I shall restrict my attention to the theological roots. The reluctance of Catholics to evangelize has many roots, historical, sociological, cultural, and political. One wonders why, with all the official encouragement given to evangelization by Vatican II and the recent popes, Catholics are for the most part ready to leave the task to Protestants, some of whom are overtly hostile to Catholicism. Many evangelically oriented sects and churches-Mormons, Adventists, Pentecostals, and Southern Baptists, for example-are winning enormous numbers of converts. Chesterton famously said, with the soul of a church. For all its worldliness, the United States remains a remarkably religious nation-a nation, as G. Discontented with a civilization of gadgets and entertainment, many are looking for some overarching meaning in life. But we too easily overlook the deep religious hunger that continues to stir in the hearts of contemporary men and women. We denounce its individualism, secularism, relativism, hedonism, and other vices-which do indeed render the environment unfriendly to the proclamation of the gospel. Today we tend to blame the prevalent culture for our lack of success. As the third millennium of Christianity approaches, it is more urgent than ever, he holds, to demonstrate the importance of the Christian message for all the peoples of the world and to revitalize Christian faith in parts of the world where it has become feeble or inert.Įvangelization is not and never has been easy. Since 1983 John Paul II has repeatedly called for the commitment of all the Church’s energies to a new evangelization. Summarizing the main orientation of his pontificate, he declared in Mexico City on May 6, 1990: “The Lord and master of history and of our destinies has wished my pontificate to be that of a pilgrim pope of evangelization, walking down the roads of the world, bringing to all peoples the message of salvation.” John Paul II has carried this evangelical shift yet further. In this exhortation he described evangelization as the deepest identity of the Church, which exists, as he put it, in order to evangelize. At the climax of his pontificate he called a meeting of the synod of bishops to deal with the question of evangelization, and from materials supplied by that synod he composed his great apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi (“Evangelization in the Modern World,” 1975). He took the name of Paul in honor of the apostle of the Gentiles and engaged in long apostolic journeys to distant continents. It taught that every Christian has a responsibility to evangelize. The Council spoke frequently of the gospel (in Latin, evangelium, 157 times) and of evangelization (thirty-one times). The Catholic Church became in a true sense evangelical. With Vatican II a major shift took place. They were expected not so much to spread the gospel as to plant the Church in countries where it had as yet no roots. While always sponsoring missionary activity, the Catholic Church has relied chiefly on religious orders to perform this task. The Catholic Church has been the church of organization, dogma, and sacraments. (Most mainline Protestant churches have evangelical wings.) A common characteristic of evangelical churches is their strong missionary spirit.Ĭatholicism, by contrast, has put the accent elsewhere, on the corporate and traditional features of Christianity. The term suggests an individualistic and biblically centered piety, such as that found in churches stemming from, or deeply affected by, the great revivals-notably Methodist, Baptist, and Pentecostal. It indicates an intense personal faith in Jesus Christ as savior and an assured sense of being saved by that faith. In the English-speaking world, evangelicalism stems from the great revivals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In Germany the word evangelisch rather than protestantisch is the preferred designation for Protestant churches. It might seem paradoxical, to say the least, to describe the Catholic Church as “evangelical”-a term that is commonly taken to be practically synonymous with “Protestant” or with a particular kind of Protestant.

Civilization 6 evangelize belief