The Church is a community of disciples in mission.

ack in March, the Huff­in­g­ton Post described it as “Catholi­cism 2.0,” but lis­ten to George Weigel him­self talk about it and you will know that Evan­gel­i­cal Catholi­cism in fact rep­re­sents Catholi­cism 5.0: the fifth “super­tran­si­tion­al moment” for the 2000-year-old Church. Two thou­sand years is a much longer span of time than many like to think, and the demands of his­to­ry are always chang­ing, and Catholi­cism has rethought itself—not its doc­trines, but the way they are lived—many times before.

EVANGELICAL CATHOLICISM 5.0

I had the priv­i­lege of hear­ing Mr. Weigel speak at my parish last night: St. Gertrude, in Madeira, Ohio. Our pas­tor said it was the first time in all his years as a priest that he ever saw the front rows fill up first. Many who came had only stand­ing room left, and St. Gertrude is a large church. Mr. Weigel spoke for rough­ly an hour about the “super­tran­si­tion­al moments” the Church has faced before, and how Catholics are meant to live their faith in our own, at the start of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

Rough­ly out­lined, Church His­to­ry may be divid­ed into five peri­ods.

• The Ear­ly Church, until the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
• The Patris­tic Peri­od, or age of the Church Fathers, until the time of Augus­tine.
• Medieval Chris­ten­dom, the age of St. Dominic, St. Fran­cis, St. Bonaven­ture, St. Cather­ine of Siena, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Albert the Great.
• Post-Ref­or­ma­tion Catholi­cism, which was shaped by the Coun­cil of Tren­t’s response to the Protes­tant schism. This was the age of the Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion, shaped by St. Robert Bel­larmine, St. Alphon­sus Liguori, St. Tere­sa of Avi­la, St. John of the Cross.
• Evan­gel­i­cal Catholi­cism.

Many suspect—wrongly, accord­ing to Mr. Weigel—that the fifth “super­tran­si­tion­al moment,” in which we are now liv­ing, began at the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil in the 1960s. In fact, it began as long ago as 1878, when Pope Pius IX died and the Col­lege of Car­di­nals elect­ed Vin­cen­zio Pec­ci (Leo XIII) as his suc­ces­sor. Pius IX had stood in absolute resis­tance to mod­ernism (and the British had great fun with his pon­tif­i­cal name in Ital­ian, “Pio Nono”); but Leo XIII under­stood that the Church had truths that a mod­ernist world need­ed to hear. His strat­e­gy was to engage mod­ernism with dis­tinct­ly Catholic “tools.”

Thus Leo XIII estab­lished the Pon­tif­i­cal Bib­li­cal Coun­cil. He embraced tex­tu­al schol­ar­ship of the Bible.  He opened the Vat­i­can records to sec­u­lar researchers. He defined Catholic social doc­trine in Rerum Novarum. And he spoke of reli­gious free­dom as the first of human rights. When John XXIII called for a Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil, he was attempt­ing to sup­ply a def­i­nite shape and form to all that had been hap­pen­ing in the Church since Leo XIII.

THE CHURCH IS A COMMUNION OF DISCIPLES IN MISSION

Accord­ing to Mr. Weigel, the main prob­lem that the Church has had since Vat­i­can II is that the Coun­cil did not pro­vide an inter­pre­tive key for under­stand­ing the six­teen doc­u­ments, as pri­or coun­cils had done. There were no canons or creeds that came out of Vat­i­can II. Thus the pon­tif­i­cates of John Paul II and Bene­dict XVI gave us the defin­i­tive inter­pre­ta­tion; we need only lis­ten to what the last two popes have told us.

And what they have told us is this: that the Church is a com­mu­nion of dis­ci­ples in mis­sion. In the wake of Trent, Catholi­cism under­stood itself as a soci­etatis per­fec­tæ—a per­fect soci­ety.  But the Church is no such thing. We are sin­ners who have expe­ri­enced mer­cy, and we have the respon­si­bil­i­ty of show­ing the rest of the world the path to the same mer­cy we have found.  Protestantism—if I may inter­ject into the sum­ma­ry I have been pre­sent­ing thus far—has always had great evan­gel­i­cal fer­vor, and those born into the Catholic Church have a great deal to learn from our sep­a­rat­ed broth­ers and sis­ters in that regard, as well as from Protes­tant con­verts.

It used to be, Mr. Weigel said, that the Church could rely on the cul­ture to trans­mit the faith. But that lux­u­ry does not exist any­more. Not only is the cul­ture not trans­mit­ting the faith, it is active­ly hos­tile to the faith.  At such an time, every Catholic has an evan­gel­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty to the world.  Mr. Weigel cit­ed two encycli­cals by John Paul II in sup­port of this truth: Redemp­toris Mis­sio (1990; here) and Novo Mil­len­nio Ine­unte (2000; here).

John Paul II under­stood that the Catholic Church does not have a mis­sion; it is a mis­sion. “Freely you have received; freely give” (Matt. 10:8). The more you give the faith away, the more it will be your own. Catholics must “put out into the deep.”  That means we must engage the cul­ture where it is. We must go out to it; it will not come to us. Easy Catholi­cism, as cul­tur­al habit, will not work in a cul­ture hos­tile to the faith.

NEW EVANGELIZATION

So what to do? What is the heart of the New Evan­ge­liza­tion? Mr. Weigel lists its five arter­ies.

• Reg­u­lar recep­tion of the sacra­ments.
• Dai­ly prayer.
• Eucharis­tic ado­ra­tion.
• Being a life­time learn­er.
• Active­ly shar­ing the faith with oth­ers. That means we have an oblig­a­tion to learn the faith and to learn it well and to keep learn­ing it.

It is not enough to say you believe all that the Church teach­es; Catholics must active­ly live their faith and active­ly engage a hos­tile cul­ture with the faith.  That is not easy, but it is nec­es­sary in the cul­ture we find our­selves in. We can­not be insu­lar, and we can­not wish our­selves back to anoth­er time.

It was an impor­tant talk; and Mr. Weigel has writ­ten an impor­tant book. If you have not read it, you should drop all else to do so. I have some thoughts of my own on what the New Evan­ge­liza­tion means, and I will be shar­ing them soon. Specif­i­cal­ly, since my main area of inter­est is rhetor­i­cal, I have some thoughts about what the New Evan­ge­liza­tion means for Catholic writ­ers, crit­ics, and thinkers. I sus­pect we need to start imag­in­ing big­ger than we have prac­ticed, how­ev­er much val­ue our prac­tice has had thus far.

The New Evan­ge­liza­tion is, I believe, the most impor­tant teach­ing to come out of Vat­i­can II. Vat­i­can II was not about com­pro­mis­ing with mod­ernism, as some rad­i­cal tra­di­tion­al­ists in the Church like to pre­tend. It was about engag­ing mod­ernism. One can­not engage this wicked cul­ture from afar; the cul­ture is not going to come to us. We must go to it. We must meet peo­ple where they are.

That is what the Church is telling Catholics that they must do now. We all have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to the faith we pro­fess. If we believe it, we must know it and live it. But then we must express it and share it. We may not remain on the shore while oth­ers are push­ing out into the deep. We must go out and be fish­ers of men. We can­not cling to our own sal­va­tion and spurn the world. We must desire the world’s sal­va­tion too.  That is what the New Evan­ge­liza­tion is about.