate response so that the entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the modern world with a missionary vigour capable of promoting a new evangelisation,” the pope says in the letter, which was issued “moto propio” meaning “on his own accord.”
This response entails the establishment of the new Council, which is a full-fledged Vatican office charged with the task of preaching the Gospel to Europe and other traditionally Christian regions where the faith is currently in crisis. It will work with local bishops to propose Church teaching, employ modern communications tools and methods for promoting the Church’s message, and mobilize missionary activities using members of religious orders and new religious movements.
Speaking at a press conference yesterday, the Council’s new president, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, said the Gospel is not a myth “but the living witness of an historical event that changed the face of history.” He went on to say, “The new evangelization must first and foremost make known the historical person of Jesus, and his teachings as they have been faithfully transmitted by the original community, teachings that we find in the Gospels and in the writings of the New Testament in their normative expression.”
The Cardinal echoes what the pope says in the document, that the Church has the duty to announce the Gospel of Jesus Christ always and everywhere, even during these times of “abandonment of the faith, which has become progressively more evident in societies and cultures that were, for centuries, impregnated with the Gospel.”
The Pope goes on to cite “a worrying loss of the sense of the sacred, even going so far as to call into discussion apparently unquestionable foundations, such as faith in the God of creation and providence; the revelation of Jesus Christ our only Savior, the shared understating of man’s fundamental experiences like birth, death and family life, and the reference to natural moral law.”
Even though there are still signs of vitality in the Christian faith of many peoples, “We also know, unfortunately, of areas which appear almost completely de-Christianized, areas in which the light of faith is entrusted to the witness of small communities. These lands, which need a renewed first announcement of the Gospel, seem particularly unreceptive to many aspects of the Christian message.”
He stresses that “at the root of all evangelization there is no human project of expansion, but the desire to share the priceless gift that God wished to give us, sharing His life with us.”
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