It seems much too soon to be talking about a newer evangelization. But is it?
When I returned to the Catholic Church a decade ago, the term “new evangelization” was the buzzword of the times. Everybody was talking about it. They were referring to the idea propagated by St. John Paul II, that in our modern period those who have been stricken by a crisis of faith must be re-evangelized with renewed urgency and priority. John Paul urged the people of God to regroup spiritually, then go out into the world animated with a revived Spirit-driven ardor for mission, armed with new methods and fresh modes of expressing the evangelium of Jesus Christ. The same new evangelization is no less relevant or necessary today than decades ago.
But the evangelical needs of our time here and now—today—are not precisely the same as even one decade ago. People and politics, and the cultural medium within which they operate, are much too fluid for the Church not to be readily adaptable. Christians must be light on their toes in this culture. Such preparedness is critical in this Digital Age where the ebb and flow of information and influence is rapid. Evangelical dexterity is especially necessary in a post-Christian era like ours, where every Christian must become an apologist of sorts. “Apologetics has to meet the adversaries of the faith where they are in each successive generation,” insisted Avery Cardinal Dulles—and today it seems there are adversaries of the Catholic worldview at almost every turn.
Which issues most merit the attention of apologists today? Pope Francis, in his newest encyclical Fratelli Tutti, suggests three that I would like to offer as immediate concern: 1) religion and science, 2) religious indifference, 3) intra-Church conflict. The last of these is the most novel of the three, and insofar as it is a weakness in the foundation of the whole project, it is the most pressing. But before I say any more about it, let’s consider the first two issues.
Religion and science
As New Polity has often said recently, there is a deeply ingrained belief today—in an age when the ongoing achievements of science and technology are widely venerated—that science has the power to overrule any belief one holds. Oxford chemist Peter Atkins has displayed this attitude (also known as a worldview called scientism) in its most radicalized form by asserting not merely the superiority of science, but its omniscience. Thus, warns Pope Francis, today as much as ever “there is a risk that a single scientific advance will be seen as the only possible lens for viewing a particular aspect of life, society and the world.”
Rejected by many in academia as a less than serious way to real knowledge, theology has been all but condemned to the rubbish bin in many secular institutions: if not in actuality, then at least in the minds of students and professors alike. Regardless, the universities remain the best place to quell this apparent conflict and demonstrate the true concord; in the university, there remains the best place for what Pope Francis calls “a creative apologetics” which aims to demonstrate—on the front lines of contemporary thought—the non-competitive relationship between faith, reason and the sciences.
The fact is that Christian intellectuals have been trying to get this point across for quite some time. But perhaps a renewed effort is needed. Otherwise (to paraphrase Alvin Plantinga), the skeptics will airily continue to ignore this lively and long-lasting research project and instead continue telling absurd stories.
The Catholic position of course is to say yes to science. Science should be revered as a way to knowledge—but always as a “boundaried” way. For both scientists and believers look in the direction of the same God—perhaps in “a general and confused way,” as St. Thomas Aquinas put it—though indirectly, through secondary causes, in the case of science.
Indeed, as Pope Francis has just said in Fratelli Tutti, “great and valued as [scientific and technological advancements] are, there exists a moral deterioration that influences international action and a weakening of spiritual values and responsibility. This contributes to a general feeling of frustration, isolation and desperation.” Scientific progression is not good in and of itself. Currently science is offering “facts” to Christians and saying: “deal with that.” But science must conform to the paradigm of faith, and not the other way around. “What can we do?” needs to be tempered by the theologian’s answer to “what should we do?” Only then can we escape that anxiety that Pope Francis says emerges from our current “tyranny over nature.”
Religious indifference
As we all know too well by now, the Pew Research Service and other research organizations continue to confirm for us the unremitting number of Americans who no longer assume any kind of religious affiliation. Religion has fallen out of fashion and favor, and radically so. The perpetuating task for apologists, then, is to move people out of their indifference; that is to say, to get them thinking seriously about life’s deepest questions. But how?
Maybe no one since the Enlightenment has thought harder about the problem of religious indifference than Blaise Pascal. Like Pascal, we too find ourselves confounded that “there exist men who are indifferent to the loss of their being and the peril of an eternity of wretchedness.” But despite his discontent, he did not think the situation entirely hopeless. Nor should we. In fact, the French polymath provides in his Pensées a strategy for intellectually engaging the indifferent. But it all hinges on the apologist’s ability to make Christianity compelling, to “make good men wish it were true” before he proves it.
We might take St. Francis of Assisi as one holy witness to this method. As we are reminded in Fratelli Tutti, “[St.] Francis did not wage a war of words aimed at imposing doctrines; he simply spread the love of God . . . In this way, he became a father to all and inspired the vision of a fraternal society.” Remember that St. Francis was unafraid to preach boldly in the public square. But this act of proposing the faith was always the outflow of a more fundamental—and attractive—invitation to a radically different way of living.
St. Francis eschewed the corrupt and greedy merchant practices of his day to live a life on self-giving and inter-dependence rather than on profiteering. The Holy Father sees business practices today in a similar way as the merchants in 13th century Italy: they build “corrupt systems that hinder the dignified development of their peoples;” “Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust, the market cannot completely fulfil its proper economic function.” We must return to a fraternal economy of love. A radical separation from the vicious economy today, we can demonstrate a new way of living to the world. The Church must again become “citizens of heaven” as St. Paul says. Only once we don this new citizenship—this way of life that attaches us to love of God and the love of neighbor—does the world have somewhere to look on as a model of joy.
It seems to me that the Pascalian methodology—one that prioritizes the psychological while tending towards the logical—needs to be considered very seriously as a strategic way forward in a culture that is not readily disposed at the level of the heart to take arguments seriously. I propose a new reading of the Pensées among Christian intellectuals as a good first step. For as Cardinal Dulles has testified, “Few if any apologetical works have brought so many unbelievers on the way to faith.”
Intra-Church conflict
But what really gives the current cultural predicament its unique tang is the proliferating divisiveness inside the Catholic Church itself. Now, the problem here is not argument per se. Argument is a good and necessary part of ecclesial life. What deserves particular attention are the deep-seated concerns of Catholics (many of which are certainly legitimate) combined with the mounting contempt for those who disagree or do not subscribe to the same practices. The issue at hand is ultimately both moral and doctrinal—and an important concern for contemporary apologetics. At the brunt of the intra-Church conflict are the so-called “radical traditionalist” types whose defining feature is their deep suspicion—indeed, for some, an outright rejection—of the Second Vatican Council.
To suggest the deficiency or invalidity of the teachings of Vatican II is eminently controversial, not to mention consequential, if true; and as such should be debated. But it seems that blinding contempt has poisoned the well. This contempt, existent on both sides of this debate to be sure, clearly runs much more rampant on the traditionalist side. Now—again—the questions and criticisms behind the inflammatory manners and methods often merit sober acknowledgement. But the incessant lashing out, mockery, sarcasm, and condescension is hopelessly unproductive.
Much of this conflict manifests on the internet, on social media and blogs, for all the world to see. As Pope Francis writes in Fratelli Tutti:
Dialogue is often confused with something quite different: the feverish exchange of opinions on social networks . . .These exchanges are merely parallel monologues. They may attract some attention by their sharp and aggressive tone. But monologues engage no one, and their content is frequently self-serving and contradictory.
When the cybernated Church manifests itself in this self-effacing way, it comes across as something like a deranged army intent on turning in on itself to satiate its hunger by first devouring parts of itself—before then turning outwards. Some see such public displays of anger, belittlement, and division as amounting to an anti-evangelical nightmare. Protestant theologian Chris Castaldo has recently expressed the off-putting nature of the clash, saying “the infighting among traditionalist, conservative, and liberal Catholics highlights the sizable dent in Rome’s claim to speak with the living voice of divine authority.”
It’s not difficult to see where Castaldo is coming from. A house divided against itself is hardly compelling. Whatever its effects on non-Catholics, it is certainly not good for the Church—if not for turning off non-Catholics from Catholicism, then at least for its effect on the souls of Catholics who have apparently forgotten the precious salvation that is theirs to lose. We might all ask ourselves: what will it profit us if we gain the whole world—and a few hundred thousand “followers”—but forfeit our soul?
The Church is suffering from a tribalism akin to those found in liberal democracies. The vicious attacks, the eschewing of reason, and the lack of love models the urban riots more than the good Samaritan who cared for his political enemy. Far from finding our freedom from others’ oppression, the Catholic, unlike the liberal, has a life of freedom for the love of God and neighbor. Our liberty is to be unitive. We are not “bereft of a shared vision” as the Pope has just claimed about the rest of the globalizing world. Our own infighting stems from our habituation toward a liberal, heretical mode of living. We need to stop being liberals and start being Catholics.
The Church as the Church
In closing, it seems that given the cultural and especially the ecclesial milieu we find ourselves in today, we would do well to discuss the idea of a newer evangelization—without dispensing with the “new evangelization” proper—and what that could mean concretely. This newer evangelization digs deeper into the tradition, shoves off the parts of the Church that look like modern liberal states with their inordinate praise of science, their competition and profiteering, and their contentious tribalism. The Church needs to look, well, more like the Church. Behind even the new evangelization is the more fundamental old evangelization, that is to say, the great and unceasing Christian commission given by Christ to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19).
But in a narrower sense, a newer evangelization—and a newer apologetics—is needed now insofar as the culture of the unbaptized needs to see a specific side of the Church today. We must then continue to seek new, innovative ways to engage persistent cultural problems like scientism and religious indifference. But above all the new missionary surge of the Church should start with the Church itself. We must clean up our own act. We must engage in intellectual discourse not as enemies, but as brethren, fathers, or sons, and without expending the classic intellectual robustness that has always been a true mark of the Christian Church. We must respect the offices put in place by Christ and honor the authority of the men who hold them—just as the apostles did at the Council of Jerusalem (see Acts 15:12-19). We must take on the virtue of charity as an unrelenting norm and catalyst of discourse, adopt the Pascalian method, invoke the principle of radical unity. By doing so, we will once again be on track for making good men wish Christianity were true.
Matt Nelson is the Assistant Director of the Word on Fire Institute.