Documents of the Second Vatican Council
Evangelization has its most recent roots in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. (See Foundational Documents section below for more bibliographical information.) Evangelization is not a new program in the Catholic Church; it is part of the reform and renewal of the Church begun at the time of the Second Vatican Council. Jesuit Father Avery Dulles opines that Pope Paul VI gave a new and integrating interpretation to the Second Vatican Council with his Apostolic Exhortation entitled Evangelii Nuntiandi or On Evangelization in the Modern World. In the preamble of that watershed document for evangelization, Pope Paul VI states that the purpose of the Second Vatican Council was to make the Church of the twentieth century ever better fitted for proclaiming the Gospel to the people of the twentieth century and beyond.
Vatican II laid the foundations for the future, explicit reflection on evangelization by rooting the entire life of the Church in the missionary life of the Triune God. This is most evident in The Decree on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and in a statement from the document on The Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity (Ad Gentes). The church on earth is by its very nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit. (#2)
In this Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Paul VI clearly and emphatically states that evangelizing all peoples constitutes the essential mission of the church…(it) is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity…She exists in order to evangelize. (#14) Many consider On Evangelization in the Modern World the magna carta for evangelization in our day. It expresses an authentic, comprehensive vision of Catholic evangelization.
One of the major conciliar and post-conciliar evangelization themes is the full, conscious, and active participation of the laity in the mission and ministry of Jesus. This document is a reflection on this important theme in summary of the 1987 Synod of Bishops. The document begins with the wonderful use of Jesus’ call to the workers for the vineyard as the thematic image for the call of the laity to take their rightful role in the mission of the Church. The vineyard is the whole world, which is to be transformed according to the plan of God in view of the final coming of the Kingdom of God. The world is the primary field of ministry rather than the Church.
This encyclical represents Pope John Paul II’s own appropriation of On Evangelization in the Modern World with its preference for the word missionary and its emphasis on the importance of restoring the mission ad gentes (to the nations). It was published twenty-five years after the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity and challenges the Church to renew her missionary commitment. The Holy Father insists that the universality of the mission be grounded in the universality of the message: Jesus proclaims Himself Savior of the whole world. Pope John Paul affirms many of the teachings already expressed by his predecessor in On Evangelization in the Modern World. He strongly asserts the centrality of mission to the life of the Church both at the communal and individual level. Mission needs to be restored to its central place in the life of the Church.
The first part of the document is a summary vision statement of Catholic evangelization based upon On Evangelization in the Modern World and Mission of the Redeemer. The U.S. Catholic bishops state the vision for evangelization in their own language and, in the opening paragraphs, add an important emphasis on the importance of believing in one’s own faith experience, developing one’s faith story, and sharing that story with others. The bishops make an original contribution by fashioning three comprehensive goals, which embody the entire vision of Catholic evangelization. Suggested objectives are given for each of the three goals to assist in their implementation.
Many of the events that were laid out in this apostolic letter to help the Church prepare for the Jubilee of the Year 2000 and the Third Millennium have already taken place. The document is important because it establishes the context for evangelization in the latter part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, beginning in 1962-65 with the Second Vatican Council, the authentic implementation of which continues to provide the agenda for the ongoing renewal of the Church. Vatican II provides the overall reform agenda and evangelization provides the unifying of the reform as the Church moves into the third millennium.
The Synod of Bishops for the Americas was held from November 16 through December 12, 1997. The Church in America is the apostolic constitution arising out of the Synod. Pope John Paul II promulgated the document in Mexico City on January 22, 1999. Apart from the significance of a unified Synod for both continents, The Church in America confirms the centrality of the new evangelization in the overall agenda of the Church as she moves into the new millennium. The document represents a major restatement of the evangelizing mission of the Church in America and contains several practical formulations that will be very helpful in carrying it out.
From the time the Gospel was first preached, the Church has known the process of encounter and engagement with cultures” (Fides et Ratio, #70), for ‘it is one of the properties of the human person that he can achieve true and full humanity only by means of culture” (Gaudium et Spes, #53). “Today, as the Gospel gradually comes into contact with cultural worlds which once lay beyond Christian influence, there are new tasks of inculturation” (Fides et Ratio, #72). As the Church throughout the world enters the Third Millennium, it is faced with new cultural situations, new fields of evangelization.
Faced with the challenges of “our times (which) are both momentous and fascinating” (Redemptoris Missio, #38), the Pontifical Council for Culture shares in this document some convictions and practical suggestions to face these challenges. It offers some new guidelines for the conversation between faith and culture, looks at some of the new challenges and opportunities for evangelization, reflects upon the new “Areopagus” situations for the Church today, and offers some concrete proposals as to how to inject the lifeblood of the Gospel into cultures to renew from within and transform in the light of revelation the visions of persons and society that shape cultures and the concepts of men and women.
The document highlights the fact that “authentic work in the area of culture…is decisive for the new evangelization.” (#39) The pastoral approach to culture has a great urgency about it; in its many forms, it has no other aim than to help the Church to fulfill its mission of proclaiming the Gospel.
In this Apostolic Letter, Pope John Paul II reviews the events of the Great Jubilee Year and affirms that the legacy of the Jubilee is the contemplation of the face of Christ: Christ considered in his historical features and in his mystery, Christ known through his manifold presence in the Church and in the world, and confessed as the meaning of history and the light of life’s journey. (#15) He asks the question “What must we do next?” and answers his question by proclaiming that we are not saved by a formula but by the Person of Jesus Christ and the plan found in the Gospel.
Using the biblical image found in Luke 5:4, the Holy Father invites the Church to “put out into the deep” (duc et altum). To do this, the Pope identifies his priorities for the Church as she enters the new millennium. These are: 1) holiness – the universal call, the emphasis of the ideal/high standard of ordinary Christian living and the need for training in holiness; 2) prayer – training in the art of prayer, commitment to personal purification, education in prayer, giving the proper place to popular piety; 3) the Sunday Eucharist and Sunday – emphasis on the Resurrection is at the center of the mystery of time, emphasis on the Sunday Eucharist at the heart of Sunday, observance of the Sunday Eucharist is more than a precept to be observed but something essential to Christian life; 4) the Sacrament of Reconciliation – facing the crisis of the sense of sin in today’s culture, a rediscovery of the Sacrament of Penance; 5) the Primacy of Grace – confrontation with the contemporary temptation which besets every spiritual journey and pastoral work, that of thinking that the results depend on our ability to act and to plan; 6) listening to the Word – a renewed listening to the Word of God through evangelization and catechesis, a Bible in every family; and 7) proclaiming the Word – a new apostolic outreach, need for inculturation, pastoral care of the young, and witness.