Cardinal Wuerl assesses challenges of New Evangelisation

(Vatican Radio) Pope Benedict XVI addressed the first session of the 13^th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Monday morning. Speaking without prepared remarks, the Holy Father offered a reflection on the meaning of the Good News and of our role in proclaiming it, drawing on sources ranging from Pagan antiquity, to Roman imperial politics, to Sacred Scripture and the official prayer of the Church. Following the Holy Father’s remarks, the Archbishop of Washington, DC, Cardinal Donald Wuerl delivered a preliminary report on the huge challenges facing the Synod fathers over the next three weeks. Vatican Radio's Philippa Hitchen was there in the Synod Hall…

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A tidal wave of secularism that has swept across our western world: that was the dramatic image used by the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl to describe the magnitude of challenges facing the Catholic Church today.
Entire generations, he said, have become disassociated from the very support systems that in the past facilitated transmission of faith. Key Christian concepts such as marriage and the family, objective right and wrong or the idea of a common good have been swept away. Tragically, he said, the sins of a few – a clear reminder of the ever present sex abuse crisis – have encouraged distrust in the very structures of the Church herself.

“It’s as if a tsunami has washed across our Western world and when it withdrew, it took with it all of those structures that are reflective of our culture, of our Christianised understanding of life"

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom in the lengthy speech in Latin that the tall, slightly stooping cardinal with the ready smile, presented to the synod fathers and experts at the opening session on Monday. The last three pontificates, he noted, have been focused firmly on ways of using the impetus of the Second Vatican Council - whose half century we’ll be marking on Thursday - to reconnect with people for whom the message of the Gospel has become stale or unconnected to real life. The work of evangelisation today, the cardinal said, is no longer about travelling vast distances to foreign lands. Rather, it’s about overcoming the ideological distances and sharing the truth of Christ’s love in our own families, our own neighbours, the places where we live and work

“What the new evangelisation is all about is learning to appreciate all over again the message of Jesus Christ, the truth of his Gospel and what that means for the world….."

And the cardinal offered a few practical pointers as to how Christians today can be effective evangelisers in an indifferent and decidedly self centred society. First, he said they must be bold, as the first apostles boldly stood up and proclaimed their faith in the Risen Christ after Pentecost. Second, they must act with urgency, just as Mary rushed off to her cousin Elisabeth to share her incredible secret of the Incarnation. Third, the Cardinal concluded, we must live our own faith with joy, reflecting in our own lives and relationships that conviction that Christ is with us here today, offering a new understanding of what it means to be truly human