What exactly is the New Evangelization?
Ask even the most consistent daily Mass-goers at a Novus Ordo parish – heck, ask the pastor – and you’ll get lots of tortured expressions and a boatload of disjointed responses, but what you won’t get is a clear cut explanation as to what this all-encompassing program of the Catholic Church in our day actually is.
And make no mistake about it; this “New Evangelization” is by design all-encompassing.
In 1990, Pope John Paul II, who coined the phrase, wrote:
I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gentes. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples. (Redemptoris Missio – 3)
Indeed, this exhortation has been taken to heart as all of the Church’s energies are indeed committed to this ill-defined New Evangelization. With rare exception, it has become the driving force behind pretty much every major decision rendered, every program enacted, and every statement issued by the sacred hierarchy ever since.
NOTE: As for the “rare exceptions” that immediately come to my mind, all of them were committed by Pope Benedict XVI who thereby incited the fury of the wolves from which he ultimately fled. We’ll take a closer look at this in another post soon.
Getting back to the New Evangelization, we see that it is imagined to be the ecclesial “operating system” du jour, and yet, one still wonders what it really is.
For all of mystery that surrounds this initiative, we must admit that the New Evangelization is aptly named in that it really is “new.”
A new what, you ask? A new mission.
The full name of the document previously cited, Redemptoris Missio, is “On the permanent validity of the Church’s missionary mandate.”
Get that? The New Evangelization is a re-orientation of the Church’s “mandate,” that which she received from Christ. The opening sentence of the document reads, “The mission of Christ the Redeemer, which is entrusted to the Church, is still very far from completion.”
Don’t gloss over what you just read. This opening line places the “New Evangelization” in its proper context.
Recall the citation above, it is to be considered the “supreme duty” of the Church and all of her members, “to proclaim Christ to all peoples.”
In other words, the New Evangelization, as its modern day Captains understand it, isn’t simply intended to serve the mission that Christ entrusted to His Church; no, it is to be treated as if it were the mission.
But is it really one and the same mission?
From my perspective the answer is obvious; of course not. Forget for the moment trying to determine what the heck it is, let’s talk about what it is not:
– It’s not about preserving the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine as if it were a great treasure
– It’s not about teaching the objective truths of the Faith with clarity and precision
– It’s not about condemning those errors that obscure the Lord’s saving truth
– It’s not about proclaiming the Kingship of Jesus Christ here present
– It’s not about professing the reality of the Holy Catholic Church as the solitary Ark of Salvation
– It’s not about calling on those who wander in darkness, exposed to final despair, to enter said Ark
In short, it’s not about the mission that Christ gave to His Church; it’s focused on something different.
So what is it?
Here’s my definition:
The New Evangelization is a program of social justice and religious diplomacy that is singularly focused on human dignity.
What’s yours?
I don’t know what is New Evangelization, but definition in this post is very probably to be true and is also terrifying.
Can I used this definition in my discussions with other catholics? Good definition is a very powerful thing.
Dear Mr. V.,
Thank you for the enumerations in this post.
Earlier this week, I read the Current Pontiff’s Lenten Message 2014. I was deeply disturbed by it. Today in reading your post, I was brought to weeping in that, at least to me anyway, the points you enumerated tell exactly why I was so disturbed by the Lenten Message. But that’s me.
Once again, thank you for your work Mr. V., and your Catholic courage and witness.
It was, is, and will remain an indoctrination tool to further the goal of the New Church modernist. Traditional Catholicism must be repressed at all cost.
Our Lady warned us of this apostasy.
This “New Evangelization”—among other things—means that all the martyrs who suffered and died for the true faith were not “Fools for Christ”—just “fools”!
Mr. V, as usual, you “hit the nail on the head”.
……”There is no doubt that the spirit of human dignity, human liberty and human rights, which has dominated the American consciousness since 1776, is a liberalistic spirit which dares repudiate the supreme rights of Christ and His Church.
Man’s true dignity of course lies not in his freedom from every restraint, but in his trustful submission to God, and in his conscientious inter-action and full cooperation with divine grace.
While America was certainly influenced by Roman Catholicism for the ‘up-building’ of a genuinely Christian culture and moral and just social order, America nonetheless fell under the overbearing sway of Protestant, Masonic and Jewish naturalism for the wholesale ‘undoing’ of Catholicism on these shores. In this way the common good was dealt a devastating blow, a blow so severe that we have never recovered from. Perhaps a better analogy would be to say that we’ve been stricken with a deadly disease which is slowly eating away at all our healthy organs and which threatens the very life of this nation.
But the errors which make up the heresy of Americanism were not contained on this continent alone; they’ve come to infect the thinking of peoples and government the world over. And worse……..THEY’VE COME TO POISON THE MINDS OF MEN AT THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT, BY THE 1960’s ROME ITSELF CONTRACTED THE DISEASE AND HAS THEREFORE HERSELF FALLEN GRAVELY ILL. Hence, with the Second Vatican Council we saw Americanism inflict its deadly ideas on the UNIVERSAL CHURCH in the same way it had been doing to the Church in America since 1776……..”
…….from “No King But Caesar” by Hugh Akins
Ziemek, indeed. Feel free to use at will.
Halina I would argue that the roots of the heresy are from the enlightenment, and that is the underlying basis for Americanism as well as all of the New World man centered ideologies. The protestant cults and masonic lodges are steeped in this.
Mr. V said: Here’s my definition:
“The New Evangelization is a program of social justice and religious diplomacy that is singularly focused on human dignity.
What’s yours?”
Mine would be as follows: To make us more like the protestants.
Kind of like in the following link:
http://www.traditionalcatholicpriest.com/2014/02/06/as-we-catholics-try-to-become-protestant-the-further-they-move-away-from-us/
That’s been the game plan all along.
It is not my definition but I know that my archdiocese is recommitting itself to ‘social justice’. But may I point to a bright star in the ‘new evangelization’ sky? I think of this endeavor, first of all, of reaching uncatechised and fallen away Catholics. So many–majority–do not know the faith. To that end there are parish programs from http://www.marian.org called Hearts Afire Parish Program. It begins with consecration to Our Lady. We are making that consecration in my parish next week. Then it goes to Consoling the Heart of Jesus which looks to be a serious look at one’s spiritual life. This program is based on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. From there will come another program with emphasis going to mercy and apostolate. These programs are meant to build up apostolates. We cannot give what we do not have so they start by taking Our Lady’s hand and coming closer to Jesus and an intensifying of the sacramental life. THAT is a true means of ‘new evangelization’! Yes, it even comes out of the Novus Ordo.
Another way to a true new evangelization is to recapture what has been stolen from us over the past decades which is the traditional bent—the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and the sacraments in the ‘old rite’ as well as our sacred music that many of us have never heard.
The pushback is strong against all that because Truth will be preached and not just milquetoast luv, tolerance, non-judgmentalism.
An Order that had turned toward tradition–and not heresy nor schism–could use your help. Please see http://wdtprs.com/blog/2014/02/action-item-petition-to-help-the-franciscan-friars-of-the-immaculate/ for the just launched petition to the Holy Father to have mercy on the Franciscans of the Immaculate: may they be exonerated and restored and not be given to modernism.
Mr. Verrecchio,
I ask a similar question but not just to Catholics but protestants as well. When I ask protestants why did Jesus incarnate I get the same boilerplate answer, “He came to die on the cross for our salvation.” This is to be expected but when I ask Catholics I also get the same boilerplate answer and this I believe ties in to your question because if Catholics knew that Jesus not only came to die on the cross for our salvation but to establish His visible church for our salvation as well there would be no need for a “New Evangelization”. It is sad to see that many in the Church think and believe like protestants and that leads them to act like them as well.
If the mission is “to proclaim Christ to all peoples”, we must ask, who – or what – is Christ?
According to Francis, “[T]here are many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, who ‘lose their lives’ for truth. And Christ said ‘I am the truth’, therefore whoever serves the truth serves Christ” (Angelus, June 23, 2013).
If the mission, then, is to serve truth, we must ask, what is truth?
Francis also asserts, “I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life” (Interview for “Civilta Cattolica”, Sept. 21, 2013).
Therefore, if God is truth, and truth is in every person’s life, here is my suggested definition: the New Evangelisation is about “helping” people to “be themselves”.
What it is definitely not about is “‘absolute’ truths” about which Francis “would not speak” (Letter to a Non-Believer, Sept. 11, 2013).
I’ll accept your definition in the sense of a ‘Mission Statement’, but only with the word -singularly- put in quotes. We know there is a lot more focus, percentage-wise, put on photo-ops, uninviting the un-cool kids from the parties, polishing and working hard on a certain, humble, persona. These take time. What time is left can be used on the still terribly important human dignity.
Please make a poster of what it, the NewEvang’, isn’t Louie, or a pamphlet and I will disseminate this antidote to the newadnauseam parishes pogromming the ecclesia vetus into SSPX land; (you can just feel Our Lord wanting to vomit the NO out).
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Catholic Militant said:This “New Evangelization”—among other things—means that all the martyrs who suffered and died for the true faith were not “Fools for Christ”—just “fools”! – that’s pretty much it.
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“What exactly is the New Evangelization?”
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answer, ‘a new gospel/covenant’ – otherwise, what the hell was assisi about? sure looked like a new ekyouallmenical ‘fingerprint here please’, against the Catholic God, to me.
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“Ask even the most consistent daily Mass-goers at a Novus Ordo parish – heck, ask the pastor – and you’ll get lots of tortured expressions and a boatload of disjointed responses, but what you won’t get is a clear cut explanation as to what this all-encompassing program of the Catholic Church in our day actually is.” Even MaradiaGaga’s FRANCLy, way too long speech, didn’t seem to know what it was, but as you state Louie, only what it isn’t. And your facts on what it isn’t means what it is is a ‘new gospel of something new, which is hard to define…because if we did define it, you all would know straight away what big fat antichrist traitors we are’.
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JPII, “I sense that the moment has come”. What sense would that be JP?
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With all the blather about old and new wineskins surrounding this New Rite New Evangelisation, one gets the impression that it’s new convenant time, not with God, not with Israel, but between Israel and the World/Flesh/Devil. Even when I was a daily mass-goer at the NO, I was under no illusion that the New Evangelisation, just like it’s foundation Rite, is just another wave of feminism, which is a late wave of protestantism. Yep – that prot to trot feminism that is all idism to all egos – multiculturalism, inculturation, gender-EQwallyti, encouring unsuspecting wee girls to serve at altar who will grow up believing Christ’s Church will make them Priests, which Christ’s Church never will, only to have them turn into bitter FEMENs burning effigies of the latest masonic anti-pope. Ironic, rather.
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In todays sermon we were informed that the Beatitudes sublate the Ten Commandmants. Sounds pretty, but what a load of a-scriptural smellies when the smell hits.
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S.Armaticus mentioned a couple of posts ago that before all this VII schniederness in Rome, they had already changed the Canon by adding St Joseph to a Canon previously reserved for Our Holy Mother and all the early Martyrs. His take was, could ‘we’ get away with a change, and they did.
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Your conclusion, Louie, is too kind: “The New Evangelization is a program of social justice and religious diplomacy that is singularly focused on human dignity.”
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Within those lines I would read, sublate Christ and His Church of Saints, His True Mission, His Real Presence in His True Mass, and His Church’s sacred tongue and Rites and dogmas, with satan’s idea of human dignity. And we all know where that ends. One only need look to Stalin, and Hitler and the Mousie Chinese Tyrant and all their ilk.
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If the Vatiscan Survey results coming from Germany’s anything to go by, the results will be new evangelieslieslies 100%; Real Truth….remnanat.
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p.s. satan’s watchwords = social justice; human dignity (the only dignity we have is in relation to our service to Christ and His True Church – all the rest is just make-up or misery); boilerplate christi-insanity; more protestants; we all worship the same Dog; garry glittar in the Mass ‘choir’; Fr This-is-why-all-that-stuff-before-I-was-ordinaned-doesn’t-matter.’
p.s. The New Evangelization and ‘the ignoble art of the Witch Hunt’.
http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/witch-hunts-and-name-calling.html
New Evangelization = preaching the “new gospel”.
(Epistle Of Saint Paul to the Galatians | Chapter 1)
8] But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema. [9] As we said before, so now I say again: If any one preach to you a gospel, besides that which you have received, let him be anathema. [10] For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
Martina got it exactly right! The preachers of this new gospel or new evangelization to please men and not God or against God are anathema. May God restore a true Pope to His Church soon.