Evangelization

Vatican Teaching on Evangelization

Vatican II’s Ad Gentes, the “Decree of the Missionary Activity of the Church,” begins,

Divinely sent to the nations of the world to be unto them a universal sacrament of salvation, the Church, driven by the inner necessity of her own catholicity, and obeying the mandate of her Founder (cf. Mark 16:16), strives ever to proclaim the Gospel to all men.

Ad Gentes continues,

7 This missionary activity derives its reason from the will of God, “who wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, Himself a man, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:45), “neither is there salvation in any other” (Acts 4:12). Therefore, all must be converted to Him, made known by the Church’s preaching, and all must be incorporated into Him by baptism and into the Church which is His body. For Christ Himself “by stressing in express language the necessity of faith and baptism (cf. Mark 16:16; John 3:5), at the same time confirmed the necessity of the Church, into which men enter by baptism, as by a door. Therefore those men cannot be saved, who though aware that God, through Jesus Christ founded the Church as something necessary, still do not wish to enter into it, or to persevere in it.” Therefore though God in ways known to Himself can lead those inculpably ignorant of the Gospel to find that faith without which it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6), yet a necessity lies upon the Church (1 Cor. 9:16), and at the same time a sacred duty, to preach the Gospel. And hence missionary activity today as always retains its power and necessity.

Pope Paul VI’s Nostra Aetate, October 28, 1965, states, 4 “The Church believes that by His cross Christ, Our Peace, reconciled Jews and Gentiles. making both one in Himself.”

Pope Paul VI’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi, December 8, 1975, 14 says:

We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church … Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection.

John Paul II declared in Christifideles Laici § 33, December 30, 1988, “The entire mission of the Church, then, is concentrated and manifested in evangelization.”

Nothing in any of these definitive and universal statements suggests an exception for evangelizing Jews.

Perhaps most striking of all, the Church’s definitive statement of its relationship with the Jewish people has no exception for evangelizing Jews. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, at § 839, states: “When she delves into her own mystery, the Church, the People of God in the New Covenant, discovers her link with the Jewish People, the first to hear the Word of God. The Jewish faith, unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. Rom 9:4 ’To the Jews belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ,’ for the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.”

The New Evangelization

Pope John Paul II introduced the New Evangelization in his encyclical Novo Millennio Ineunte.

Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, explained it with particular clarity.

Father John McCloskey’s assessment of the state of the Catholic Church in the United States at the beginning of 2006 is that it is still winter but there are clear signs of spring. Father McCloskey has had extraordinary success as a Catholic evangelist. His ideas on how we can evangelize are well worth reading.

Myth and Reality

There is a myth that the Catholic Church discourages evangelizing Jews. The truth is exactly the opposite. The misunderstanding came from a speculative document called Reflections on Covenant and Mission.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church § 674 declares, “The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel’, for ‘a hardening has come upon part of Israel’ in their ‘unbelief’ toward Jesus.”

Jesus Evangelized Jews

Let us review the teaching of the Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, at § 1226, states: “The apostles and their collaborators offer Baptism to anyone who believed in Jesus: Jews, the God-fearing, pagans.”

The four Gospels tell us that Jesus’ entire public ministry was devoted to evangelizing Jews.

Jesus told Nicodemus, a prominent Jew and member of the Sanhedrin, Jn 3:5 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Could He have intended an exception for Jews? He told the twelve, Mt 10:5 Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” He added, Mt 15:24 “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Before ascending to the Father, He commanded, Mt 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit’s miracle highlighting the universality of the Catholic Church was an evangelization of Jews. Acts 2:5 “Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.”