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PAGE 7—The Southern Cross, January 1,1976
Pope Calls Evangelization Service To All Humanity
VATICAN CITY (NC) - Pope Paul,
calling evangelization a service rendered
“to the whole of humanity,” has
repeated in an apostolic exhortation on
evangelization “that the task of
evangelizing all people constitutes the
essential mission of the Church.”
He declared that the objectives of the
Second Vatican Council “are definitely
summed up in this single one: to make
the Church of the 20th century ever
better fitted for proclaiming the Gospel
to the people of the 20th century.”
The Pope vigorously denied that the
council’s teachings provide any
“excuses” to retreat from
evangelization, and he branded
“insidious” any such assertions.
“Thus one too frequently hears it
said,” he noted, “that to impose a truth,
be it that of the Gospel, or to impose a
way, be it that of salvation, can only be
a violation of religious liberty.”
He answered: “It would certainly be
an error to impose something on the
consciences of our brethren.
“But to propose to their consciences
the truth of the Gospel and salvation in
Jesus Christ... far from being an attack
THEOLOGIAN SA YS:
on religious liberty is fully to respect
that liberty, which is offered the choice
of a way that even non-believers
consider noble and uplifting.”
The Pope’s document on
evangelization, “Evangelii Nuntiandi”
(On Proclaiming the Gospel), was dated
Dec. 8 but released 10 days later. It was
based largely on discussions at the
international Synod of Bishops which
met here in October of 1974. His
declaration that the Church’s essential
mission is to evangelize all peoples was
taken directly from the synod’s own
concluding words.
Continuing his rebuttal of the
argument that to preach the Gospel is
“to impose a truth” and is a “violation
of religious liberty,” the Pope asked:
“And why should only falsehood and
error, debasement and pornography
have the right to be put before people
and often, unfortunately, imposed on
them by the destructive propaganda of
the mass media, by the tolerance of
legislation, the timidity of the good and
the impudence of the wicked?”
He continued: “The respectful
presentation of Christ and His kingdom
is more than the evangelizer’s right. It is
his duty.
The 122-page exhortation, which the
Synod of Bishops last year requested
the Pope to write, deals with the
relationship between evangelization and
human liberation, the adaptation of the
Gospel to various cultures, and other
themes.
To evangelize, the Pope maintained,
is the Church’s “deepest identity.”
The Pope warned that the liberation
proclaimed by the Gospel “cannot be
contained in the simple and restricted
dimension of economics, politics, social
or cultural life.”
Rather the liberation bestowed by
evangelization “must envisage the whole
man, in all his aspects, right up to and
including his openness to the absolute,
even the divine Absolute.”
The freedom which evangelization
seeks to achieve for man “is therefore
attached to a certain concept of man, to
a view of man which it can never
sacrifice to the needs of any strategy,
practice or short-term efficiency.”
He declared that the Church can
never accept violence “as the path to
liberation, because she knows that
violence always provokes violence and
44 Jews Still God’s People”
BY JOHN MAHER
WASHINGTON (NC) - “It is my
conviction that Israel did not cease to
be God’s people after the death of
Jesus,” a noted Catholic theologian told
Jewish and Catholic leaders gathered
here at a meeting sponsored by the
National Conference of Catholic
Bishops (NCCB).
“To Israel belongs the Christ,” said
the theologian, Jesuit Father Walter
Burghardt, professor of patristic
theology at the Catholic University of
America here. “He belongs first and
foremost to the people of Israel.”
Father Burghardt said that, while he
has found support for his conviction
that the Jews remain God’s chosen
people in St. Paul’s letter 'to tlhe
Romans, he finds support more clearly
expressed in the documents of the
Second Vatican Council.
He cited the statement that God
“does not repent of the gifts He makes
or of the calls He issues” which was
made in the section on the Jews in the
council’s Declaration on the Relation of
the Church to Non-Christian Religions
(Nostra Aetate).
Christian theologians differ, the
Jesuit pointed out, on the question “In
what sense does Israel remain dear to
God?”
As an answer, Father Burghardt
quoted Augustinian Father Gregory
Baum, professor of religious studies and
theology at St. Michael’s College of the
University of Toronto, who said that
“God continues to address His people in
the liturgy of the covenant,” that is, in
the synagogue service.
But, he added, “I must affirm that i"
it is true that Israel remains God’s
people, it is equally true that the
Gentiles have been incorporated into
God’s people. Israel has not been
rejected. The covenant has become
universal.”
Father Burghardt said it is his belief
that “God’s promises reached an
unparallelled point in Jesus.” This, he
said, “is the stumbling block, the claim
of Jesus that He was the coming of
Yahweh in an unexpected form.”
He continued: “I cannot say with
certitude just what Christian theology
ought to assert about the relation
between Jesus and the Jew of today.”
Christian theology has affirmed, he
said, that there is one mediator, Jesus
Christ, who died and rose for all. “On
the other hand, a centuries-old people
who have borne such striking witness to
the presence of Yahweh does not
confess that Jesus is savior.”
In light of the belief that God is
redemptively at work among the Jewish
people, Father Burghardt said, “I find it
impossible to say that the Jewish
religion is intended by God to
disappear.”
Father Burghardt gave one of two
1 , ~ U ''‘"'V ' M ' * *
Bishop Raymond W. Lessard of
Savannah was in attendance at the
meeting.
presentations op “New Orientations in
Jewish-Christian Relations” at the
NCCB-sponsored national celebration of
the 10th anniversary of the Second
Vatican Council’s declaration dealing
with the Jews and other non-Christian
religions.
The Jewish presentation was made by
Rabbi Irving Greenberg, chairman and
professor of the department of Jewish
studies, City College of the City
University of New York.
Rabbi Greenberg said “we are now
living in a period of new revelation”
made through two major events in
Jewish salvation history, the Holocaust
of the Nazi era in which six million Jews
were murdered and the rebirth of Israel,
“a redemption not experienced on this
scale since Exodus.”
“The successful carrying out of the
Holocaust was revelatory,” he said,
because it was “the most radical
contradiction of statements of human
value and divine concern in both
religions.”
“For Christians,” Rabbi Greenberg
said, “I believe the Holocaust reveals the
demonic consequences possible in its
traditional attitude toward the Jews.”
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irresistibly^ engenders new forms of
oppression and enslavement.”
He expressed hope that the
considerations he put forward “will help
to remove the ambiguity which the
word ‘liberation’ very often takes on in
ideologies, political systems or groups.”
Regarding efforts toward human
liberation in the Third World, the Pope
said that the Church “has the duty to
proclaim the liberation of millions of
human beings, many of whom are her
own children - the duty of assisting the
birth of this liberation, of giving witness
to it, of ensuring that it is complete.”
But he warned Catholics against
falling into the “frequent temptation”
of reducing the Church’s mission to a
simple “temporal project.”
The Pope claimed that the Church’s
“contribution to liberation is
incomplete if she neglects to proclaim
salvation in Jesus Christ.”
Without that, “the Church’s message
of liberation would no longer have any
originality and would easily be open to
monopolization and manipulation by
ideological systems and political
parties.”
The Pope reiterated that all temporal
and political liberation “carries within
itself the germ of its own negation”
when it does not include a “truly
spiritual dimension.”
According to Pope Paul, the Church
is learning the “proper manner and
strictly evangelical means” for
collaborating in liberation.
These, he said, include encouraging
“Christian liberators” through the
inspiration of faith and through the
Church’s social teachings to work for
human advancement.
The exhortation urged an
evangelization of cultures, “not in a
purely decorative way as it were by
applying a thin veneer, but in a vital
way.”
The Pope held that the real “drama
of our time” is the split that exists
between Christ’s Gospel and various
cultures.
Dissenting Catholics were reminded
that the Church’s mandate to evangelize
“is not accomplished without her, and
still less against her.”
The Pope complained that some
claim “to love Christ but without the
Church, to listen to Christ but not the
Church, to belong to Christ but outside
the Church.”
JHe appealed for new efforts to
reattract non-practicing Catholics to the
Church. Non-practice, he said, “is often
the result of the uprooting typical of
our time.”
He also attributed it to “the fact that
Christians live in close proximity with
non-believers.”
Society, the Pope maintained,
exposes Catholics to “militant atheism”
and to secularism that views God as
“superfluous and an encumbrance.”
Pope Paul appealed for “simple, clear
and direct” preaching and teaching. Use
of modern communication instruments
must be encouraged in an age which
some say is lost to the Word, he wrote.
But the Pope added: “The fatigue
produced these days by so much empty
talk and the relevance of many other
forms of communication must not
however diminish the permanent power
of the Word or cause a loss of
confidence in it.”
The Pope underlined “witness of life”
as a primary tool of evangelization.
That traditional attitude of
contempt, he said, “enables some
Christians to feel that they were doing
God’s work in not stopping the
Holocaust.”
“When absolute power arose and
made itself god, Israel of the flesh was
i seen as antithetical to it,” the rabbi said.
“Had Jesus and his mother been alive in
1944, they would have been sent to
Auschwitz (a Nazi death camp).”
Christian persecutions of earlier
times, he said, gave Jews the
opportunity to convert and were
therefore better than the Nazi
persecution, which offered no such
option. “Jews have a vested interest in
Christianity’s existence and renewal,”
said Rabbi Greenberg.
He cited the Soviet Union as another
example of “secularism triumphant,
more dangerous than Christianity.”
Secularity is a danger to both
religions, he said. In the face of it, He
urged defining fear of God biblically as
“care for the image of God, in men,
which excludes no man from
humanity.” (
Discussing the revelatory nature of
the rebirth of the state of Israel. Rabbi
Greenberg said “If the experience of
Auschwitz argues that we are cut off
from God, the existence of Jerusalem
speaks of God’s faithfulness. Israel’s
faith in God demands that such
unprecedented destruction should be
matched by unprecedented salvation.”
Appealing for Christian support of
the right of Israel to exist, Rabbi
Greenberg contended that silence in a
potential Holocaust situation would
destroy Christian credibility. “Another
genocide can only destroy the
credibility of any religion,” he said.
Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of
Cincinnati, president of the NCCB,
made a formal presentation to the
gathering of the statement on
Catholic-Jewish relations approved at
the November meeting of the NCCB.
In a response to the conference
statement, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein,
president of the Synagogue Council of
America and chairman of the
International Jewish Committee for
Interreligious Consultations, said the
NCCB document “demonstrates that
action and not words is needed.
TEN YEARS AFTER -- Rabbi Irving Greenberg of left) are: Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman, Jesuit Father
the City University of New York addresses a meeting
at Catholic University, Washington, D.C., marking the
10th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s
Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to the
Jewish people. Seated behind Rabbi Greenberg (from
Walter Burghardt, Bishop Bernard F. Law, Archbishop
Joseph L. Bernardin, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein, Msgr.
Charles Moeller and Father Edward H. Flannery. (NC
Photo by John Willig)
Catholic Families Are Seen
Upholding Catholic Values
WASHINGTON (NC) - Many
Catholic and Christian families are
“actively supporting one another in
their common beliefs and values”
despite lack of support for those beliefs
and values in contemporary American
culture, a U.S. Catholic Conference
(USCC) official said here.
“The family is the indispensable
transmitter of the distinctive beliefs,
values and attitudes characterizing a
nation and underlying the aspirations
and commitments of its individual
members” said the official, Father
Donald B. Conroy, representative for
family life in the USCC department of
education. “In this regard, there js no
viable substitute for the family.”
Father Conroy issued a statement on
“The American Catholic Family and the
Bicentennial” on behalf of diocesan
family life directors and after
consultation with them. The statement
was issued on the occasion of Holy
Family Sunday, Dec. 28.
The statement noted that “it was
concern for their families and the
quality of family life that led many of
our forefathers to leave their native
homelands to conquer the forbidding
wilderness and gradually to shape a new
nation.”
After briefly sketching the growth of
the country, its urbanization in the past
century and the involvement of all
major races and nationalities in this
process, the statement described the
role of Catholic immigrants in these
developments and the Church’s ministry
to them.
“Today,” the statement then said,
“American Catholic families are highly
mobile both socially (through education
and income) and spatially (going out of
cities to suburbs and to newly
developing industrialized areas).
“Thus, Catholic families are now
moving toward full participation in
American society and are experiencing
the multi-faceted impact of a dominant
culture that is increasingly secularized
and no longer primarily influenced by
Protestant religious belief.”
The statement noted that American
families, including Catholic ones, “are
growing more and more alike in size,
structure and general patterning of
activities throughout the life cycle.”
It continued: “In this climate of
technological pressure and growing
secularization, American Catholic
families are called to work out major
adjustments in ways that are consonant
with their faith. They no longer can
count on much support from an
externally religious culture for their
distinctive family attitudes, values and
beliefs.”
As indications of the lack of support
in contemporary society for Catholic, or
Christian, family ideals, the statement
cited:
- Fewer sanctions for and less
disapproval of pre-marital and
extra-marital sexual relations, leading to
“an estimated 800,000 extramarital
pregnancies annually and a venereal
disease rate of epidemic proportions;”
- An increase in divorces annually by
seven or eight percent since 1968 to
more than one million this year;
- Increased cohabitation without
formal marriage;
- “Aggresive advocacy of ‘open
marriage’ and homosexuality;”
“A commonly accepted
contraceptive mentality;”
“The apparent widespread
incidence of child abuse and '
- “The acceptance of abortion and
sterilization by married couples.”
“The danger,” the statement said, “is
that even Christian families will be
influenced to compromise their ideals
and no longer view sexual relations;,
marriage and parenthood from a moral
perspective founded on Gospel values.”
But, the statement added, there is
reason for optimism.
It noted:
- Signs of vitality in organizations
“dedicated to enriching family life and
strengthening the quality of married
relationships;”
- Increasing support for improving
social conditions “which unjustly
deprive many families of basic economic
and cultural rights.”
“We also discern,” the statement
continued, “a desire within the
contemporary Church to establish forms
of family ministry that will actively
assist the beleagured contemporary
Catholic family to be reassured and
grow in a deeply Christian and human
manner. Working on family and
marriage preparation, helping the family
to prepare for and celebrate the
sacramental events of their lives and
deeply educating adults to understand a
mature Christian spirituality and faith
commitment within the demands of
contemporary living are all clearly
discernible tendencies within the family
life apostolate.”
The statement finally called on
“American Catholic families, and other
religiously sensitive families with whom
we share so many ecumenical bonds, to
renew the pioneering spirit of our
forefathers.”
It said: “We know that it is not
simply a question of going back to a
point in the past but of actively trusting
in the Holy Spirit working in our lives
to creatively discover new programs and
patterns for vibrant Christian styles of
marriage and family life.”