“Go and Tell What You Hear and See”
The Gospel of the Third Sunday of Advent (Matt 11:2-11) recounts the question that the imprisoned Baptist sends his disciples to ask of Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come?” And Jesus’ response: “Go and tell what you hear and see.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith presented today a document on evangelization, in effect asking all the disciples of Jesus to go and tell what they have seen and heard.
Thanks to Amy Welborn here is a link to the document via the Episcopal Conference of England and Wales in PDF format.
Section 11 reads in part:
It needs to be remembered that, in transmitting the Gospel, word and witness of life go together. Above all, the witness of holiness is necessary, if the light of truth is to reach human beings….However, even witness by itself is not enough, because even the finest witness will prove ineffective in the long run, if it is not explained, justified — what Peter called “giving a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15) — and made explicit by a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the Lord Jesus.
The indefatigable (and clearly well-connected) Gerald O’Collins already has a reflection on the document in the current Tablet. One of his reflections follows:
While honouring the non-negotiable claims of truth (how could the CDF do otherwise?), this doctrinal note highlights the centrality of love. It calls “the love of Christ for the eternal salvation of all” the “primary motive of evangelisation” (n. 8). The note quotes the Second Vatican Council’s “Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” and declares: “Love impels the followers of Christ to proclaim to all the truth which saves” (n. 10). The document brings love into its conclusion: “The love which comes from God unites us to him … and makes us one, until in the end God is ‘all in all’” (n. 13).
In calling Catholics to commit themselves generously to spreading the Good News, the CDF puts Christ right at the centre: “The Lord Jesus Christ, who is present in his Church, goes ahead of the work of evangelisers, accompanies it, follows it, and makes their labours bear fruit” (n. 1).
I hope everyone is relieved to see that the document has footnotes, not endnotes.
I’ve often pondered what makes a good evangelist (certainly not me), but those who have been effective evangelists to me have pretty much followed St. Teresa of Avila, who not only told what she heard and saw, but acted on it:
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
“. . . even the finest witness will prove ineffective in the long run, if it is not explained, justified — what Peter called “giving a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet 3:15)”
Hmmm. The issue here seems to be the difference between *saying” and *showing”. Not that the writer takes sides — both are necessary, But we can ask even St. Peter: Don’t your reasons boil down to what Jesus *showed* — that God loves us even unto death? Aren’t His death and resurrection showings? Which reminds me of Julian of Norwich and the mystical showings God gave her as an individual. Don’t we hope ultimately for a showing of God by Himself? Will we *talk* with God? About what? Hmmm again.
Thanks for the Teresa of Avila text, Jean. Beautiful. And true.
The key question is, does the test for “loving” engagement have any other components than “truth-telling” or “truth-doing”? If the only concrete test of “love” is truth, we will merely compound the self-satisfaction of self-proclaimed evangelists who bring “good news” only to themselves.
History gives us reason to be skeptical about the reduction of love to truth. Augustine justified violence against the Donatists in the name of love. It was for their own good, poor souls.
But St. Paul 1 Cor 13 suggests that there can be truth-telling without love; this in turn suggests, that love has distinctive characteristics on its own. Does this document do enough to give a thick and practical description of love?
Cathleen, not sure if this is what you mean, but as the child of free thinking secular humanists, I was a sitting duck for all sorts of evangelists. I’d have to say that all of them told me the truth as they saw it, i.e., that I was going to hell unless I accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. I didn’t sense that they loved me particularly, but that they were simply trying to make points with their Sunday school teachers and pastors by trying to reel in a “live one.”
I think it’s fine to tell the truth, and sometimes it has to be blunt. But my litmus test for whether there’s any love in it is whether the person telling you you’re going to hell in a handbasket bothers to back it up with an offer of help or support or some such thing.
I hear a lot of grousing in the parish about couples who are preparing for marriage who already have a couple of kids together and are cohabiting. People want to tell them they’re in a state of sin–which may be true, though there’s also a slight chance they’re cohabiting without sex during this period.
In any case, are the truth-tellers bothering to offer ideas for how the couple might respond the “right” way? Not that I can see. They simply seem worried that somehow the parish will be seen as sanctioning sin and they will look bad by association.
I suppose you could argue that this attitude bespeaks a love for the Church. But the Church is comprised of those in it.
So …. you tell me how that parses out.
Jean–yes, exactly.
If the only thing required by love is telling the truth then you end up in precisely those situations. You also end up justifying all sorts of deeds in the name of love when it is equated with truth.
Augustine just loved the Donatists – in fact, you could say he loved them to death.
People can tell the truth–and preach true doctrine–with all sorts of motivations and for all sorts of purposes. Truth telling can be just another excuse to be mean . .. and get away with it.
I’m not sure, Cathleen, why these are your responses to this particular document. It seems mild to me. It calls for trust, relationships, and freedom, and explicitly discourages coercion.
Cathy, yes all these things can happen, but need they? Is this any reason for dissociating love and truth? St Paul’s phrase was “doing the truth in love”.
And do you really think this text is recommending what you oppose? Whether you regard it as “thick and practical” enough I don’t know, but the Pope issued an encyclical on love.
Joe,
1. Is it a logical necessity that “these things” happen? No, absolutely not. But an examination of the history of the Church on evangelization shows that they have happened, again and again. I just finished reading the debate between Sepulveda and las Casas–what was justified in the name of evangelization of the native population was so intertwined with self-interest that to call it love is “laughable.” The document averts to the history of evanglization as if it is all sweetness and light. I don’t think we are any less liable to sin than they were five hundred years ago. We need to ask how self-interest affects our efforts at evangelization today–it may not be violence, but it may be something else.
2. In this context, the call for love is laudable, but it seems almost pro-forma, to mee. Moreover, what love in the context of evanglization would look like would benefit from some specification. 1 Cor 13 makes it clear that in proclamation of the Gospel, a) love is crucial; d b) love has certain specific qualities; and c) love is not reducible to truth, and loving someone else isn’t reducible to giving them the truth. It provides an independent set of norms.
I would have been happier with the document if it had quoted this:
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Cathleen,
Absolutely everything you are saying, in different words, is present in paragraph 8 of the document.
Unless I’m missing something?
Where does the document say, or imply that “love is reducible to truth, and loving someone else is reducible to giving them the truth”?
Pope Benedict has been rather cautious in responding to the invitation of Muslim theologians to dialogue. This suggest to me that he does not regard simply proclaiming the truth, without due regard to the predispostions and circumstances of those one is addressing, as a prudent course of action. Is bluntness a sign of love? I mean that as serious question.
Joseph, I think bluntness can be a sign of love. As in:
“Your drinking has made you sick, unable to care for yourself, created emergencies that call me away from my own family, and turned you into someone I no longer know and respect. It seems to be the reason for which you live, and I long for you to be free of it because I love you.”
To be sure, there is self-interest, grief and resentment mixed in there. But if there were no love, you wouldn’t bother saying anything. You’d simply give up.
I don’t think the document says that love is reducible to truth, but to those of us who have heard charges that RCIA sugar-coats some aspects of Catholic teaching in order to bring in new converts(and in my experience, I’d have to say it does somewhat), words like “clear and unequivocal” may sound like oblique criticism, or call to be more doctrinaire about evangelizing.
Frankly, the Catholics who did the best “job” on me were those who never talked about doctrine at all, but simply lived it.
I hasten to add I’m not speaking for Cathleen here. She may be seeing something entirely different.
Joe,
I think you are distorting my criticism. Do I mean to suggst that the document committed to the proposition “Love is reducible to truth, and loving someone else committed to truth”? No, of course, not–that’s not Catholic teaching. That’s not my criticism. As I tried to make clear, my criticism is one of emphasis and lack of specificity. A document–particularly one designed to give practical direction–can be defective in ways other than being false. I argued that 1) much more EMPHASIS needed to be placed on the distinction between love and truth; and 2) More SPECIFICITY needs to be given to what love looks like in the context of evangelization. In response to your prior comment, I gave you a specific example of how it might be made better –an extended session on 1 Cor 13.
Why do I think this is necessary? I think there are specific temptations among those who feel themselves called to evangelization. One of those temptations IS to reduce love to truth-telling. So it needs to be actively resisted, not excluded by implication or burden of proof. And I think, in parallel fashion, that people are resistant to efforts to evangelization because of the way those who feel called to do it carry themselves out. I think the motley history of Christian evangelical efforts needs to be treated with more sensitivity–I don’t think a general call to avoid coercion and to be loving is enough. Furthermore, evangelization is context-dependent. I think there is, in the context of the US, a temptation for evangelicals to reduce “loving” to “truth telling.” I think it turns most people off. I saw CNN’s God’s warriors last night–and the Christian “Battle Cry” movement –in my view, they reduced loving to truth telling, Yet I saw a lot of hate in those faces. Does CNN distort–no doubt. At the same time, this movement is significant–and there was hate to show.
Like it or not, we’re in an ideological marketplace. Lots of people claim to have the truth. There is no Arichimedean point from which to judge those claims. So potential converts are going to be making judgments not on the basis of the fervor of the truth claims, but upon the attractiveness of the lives lived that integrate those truth claims within them. “See how they love one another.” That, in my view, needs to be kept front and center not only in all efforts at evangelization, but also in all official documents designed to promote evangelization.
Cathy
Cathleen, I agree with your points, especially #2. I think it is helpful to know what love looks like in the context of evangelization.
But aren’t any types of prescriptions for good evangelization kind of futile anyway? You can say you want to “win souls for Christ” as the evangelicals sometimes put it, and you may be able to whip up a big crowd for a couple hours like Billy Graham and look like a success while the TV cameras are one.
But it’s Christ who wins souls, selecting whatever poor instruments he has to hand. I have to say that the mentally challenged Salvation Army ringer at the Kroger store made me think more about whether I was right with God than anybody else in the last six months. And all’s he said was “Bless you, lady!”
Three points:
1. It is the Lord Jesus “who makes their labors bear fruit.”
2. “Above all the witness of holiness is necessary.”
3. “Love impels the followers of Christ” to freely share the one who is God’s gift to them, respecting others’ dignity and freedom.
A sort of tangential add-on to Fr. Imbelli’s “respecting others’ dignity and freedom.” This kind of respect is what good “truth-telling” calls for. That is, it calls for tact, the saying of the right thing to the right person at the right time in the right way. No mean feat, one that, as my wife tells me with some frequency, I fail to pull off.
In short, just telling truths is not necessarily real truth-telling.
I’m still at a loss to see the lacuna in the document. It seems to me that all of the concerns about behavior are addressed.
If there are material objections to any identification at all being made between speaking the truth and charity, then the issue runs much more deeply than that.
This is the traditional list of the Spiritual Works of Mercy:
» Convert the sinner
» Instruct the ignorant
» Counsel the doubtful
» Comfort the sorrowful
» Bear wrongs patiently
» Forgive injuries
» Pray for the living and the dead
Only two of those works of mercy are restricted to the active exercise of gentleness. The others suggest somewhat more forwardness vis-a-vis the other, and imply a desire that the other should change.
The thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians does not exhaust the teaching of the New Testament on charity. St. Paul’s life was testimony to an active desire to change the lives of others because he knew the truth. One aspect of his activity was a remarkably frank relationship with the Corinthians!
Jean
In the example you give I would agree that bluntness is a sign of love, or at least might be, but the situation was one in which the person’s behavior was at issue rather than his beliefs, and he was being addressed by someone who he might take to be interested in his well being. I am not at all sure that bluntness is much of an approach to evangelization. Telling a member of a certain group, bluntly and without being invited, what you think about his prophet and his sacred book may be more likely to infuriate than to convert. Being frank with some one who professes an interest in conversion is still another matter.
Bob and Bernard,
One does not have to know too much about the history of religions to know that most religions claim to have the absolute truth. One does not need to know much about the history of Christianity to know that the message has been preached by people in ways and in manners that are repellent rather than attractive What, concretely, does respecting “dignity” and “freedom” consist in? These have long been contested philosophical terms. Concreteness would help. “Holiness” is also a term which needs specification. Are we going for the mysterium terrible et fascinans a la Otto? Or something else?
CatgtL
This may come down to judging which is the greater problem, threat, temptation, whatever: (1) reducing love to truth-telling or (2) neglecting the call and command to preach “the tidings of great joy” that we will be hearing next week. I would guess that Bob started this thread because he shares the CDF’s concern that (2) is a real problem today; you, on the other hand, seem to think (1) the main problem I would love to see more discussion of (2).
The CDF document says more than once the gist of what you say when you write: “So potential converts are going to be making judgments not on the basis of the fervor of the truth claims, but upon the attractiveness of the lives lived that integrate those truth claims within them.”
Joe,
That’s helpful. I guess, however, I think the two points are related. If we “preach the tidings of great joy” in a manner that conveys small-mindedness and meanness we will in fact, repel people. Or, what’s perhaps equally bad, we will attract people for the wrong reasons. I’m quite sure that if someone started a religion bringing back human sacrifice there’d be a lot of takers.
In the American context, the model for evangelizing is the televangelist model. There are several popular blogs I’ve come across –initially through following links on Amy Welborn’s site–which seem to equate evanglization with insults (calling people who disagree “evil” and “stupid.”) Do I think the CDF wants this. I don’t think so, but my guess is the purveyors of this approach would not agree. They probably think they’re imitating St. Paul.
Unlike St. Paul, who was preaching a new word, we are preaching a word that is profoundly new in one sense, but also old and familiar in another sense. More broadly, people have preconceptions about Christians–and Christianity. So I don’t think it helps to call for evangelization without talking about the concrete reasons people are turned off Christianity in the US. We’re not dealing with a tabula rasa here.
I simply disagree with you about whether the document is sufficiently specific about how evangelization needs to be conducted. For me, it’s too important to be a “gist”–it needs to be spelled out. Why is it important? Because the success of evanglization in fact depends upon it.
But I will see you and raise you one. The whole thing isn’t concrete enough. When, exactly, and how, are we supposed to evangelize? Do you tell people sitting next to you on a plane about the good news of Jesus Christ? If so, I hope you don’t sit next to me on the 7:00 am. shuttle from DC to New York–and I already believe it. I just want my coffee and (sorry Bob) my New York Times.
Joseph Gannon, this discussion is leaving me in the dust, but I would make the point that the drunk operates from a set of beliefs as much as the unconverted and the sinner–that is, drinking makes me happy, I’m not making you do it, and I’ve got a designated driver so it’s not hurting anybody, so who are you to tell me what to do.
If we are to preach joy to drunks or the unconverted and sinners, I think we could use more discussion about what that “joy” actually is. It’s often got nothing to do with being happy.
Paul withstood Peter to his face, because he was wrong. But I’m sure he had the decency and tact to wait till after the coffee service.
He also had Timothy circumcised. Talk about coercion.
To speak more generally about the document, I’m noting that it doesn’t give any practical suggestions. It is not a ferverino to would-be evangelists to use all the means of social communication or to be creative or to work with the local ordinary or what have you. It’s really just a statement of rights and responsibilities, as far as I can make out.
Cathy:
I don’t believe that the document was aimed specifically at the US, so it should not be surprising that it does not address problems that may be peculiar to our situation.
By the “gist”, I meant that the text was meeting your concern, also expressed generally in the form of a complaint, with not much specific to it.
I would not advise you to evangelize on an airplane, especially not before coffee.
I remember it being said that a reviewer should review the book in front of him, not complain because the author didn’t write the book the reviewer would like to read.
Jean
As you have probably noticed, I never quibble; but I think your drunkard has some rationalizations rather than beliefs. “What is the difference?” you say. Well there is a difference bertween a belief that one has held for as long as one can remember and everyone in one’s community shares, and an exculpatory line that a habitual drunkard knows that many of the people in his community would think is ridiculous and a mere excuse for misbehavior.
Joseph, I defer to you as a gentleman and a scholar as you make these distinctions.
My only point is that one CAN remonstrate with drunks in a blunt manner, and many evangelists believe that sinners and unbelievers, sick in the souls and in danger of eternal hellfire, must be dealt with in the same manner.
Whether the impetus is love or something else or a mixture is impossible for anyone but God to discern.
As a possible minor point of interest on the practical side of this discussion (i.e., how should Catholics evangelize), when I converted, I asked the priest what special responsibilities I had to my unbelieving parents. He said, “To love them.”
Jean
He gave good advice.
Cathy and Fr. Komonchak, this posting is not meant to cut into your exchanges. When I brought up tact above, I was not saying anything about the CDF document. Nor am I saying anything about it now. The reason I introduced it is that one might well take tact to be a crucial condition for the kinds of conversation that thoughtful evangelization would call for.
Along with Gadamer, I take tact to be part of the practical wisdom we need to interact well with other people. Tact clearly is relevant to the kind of discourse that Aristotle calls deliberative rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that aims to persuade someone to a particular course of conduct. This kind of discourse calls upon the speaker to take into account the concrete conditions of the hearer or hearers. Thus, the speaker is to notice whether the hearer is agitated, fearful, complacent, young, older, poor, well-to-do, etc. and then tailor what he or she says to the hearer’s condition. Similarly, tact requires the speaker to listen, in his or her turn when the hearer responds.
I take it that tact does not in any way call for the speaker to disregard the obligation to tell the truth to the hearer. But tact does recognize that there are right ways to tell the truth and wrong- foolish or insensitive -
ways of doing so.
Because tact is part of practical wisdom, there are no general rules for determining what tact calls for in any particular situation. Accordingly, documents laying out general norms or instructions (as I take the CDF document to be) ordinarily wouldn’t try to set forth directives attempting to say what tact calls for in particular cases.
Let me add that to say that tact calls for a respect for the hearer’s dignity and freedom does not require that I give a precise definition of either dignity or freedom. It’s enough to say that tact simply calls for the speaker to recognize that his or her hearers have the same constitutive capacities and vulnerabilities as he or she does.
I apologize, Cathy and others, for sounding like I’m condescendingly lecturing you. I have every reason to think that you all already in some fashion know all this. I only recall it because in my limited experience with parish RCIA programs, good exercises of tact cannot be presumed.
Bernard, no need to apologize. I think there is an interesting issue here.
Joe thinks the CDF document is like am academic book, and I’m too critical book reviewer–griping about the book that I wish was written. I do not think of CDF documents as analogous to academic books–I think of them as analogous to regulations written to implement legislation, or appellate court opinions. They are designed, in other words, to provide practical guidance to people in the course of calling them to act in a particular way. Documents such as these are regularly criticized for what they don’t say as well as what they say, and what they emphasize as well as what they fail to emphasize.
I think there are several issues here. First, I’m not sure the issue is merely one of “tact,” although I think tact is important. I think the issue is specifying what “love” and “respect” consist in in the context of evangelization. I don’t think it’s merely a question of waiting for an opportune moment, or an effective strategy.
I think we can come up with some thicker sense of what love means in the context of evangelization if we think seriously about what the Golden Rule would require in this sort of situation. How would we would want a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness to treat us if they were trying to convert us to their truth?
Can we beat this horse any more, really?
I remember at the Q and A of his Common Ground lecture, that Cardinal Kasper said something like this: “I don’t know if you have this problem in the United States, but in Germany we have the problem that when people don’t acknowledge the Magisterium, suddenly you have a lot of little Magisteriums all over the place.”
Why don’t we each develop our own documents on evangelization and promulgate them?
Or maybe we could talk about the one that has actually already been developed, with evident care? No one has yet mentioned Russia or Islam, both of which underlie this document.
Of course, no one is compelled to participate in any blog discussion which they find offensive or irksome. That would be to violate their human dignity.
Oh, dignities can suffer a little irksomeness now and again. Enter the fray, that’s my motto.
But I thought the rule (your rule, in fact) was that we discuss the matter proposed by the blogposter until that ran its course. Then maybe it would be fun to go off on tangents.
We have not actually discussed the document. We have discussed your objections to evangelization. At length. Particularly when evangelization has anything to do with air travel in the early morning. Now I could be wrong but that certainly sounds tangential to me.
I don’t know if anyone still cares, but I was thinking that paragraph 12 is discussing the situations in which Catholics and Orthodox local Churches coexist, perhaps particularly in historically Orthodox areas of the world. This is still a serious issue among Eastern Catholics and Orthodox and is a barrier to reunion. So this paragraph teases out a solution that should be amenable to the Orthodox. Certain buzzwords are included. Special care is given to the word “proselytism,” and a distinction is made between the conversion of peoples and the conversion of individuals.
Kathy, Bob started the thread–not Joe. And Bob’s thread includes a quote from a scholar to the effect that “While honouring the non-negotiable claims of truth (how could the CDF do otherwise?), this doctrinal note highlights the centrality of love.” It’s precisely that claim that I’m disputing. But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll start another thread on my specific question, and I will completely understand if you ignore it.
Fr. Imbelli’s post begins with a quotation from Scripture in which one of the signs of the coming of the true Messiah is that “the poor have the good news preached to them.” The question I’ve raised before is, at what longitude (or altitude) should the good news be rationed? In what areas of the world should the Church fail to proclaim the truth?
This is a live question among missionaries and ecumenists. If a non-Christian’s religion is positively willed by God as a means of salvation, then won’t the preaching of the Gospel interfere with their path?
On a more political note, if an area (like the Caucasus) has often in the past been subject to forced conversions by the conquering kings of the day, wouldn’t evangelization of the Christian people there (who have valid sacraments anyway!) be insensitive and divisive?
I see the document as trying to thread the needle on these and other difficult socio-political questions. It’s written in theological language but has the language of statesmanship in it as well, and diplomatic concerns underlie the entire document. It’s extraordinarily careful writing.
Cathleen’s quest for thicker descriptions of love in a Vatican document is destined to be frustrated. This is not because the Vatican has no ideas on the subject, but rather because a thick description of love must necessarily be culturally specific. It would be completely inappropriate for the Vatican document to do this. How you approach an individual respectfully and lovingly on the high plateau of Vietnam and in downtown Los Angeles are two different descriptions.
For a local treatment of the topic of evangelization, there is the US Bishop’s Pastoral Plan “Go and Make Disciples.” It’s pretty “thick,” though not all that deep.
I’d also like to mention Paul VI’s contribution to the matter of love for the one being evangelized (in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi). He calls for the love “not of a teacher but of a mother,” and while that may not be very specific, I find it most engaging. In fact, I think the whole exhortation is brilliant and reframes the question of evangelization for our age definitively.
Which leads to my final point. One cannot discuss this topic outside of its historical context. Comparing what the Vatican says today about evangelization with what Christian missionaries did in Latin America in the sixteenth century as though nothing has happened in between will really shed no light on the subject at all.
Rita, that’s very helpful. I’ll take a look.
But I do think history matters. First and foremost, peoplee –at least in the West– understand religion and religious evangelization in a manner that is necessarily shaped by their understanding of history. The history of religion includes very bad episodes–including those about which I have spoken . A Church that sees itself as in essential continuity with its past–and under a Pope who has stressed historical continuity over change — had better expect some tough questions. We can’t really just say, “Oh that was then, this is now” about old patterns or practices now universally rejected–while trying to preach and teach patterns or practices that are MOSTLY rejected. We need to understand that evangelization is a sensitive subject. We need to be prepared to give a clear account of our own history. It’s not merely a question of eggheads like me. This general history of Church misdeeds has entered into the common lore.
Otherwise, I think you’re going to meet resistance to evangelizing and resistance to being evangelized.
Cathleen,
Of course history matters. That’s what I’m saying. This document has to be taken in its historical context. It cannot be read as though Evangelii nuntiandi, or Tertio Millenio adveniente, or Ad Gentes, or even Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 34 for that matter, were never written. A major evolution in thinking has taken place over the past hundred years, whatever anyone may say to the contrary.
That does not mean there is no continuity with the past, but rather that the ways we see that continuity have been reframed and yes, changed, so that the church can go into the future.
I’m not saying there is no culpability for sins of the past, or that the church should brush them under the rug, as the simplistic thinking “That was then” implies. But if you are saying that the influence of the past on the present leads to a desire to emulate the Spanish conquest of Latin America, I think you are profoundly mistaken. If anyone does think this way, they would rightfully be held to account by Catholics who are more knowledgable about their own living tradition. All the conciliar and papal statements of our own epoch have completely discredited coercion as a tool of spreading the faith.
It would be likewise profoundly ahistorical to hold a document issued today to account for everything done in the name of “spreading the faith” in the past. It would be as useless as requiring the president of France today to answer for the desecration of Notre Dame of Paris after the French revolution before being willing to believe that he supports freedom of religion.
Rita, the question, ultimately, for me is eminently practical. We cant pretend that we’re in a theological vacuum. We can’t pretend that people don’t have lots of preconceptions about how the Church operates. What questions you have to answer depends on whom you want to persuade. As Mark Lilla’s book shows, people are worried about how far religious people will go in pushing their point. This is a key issue here and now.
Your analogy, by the way, is rather odd. B16 claims to be in apostolic succession, supported by the grace of the holy spirit, with every pope since Peter. He’s just reclaimed, publicly, in the context of liturgy, continuity with the Tridentine rite. So the question of continuity and change, more broadly, is one that he himself raised. Furthermore, the nature and scope of the Church’s ability to develop doctrine is in fact highly contested. In contrast, I’m not aware that the current president of the Fifth Republic claims any divine demanded or supported continuity with post-revolutionary France. At the same time, the recent debate about head scarfs in France suggests that a broader consideration of these issues might have been wise on his part — many people did worry about whether the secularism of France was in fact antireligious.
Las Casas died in 1566. The first Roman Missal following the reforms of the Council of Trent was published in 1570.
Cathleen, we seem to have a different impression about who is the intended audience of this document. If it were written for the American public and specifically for those who are biased against Catholics and against evangelization, I think many of your criticisms would be very much justified. I am assuming the document is written for church leaders and the faithful who are the most engaged with promoting the church’s outreach on an institutional level. Perhaps I am wrong. One assumes a different hermeneutic depending on the intended audience.
I’m sorry you don’t like my analogy. The point I was trying to make is not that it can’t be done but that it would be useless. Even if Sarkosy deplored the descration of Notre Dame until he is blue in the face, it would make no difference to the headscarf issue. I am not claiming divine right of presidents!
As for Benedict and continuity with the tradition, I too find some of his statements that are being read as a denial of change at Vatican II troubling, but I don’t believe we get any farther forward by generalizing from this that he would also claim that evangelization — and the church’s thinking about it — has not changed a great deal in recent generations. Many of the changes in attitude came before Vatican II, etc.; Pius XII had things to say in this vein, etc.
There are some practical approaches to evangelization in the Catholic community that are, I think, derived from a model which places the emphasis upon “accepting Catholic truth” in a manner quite divorced from developing a living relationship with the living God — or perhaps it should be said, that does not keep the person of Christ at the center. There are definitely pitfalls to steer clear of!
Thanks, all, for a good discussion.
Rita’s “sign off,” may indicate that it’s time to bring this thread to a close; but since my post initiated it, I’ll hazard a “last word.”
Rita’s point about an evangelization that keeps “the person of Christ at the center” is what I find so attractive about the document, and what Gerry O’Collins rightly highlighted in the passage I intentionally cited.
Though Cathy legitimately cautions against historical amnesia and calls for a discerning assessment of the context of evangelization in the United States (and elsewhere), the content of the Good News centered on Christ is my particular concern. And the responsibility of all disciples of Christ to share the Good News.
I read Joe Komonchak’s several attempts to focus on “the tidings of great joy” on this thread and the sharing of the gift we have received on the thread initiated by Cathy to point in this same direction.
Thus my summing up of the CDF’s appeal to all Catholics “to go and tell what they have seen and heard” — coffee breaks allowed!