John Lee, Johannesburg – What are we Catholics doing in response to the call for a New Evangelisation? The success of the many new anti-Catholic agents is due to their taking advantage of the tepidity and indifference of many of us Catholics who are not up to the level of their aggressive evangelising methods.
The effects of this insufficient cathechesis and formation on our part leaves many of us in lamentable helplessness before the fundamentalists’ recruitment work.
Many of us seem unaware of the fact that the Church’s primary reason for existence is to evangelise. Many of us seem confused regarding the basis of salvation in Jesus Christ and see “ecclesiocentrism” as the central focus of our evangelising efforts.
It’s Jesus and You
The Evangelicals urge personal commitment to Jesus Christ, whereas many of our homilies are intellectually above the heads of the people, and the Church is presented too much as an institution marked by structures and hierarchy.
The success of these new religious movements is a challenge and an opportunity.
We must never forget that the riches in Christ (Eph 3:8) are vital, and no culture or era can exhaust this reality. These riches are, first of all, Christ himself in a dynamic relationship with us because he alone is our salvation.
Absorbed in the inner problems of the Church and occasionally in issues of peace and justice, we contemporary Catholics feel little responsibility for spreading the faith.
The apostolate was, in the past, mainly directed at showing Protestants that Christ had founded a hierarchical Church which was to be accepted as the organ of divine revelation. The focus was more on authority than content.
Let us resolve in the new year to involve ourselves in evangelisation as a priority and to bring to the world, Jesus, who alone is the way, the truth and the life.
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