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EXCERPTS
FROM THE APOSTOLIC EXORTATION EVANGELII NUNTIANDI (1975) by
Paul VI 19.
Strata of humanity which are transformed: for the Church it is a question
not only of preaching the Gospel in ever wider geographic areas or to ever
greater numbers of people, but also of affecting and as it were upsetting,
through the power of the Gospel, mankind's criteria of judgment,
determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of
inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God
and the plan of salvation. 20.
All this could he expressed in the following words: what matters is to
evangelize man's culture and cultures (not in a purely decorative way, as
it were, by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right
to their very roots), in the wide and rich sense which these terms have in
Gaudium et spes,[50] always taking the person as one's starting-point and
always coming back to the relationships of people among themselves and
with God. The
Gospel, and therefore evangelization, are certainly not identical with
culture, and they are independent in regard to all cultures. Nevertheless,
the kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is lived by men who are profoundly
linked to a culture, and the building up of the kingdom cannot avoid
borrowing the elements of human culture or cultures. Though independent of
cultures, the Gospel and evangelization are not necessarily incompatible
with them; rather they are capable of permeating them all without becoming
subject to any one of them. The
split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our
time, just as it was of other times. Therefore every effort must be made
to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures.
They have to be regenerated by an encounter with the Gospel. But this
encounter will not take place if the Gospel is not proclaimed. 21.
Above all the Gospel must be proclaimed by witness. Take a Christian or a
handful of Christians who, in the midst of their own community, show their
capacity for understanding and acceptance, their sharing of life and
destiny with other people, their solidarity with the efforts of all for
whatever is noble and good. Let us suppose that, in addition, they radiate
in an altogether simple and unaffected way their faith in values that go
beyond current values, and their hope in something that is not seen and
that one would not dare to imagine. Through this wordless witness these
Christians stir up irresistible questions in the hearts of those who see
how they live: Why are they like this? Why do they live in this way? What
or who is it that inspires them? Why are they in our midst? Such a witness
is already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and
effective one. Here we have an initial act of evangelization. The above
questions will ask, whether they are people to whom Christ has never been
proclaimed, or baptized people who do not practice, or people who live as
nominal Christians but according to principles that are in no way
Christian, or people who are seeking, and not without suffering, something
or someone whom they sense but cannot name. Other questions will arise,
deeper and more demanding ones, questions evoked by this witness which
involves presence, sharing, solidarity, and which is an essential element,
and generally the first one, in evangelization."[51] All
Christians are called to this witness, and in this way they can be real
evangelizers. We are thinking especially of the responsibility incumbent
on immigrants in the country that receives them. 22.
Nevertheless this always remains insufficient, because even the finest
witness will prove ineffective in the long run if it is not explained,
justified - what Peter called always having "your answer ready for
people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have"[52] -
and made explicit by a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the Lord
Jesus. The Good News proclaimed by the witness of life sooner or later has
to be proclaimed by the word of life. There is no true evangelization if
the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the
mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed. The
history of the Church, from the discourse of Peter on the morning of
Pentecost onwards, has been intermingled and identified with the history
of this proclamation. At every new phase of human history, the Church,
constantly gripped by the desire to evangelize, has but one preoccupation:
whom to send to proclaim the mystery of Jesus? In what way is this mystery
to be proclaimed? How can one ensure that it will resound and reach all
those who should hear it? This proclamation - kerygma, preaching or
catechesis - occupies such an important place in evangelization that it
has often become synonymous with it; and yet it is only one aspect of
evangelization. … 48.
Here we touch upon an aspect of evangelization which cannot leave us
insensitive. We wish to speak about what today is often called popular
religiosity. One
finds among the people particular expressions of the search for God and
for faith, both in the regions where the Church has been established for
centuries and where she is in the course of becoming established. These
expressions were for a long time regarded as less pure and were sometimes
despised, but today they are almost everywhere being rediscovered. During
the last Synod the bishops studied their significance with remarkable
pastoral realism and zeal. Popular
religiosity, of course, certainly has its limits. It is often subject to
penetration by many distortions of religion and even superstitions. It
frequently remains at the level of forms of worship not involving a true
acceptance by faith. It can even lead to the creation of sects and
endanger the true ecclesial community. But
if it is well oriented, above all by a pedagogy of evangelization, it is
rich in values. It manifests a thirst for God which only the simple and
poor can know. It makes people capable of generosity and sacrifice even to
the point of heroism, when it is a question of manifesting belief. It
involves an acute awareness of profound attributes of God: fatherhood,
providence, loving and constant presence. It engenders interior attitudes
rarely observed to the same degree elsewhere: patience, the sense of the
cross in daily life, detachment, openness to others, devotion. By reason
of these aspects, we readily call it "popular piety," that is,
religion of the people, rather than religiosity. Pastoral
charity must dictate to all those whom the Lord has placed as leaders of
the ecclesial communities the proper attitude in regard to this reality,
which is at the same time so rich and so vulnerable. Above all one must be
sensitive to it, know how to perceive its interior dimensions and
undeniable values, be ready to help it to overcome its risks of deviation.
When it is well oriented, this popular religiosity call be more and more
for multitudes of our people a true encounter with God in Jesus Christ. 62.
Nevertheless this universal Church is in practice incarnate in the
individual Churches made up of such or such an actual part of mankind,
speaking such and such a language, heirs of a cultural patrimony, of a
vision of the world, of an historical past, of a particular human
substratum. Receptivity to the wealth of the individual Church corresponds
to a special sensitivity of modern man. Let
us be very careful not to conceive of the universal Church as the sum, or,
if one can say so, the more or less anomalous federation of essentially
different individual Churches. In the mind of the Lord the Church is
universal by vocation and mission, but when she puts down her roots in a
variety of cultural, social and human terrains, she takes on different
external expressions and appearances in each part of the world. Thus
each individual Church that would voluntarily cut itself off from the
universal Church would lose its relationship to God's plan and would be
impoverished in its ecclesial dimension. But, at the same time, a Church
toto orbe diffusa would become an abstraction if she did not take body and
life precisely through the individual Churches. Only continual attention
to these two poles of the Church will enable us to perceive the richness
of this relationship between the universal Church and the individual
Churches. 63.
The individual Churches, intimately built up not only of people but also
of aspirations, of riches and limitations, of ways of praying, of loving,
of looking at life and the world, which distinguish this or that human
gathering, have the task of assimilating the essence of the Gospel message
and of transposing it, without the slightest betrayal of its essential
truth, into the language that these particular people understand, then of
proclaiming it in this language. The
transposition has to be done with the discernment, seriousness, respect
and competence which the matter calls for in the field of liturgical
expression,[92] and in the areas of catechesis, theological formulation,
secondary ecclesial structures, and ministries. And the word
"language" should be understood here less in the semantic or
literary sense than in the sense which one may call anthropological and
cultural. The
question is undoubtedly a delicate one. Evangelization loses much of its
force and effectiveness if it does not take into consideration the actual
people to whom it is addresses, if it does not use their language, their
signs and symbols, if it does not answer the questions they ask, and if it
does not have an impact on their concrete life. But on the other hand,
evangelization risks losing its power and disappearing altogether if one
empties or adulterates its content under the pretext of translating it;
if, in other words, one sacrifices this reality and destroys the unity
without which there is no universality, out of a wish to adapt a universal
reality to a local situation. Now, only a Church which preserves the
awareness of her universality and shows that she is in fact universal is
capable of having a message which can be heard by all, regardless of
regional frontiers. Legitimate
attention to individual Churches cannot fail to enrich the Church. Such
attention is indispensable and urgent. It responds to the very deep
aspirations of peoples and human communities to find their own identity
ever more clearly. 64.
But this enrichment requires that the individual Churches should keep
their profound openness towards the universal Church. It is quite
remarkable, moreover, that the most simple Christians, the ones who are
most faithful to the Gospel and most open to the true meaning of the
Church, have a completely spontaneous sensitivity to this universal
dimension. They instinctively and very strongly feel the need for it, they
easily recognize themselves in such a dimension. They feel with it and
suffer very deeply within themselves when, in the name of theories which
they do not understand, they are forced to accept a Church deprived of
this universality, a regionalist Church, with no horizon. As
history in fact shows, whenever an individual Church has cut itself off
from the universal Church and from its living and visible center-
sometimes with the best of intentions, with theological, sociological,
political or pastoral arguments, or even in the desire for a certain
freedom of movement or action- it has escaped only with great difficulty
(if indeed it has escaped) from two equally serious dangers. The first
danger is that of a withering isolationism, and then, before long, of a
crumbling away, with each of its cells breaking away from it just as it
itself has broken away from the central nucleus. The second danger is that
of losing its freedom when, being cut off from the center and from the
other Churches which gave it strength and energy, it finds itself all
alone and a prey to the most varied forces of slavery and exploitation. The
more an individual Church is attached to the universal Church by solid
bonds of communion, in charity and loyalty, in receptiveness to the
Magisterium of Peter, in the unity of the lex orandi which is also the lex
credendi, in the desire for unity with all the other Churches which make
up the whole- the more such a Church will be capable of translating the
treasure of faith into the legitimate variety of expressions of the
profession of faith, of prayer and worship, of Christian life and conduct
and of the spiritual influence on the people among which it dwells. The
more will it also be truly evangelizing, that is to say, capable of
drawing upon the universal patrimony in order to enable its own people to
profit from it, and capable too of communicating to the universal Church
the experience and the life of this people, for the benefit of all. 65.
It was precisely in this sense that at the end of the last Synod we spoke
clear words full of paternal affection, insisting on the role of Peter's
Successor as a visible, living and dynamic principle of the unity between
the Churches and thus of the universality of the one Church.[93] We also
insisted on the grave responsibility incumbent upon us, but which we share
with our Brothers in the Episcopate, of preserving unaltered the content
of the Catholic faith which the Lord entrusted to the apostles. While
being translated into all expressions, this content must be neither
impaired nor mutilated. While being clothed with the outward forms proper
to each people, and made explicit by theological expression which takes
account of differing cultural, social and even racial milieu, it must
remain the content of the Catholic faith just exactly as the ecclesial
magisterium has received it and transmits it. |