What Is the New Evangelization?

Since the New Evangelization has become a major focus for both Sacred Heart Major Seminary and the Archdiocese of Detroit, it might be well to review a bit where this emphasis came from and why it is important.

Starting in 1983, St. John Paul II began to refer frequently to a new evangelization. He made it clear that he wasn't calling for a new gospel. Instead, he was calling for a new effort, characterized by new ardor, methods, and expression and directed in a new way, not only to those who have never heard the gospel beforethe traditional mission territoriesbut now also to the lukewarm and de-Christianized traditionally Christian Western nations.

He distinguished between primary evangelization, directed towards those who have never heard the gospel before; pastoral care, directed towards those who were living as believers; and the new evangelization or re-evangelization, directed towards those from traditionally Christian cultures or backgrounds. Within this last category, entire groups of the baptized have lost a living sense of the faith, or even no longer consider themselves members of the Church, and live a life far removed from Christ and his Gospel (Mission of the Redeemer, no. 33).

Cardinal Adam Maida, archbishop of Detroit from 1990 to 2009, determined that a more serious institutional response needed to be made to this call of St. John Paul II. He gave Sacred Heart a new motto, Preparing Heralds for the New Evangelization, and directed the seminary to build this focus on evangelization into its degree programs, which we have done. Archbishop Allen Vigneron, Cardinal Maida's successor, has continued the emphasis and expanded it to the entire Archdiocese of Detroit.

St. John Paul II published his vision or mission statement for the Catholic Church as it entered the new millennium, the apostolic letter Novo Millennio Ineunte (At the Beginning of a New Millennium). He cited the collapse of Christian society as a primary reason for the need for a new evangelization.

To nourish ourselves with the word in order to be servants of the Word' in the work of evangelization: this is surely a priority for the Church at the dawn of the new millennium. Even in countries evangelized many centuries ago, the reality of a Christian society' which, amid all the frailties which have always marked human life, measured itself explicitly on Gospel values, is now gone (no. 40).

The collapse of Christian society is being experienced in the Catholic Church, and here in the archdiocese, it is a wake-up call to the need for a renewal of fervor, both for holiness and for evangelization, rooted in the continuing reality of Pentecost.

As St. John Paul II put it in Mission of the Redeemer, his 1990 encyclical on evangelization, 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 [to the nations]. No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples (no. 3). The message here is that the call to evangelization is addressed to each Christian and can't be delegated to specialists or committees. Nor is it adequate to occasionally have special evangelization events, as useful as they may be.

What is being called forand what is necessaryis that evangelization become part of the baptized Catholic's fundamental identity and part of our everyday way of life. As the Church of Detroit prepares for the Archdiocesan Synod in 2016, which will focus on evangelization, reviewing these words of St. John Paul II can shed light on why we are holding the synod.