Part II Continued

Part II: SPREADING THE HOLY FIRE
New Cultural Situation, New Fields of Evangelization

From the time the Gospel was first proclaimed, the Church has undergone endless cycles of encounter and engagement with culture.5 As she makes contact with worlds once beyond the Church’s influence, new challenges of inculturation arise. This will always be the case. Particularly troubling for the Church in these present times is the fact that some traditional Christian beliefs and practices with thousand-year-old traditions are being shattered. What seems obvious is that evangelization is no longer a matter of grafting our faith onto the culture but of revitalizing a de-Christianized world.

When Saint Paul arrived in Athens, he went to the Areopagus, the cultural center of the city, and proclaimed the Gospel in language comprehensible in those surroundings (see Acts 17:22-31). For those of us living at the dawn of the third Christian millennium, the Areopagus symbolizes the new circumstances in which Jesus and His teachings must be proclaimed. These modern realities represent new fields ripe for evangelization.

Communications and Globalization
Mind-boggling technology is turning our planet into a “global village.” Cardinal George has said that: “The opportunity globalization offers for a more interconnected world is of great importance, particularly for a Church which calls herself Catholic.”6 The Cardinal suggests that it is quite apparent that a new world order is indeed taking hold. We absorb more random and orchestrated imagery faster than any generation has ever before, and a great preponderance of those images are absolutely antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Urbanization and the Dynamic Ethnic Diversity of Lake and Cook Counties
A glance at the demographics of our neighborhoods reveals multiple cultures and economic classes, varying degrees of education and opportunity, along with all the vexing traumas and glorious beauty such concentrated humanity can conjure. This rainbow of races, nationalities, and cultures, all pressed together in the cities and recently spreading its quilt out into the suburbs and rural regions, presents our local Church with a great test of its universality and a crucible by which to assess its commitment to love unconditionally.

Ecology, Science, Bioethics
The Church has always proclaimed that nature does not belong to the human race but to God, its Creator. Yet, laboratory-spawned innovations race ahead of our human ability to form an ethical response. We grapple for a moral handle on our newfound powers. Times such as these present contemporary Catholics with a daunting evangelical challenge: we must diligently articulate the Gospel of Life and the civilization of love.

Family Recent census data testifies to the changing face of the family in the United States. For the first time in our national history, fewer than 25% of American homes are led by a husband and wife. Yet everyone belongs to a family, and today, as always, a family is the garden in which God has planted each of His children. The goal of every family is to form the most stable, nurturing environment for loving relationships among all its members. The family is the first human society, the wellspring of all culture, and a primary arena to live the Gospel in a concrete way. The family can and should be the basic school of conversion.

Art, Entertainment, and Sports
Entertainment is a multi-billion dollar industry. Its influence is inescapable, controversial, and far-reaching. Leisure pursuits and sports are not mere diversions. They weave the dreams of our people. They promote certain life-styles. They create a whole value system which is and of itself desperately needs evangelizing. Support and encouragement for Christian artists is an excellent way of reaching a whole host of people who may have no other contact with the message of Christ.7

Declining Church Attendance
There were Greeks in Paul's first century Areopagus who worshipped an “Unknown God.” Two thousand years later, many Catholics claim that they know God, but seem to have difficulty finding time to worship God. According to a recent CARA study that reported on a survey of Catholic adults over the age of eighteen, weekly Mass attendance dropped from 44% in 1987 to 37% in 1999. The number of those who said they "would never leave the Church" declined from 64% in 1987 to 57% in 1999. Those mistakenly believing that "one could be a good Catholic without attending Mass rose from 70% in 1987 to 76% in 1999 (New Perspectives in the Modern World, Summer 2000).