This type of street evangelisation doesn't set itself up to know all the answers.
New Evangelisation doesn't take place in one strike and once for all.
Not exact matches
If they won't
do that, Catholics will have to look elsewhere to engage inthe new
evangelisation.
The recent Synod on the New
Evangelisation proposed to us: «This faith can not be transmitted in a life which is not modelled after the Gospel or a life which
does not find its meaning, truth and future based on the Gospel» (57).
I'm talking about Catholic street
evangelisation, something I came across three years ago on a postgraduate gap year and which I've been
doing ever since.
It is time for all of us to
do our part in this New
Evangelisation.
There is also an urgent need to work for the new
evangelisation in Africa, especially among people who have distanced themselves from the Church or who
do not behave in a Christian fashion.
While avoiding that error, we
do need to address the problem of evil if
evangelisation is to be effective.
Proposition 7: New
Evangelisation as a Permanent Missionary Dimension of the Church It is proposed that the Church proclaim the permanent worldwide missionary dimension of her mission... to • evangelise those who
do not know Jesus Christ; • [to support] the continuing growth in faith that is the ordinary life of the Church; • to [reach out to] those who have become distant from the Church.
And this great missionary zeal is evident in his first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium: «I dream of a «missionary option», that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church's customs, ways of
doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channelled for the
evangelisation of today's world.»
... in our
evangelisation activity, we
do not limit ourselves to individuals.
... [from] the address Pope Benedict gave [the Roman curia] at Christmas two years ago... «As the first step of
evangelisation... we must seek that human beings
do not set aside the question of God,...».
Perhaps those who prefer to play down the «difficult parts» of Christian life in their outreach to a dechristianised culture are reasoning that, just as the worst thing you can
do to a man who has severe hypothermia is to warm him up too fast, it is counter-productive to
do too much, too soon in
evangelisation.
We could
do worse than begin with the call issued by the American bishops a few years ago to their people, in which they announced the aim of their
evangelisation initiative as «to let every American know they are freely invited to join us in the fullness of Catholic faith».
Soberly reflecting on the collapse of the Catholic missions after Vatican II, and the failure of the New
Evangelisation to recover the lost ground, he concludes that, while the faithful have often been reminded of the duty of evangelising, the motivation for so
doing has remained obscure.