New Evangelization Dicastery Seeks to Define Terms

(March 17, 2011) The Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, established by Pope Benedict XVI on September 21, 2010, will mark only its six-month anniversary this month, but the newborn dicastery is busy setting its goals and work plan. The first task at hand is defining terms such as the subject of the new evangelization, the methodologies to be used and the recipients of the new evangelization. It is also contemplating its relation to the various cultures and ecclesial traditions in which the new evangelization is carried out. Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella organised the study last weekend in Rome to examine these matters. When Pope Benedict XVI announced the new dicastery in June 2010, he said its principal task would be to "promote a renewed evangelization in the countries where the first proclamation of the faith has already resonated and where Churches with an ancient foundation exist but are experiencing the progressive secularization of society and a sort of 'eclipse of the sense of God.'" Archbishop Fisichella thus clarified that the Pope is looking to the countries that we "know as the West, or the First and Second World, where economic, scientific and technological progress has caused a crisis in the very meaning of God." The dicastery president lamented a lack of learning about the faith. "Despite the fact that in many Churches a profound religious sense continues, which is expressed in a life of faith and of religious traditions, this is not accompanied by a corresponding in-depth support from the intelligence, capable of communicating the richness of the experience and of the patrimony of the faith," he said. This absence leads to Catholics leaving the faith for groups where, he suggested, the "emotive nature and fundamentalism are salient."