Evangelism is paramount

by Letters Editor · Published December 22, 2011 · Updated December 19, 2011

From Frank Bompas, Johannesburg

Damian Mcleish has written letters to The Southern Cross recently complaining about the �seamless garment� position taken by US bishops on Catholic moral teaching since it appears to him to downplay the stand of the Church on abortion.

I think that what the US bishops are concerned about is an over-zealous pro-life lobby that virtually ignores the other serious moral problems in society and focuses upon abortion, euthanasia and similar evils.

Of course the pro-life lobby is not the only movement that can cause distortions in the life of the Church: focusing in an unequal manner on extraordinary spiritual gifts such as healing and the righting of social evils such as poverty can also result in unbalanced theology and spirituality that are the starting points for heresy and schism.

But there is a further issue that needs to be highlighted. We live in a society that is in large manner no longer Christian and expecting people who have not made a commitment to Christ to accept Christian moral principles is not going to work.

For the last 20 years the Church has been more and more aware of the need to evangelise the large numbers of nominal and Sunday Catholics who have not made Christ centre of their constant call by the Holy Father to implement a new evangelisation. The result of the neglect by the Church over many years to bring people to a strong relationship with Christ has been increasing de-Christianisation.

At least some of the considerable resources ploughed into the pro-life movement would have been better allocated to building up the faith and commitment of Catholics to Jesus Christ.

People who are strong and sincere in their faith need no convincing and understand the evils of abortion. And spending vast amounts of time and energy lobbying politicians to oppose abortion when a large proportion of their electorate is only Christian in name is wasteful.

Jesus and the apostles did not spend much time talking about the injustices and serious moral evils within the Roman Empire. Instead they focused on preaching the Gospel in order to win souls and bring about moral and spiritual renewal in the lives of their followers.

While I do believe that a vital part of the Church�s mission is to propagate moral values in a society that has lost sight of these, this mission must not obscure the principal role of the Church of creating and sustaining a community of people whose lives are centred on Christ.

In particular the Church cannot afford to devote too much of its resources upon a single moral issue, however serious it is.