By Richard Szczepanowski
Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON – Because materialism, secularism and individualism are “rapidly enveloping our society and culture,” Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl urged Catholics to actively participate in the Church’s new evangelisation efforts “to proclaim the Gospel anew.”
“This is a time when voices need to be heard that say there is an anchor, there is a basis, a moral foundation to the choices we make,” Cardinal Wuerl said in an address at The Catholic University of America.
The “subtle influences” of materialism, secularism and individualism, he added, “need to be cleared away before we can plant the seeds” of faith.
Cardinal Wuerl spoke on Why the New Evangelisation Now? to the DC Council of the Knights of Columbus on 28 March.
Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Wuerl said the new evangelisation is “an effort to re-propose the Gospel – what we do and how we express our faith” – to those who already know the faith but for whom it holds no interest.
Last June, the Pope announced that he was establishing a pontifical council to promote “a renewed evangelisation” to people “living through a progressive secularisation of society and a kind of eclipse of the sense of God.”
Two months later, Cardinal Wuerl took up Pope Benedict’s call and issued a pastoral letter, Disciples of the Lord: Sharing the Vision, in which he outlined his vision for a new evangelisation. In that pastoral, the Cardinal urged the faithful to “invite others to hear once again, maybe all over again for the first time, the exciting invitation of Jesus – ‘Come, follow me.’”
In his address to the Knights of Columbus, Cardinal Wuerl said “the new evangelisation is not a programme, and I have to say this over and over again. It is a mode of thinking, seeing and experiencing.” He called it “a lens through which we see the opportunities to proclaim the Gospel anew. Don’t think of it as some task – it is a recognition that the Holy Spirit is actively working in the Church.”
He said the religious values espoused by the Church can address “the challenges of today.”
The Cardinal said recent attempts in the State of Maryland to legalise same-sex marriage “seek to redefine, to change the basic meaning of marriage – we live in a society where a 51 per cent majority can determine reality.”
The Maryland House of Delegates earlier this month failed to reach a vote on a bill that would have permitted same-sex couples in the State to marry. Lawmakers sent it back to the House Judiciary Committee, effectively defeating the measure during this legislative year.
Cardinal Wuerl said that while same-sex couples and other unions can be called “domestic partnerships” or any other such label, “some words’ meanings, like ‘marriage,’ simply cannot be changed by a vote of the majority. You can’t change reality just by changing names and words.”
He also said the Church’s new evangelisation efforts can refute “the arrogant claims of secularists.”
“We are interrelated and we have obligations to one another,” Cardinal Wuerl said. “This is what the Church is talking about. This is what the Pope is talking about.”
He said the Sermon on the Mount “offers a vision of life that truly inspires us.”
“Here (in the Sermon on the Mount presented in Matthew’s Gospel), we are challenged to envision a world where not only the hungry are fed, the thirsty are given drink, the stranger is welcomed and the naked are clothed, but also most amazingly sins are forgiven and eternal life is pledged,” Cardinal Wuerl said.
He said the new evangelisation is different than evangelisation that “brings the Word of God to those who do not yet know anything about Jesus Christ.” The new evangelisation, he said, “is bringing the Word back to those who have moved away from the Church, those who have been baptised, but not sufficiently evangelised.”
He said that to be successful in their new evangelisation efforts, Catholics must “know the faith well enough and be comfortable to share it. We have to know who Christ is.”
The “starting point” of this new evangelisation, Cardinal Wuerl said, “is recognising that God still speaks to His people, that God speaks to us today.”