Evangelisation: a time to stop reinforcing failure

THE DOCUMENT Evangelisation in England and Wales: a report to the Catholic Bishops has just been launched, in good time for it to be read and seriously studied by the Bishops at their autumn Study Week, at which Evangelisation is to be the major topic. It is the result of a commission to the Revd Dr Philip Knights of the CMS and Mrs Andrea Murray of Ushaw college to carry out research into evangelisation in England and Wales, and to report back to the Bishops' Conference.
Evangelisation, as the report makes clear, is not the same thing as Evangelism, though it should certainly include it. Part of the report's findings include the results of a survey from within various constituencies in the Church; "many respondents", the document reports, "understood evangelisation as simply those activities which enabled those who were not Christians to become Christians": this was in fact the largest response.
IT IS, OF COURSE, important to understand that there is more to Evangelisation than that.
The report quotes the teaching of Pope Paul's Evangelii Nuntiandi, which explained that "evangelisation has been defined as consisting in the proclamation of Christ Our Lord to those who do not know him, in preaching, catechetics, baptism and the administration of the other sacraments".
"But", the document continues, ...no such defective and incomplete definition can be accepted for that complex, rich and dynamic reality which is called evangelisation without the risk of distorting its real meaning....
In a word, the Church may be truly said to evangelise when, solely in virtue of the news which she proclaims, she seeks to convert both the individual consciences of men and their collective consience, all the activities in which they are engaged, and, finally, their lives and the whole environment which surrounds them.
The report makes it clear, nevertheless, that though Evangelisation has to be seen within a wider context than merely the making of new Christians, "Yet it is impor tant to note this expectation. Growth in numbers of practising Christians through proclaiming the central teachings of the Church is not only the most prevalent expectation of evangelisation, but is an essential component of evangelisation-.
We might go further, and suggest that if "growth of numbers of practising Christians" has not taken place as the result of a project of evangelisation, then that project has not succeeded; it must be said, for instance, that though the Decade of Evangelisation which preceded the Millennium may well have been a huge success elsewhere, in these islands it was in general an abysmal failure. To say that evangelisation is more than simply filling our pews may be true: but it is that at least. We can say more: that if we want to see where "evangelisation", understood in its conciliar sense as being an "impregnation" of the culture and the whole way of life of man, we will find it as a living reality in those places where the Churches are full, and where those who formerly did not believe, or believed in a merely formal way, now embrace with conviction the full sacramental life of the Catholic Church.
The report understands this very well, — better, it must be said than some bishops, in whose dioceses falling numbers of priestly vocations are seen as simply a sign of the times, and where phrases like diocesan "development" are used to describe the closure of yet another Parish Church: but where a supposed commitment to "evangelisation" (serviced bY all the usual bureaucratic accompaniments) continues to be enthusiastically proclaimed. Such dioceses often greet the ecclesial movements and the new religious communities with considerable hostility as failing to engage with something called "the charism of the diocese"; this report, in striking and Welcome contrast, sees them as providing important examples of the fact that "those who have been committed to koinonia often live out their lives in kerygma"; for them, the report says, "the call to a New Evangelisation has become an essential part of their identity and apostolate." The example is given of Youth 2000, through whose gateway "many young people have made Christian commitments, including impressive numbers of seminarians and vocations to various forms of religious life".
In brief: the Church in this country needs a radically new practical approach to evangelisation — radically new but also radically traditional, for what is true of the new movements is no more than, through the ages, has characterised the never-ending process of renewal of the Church. We need to stop reinforcing failure, and to recognise where real growth is actually taking place, on the ground. This intelligent, thorough and perceptive report could play an important part in that process, if the bishops were carefully to read it (all of it, not just the bits they like) and then vigorously to act on it. We can but hope and pray.