A series of articles on Pope Francis’s comments on proselytizing
EVANGELIZE, DON’T PROSELYTIZE – AND THERE’S A DIFFERENCE.
People can’t be coerced into the faith, they must be loved. That is what Pope Francis is saying, and that is what his predecessors said.
http://www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/should-we-proselytize-5829569848279040
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In this week’s interview with atheist newspaper publisher Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis commented that “proselytization is solemn nonsense.” Christians who have converted to the Catholic faith, missionaries, and those involved in apostolates that work helping people to convert to Catholicism were offended. When Pope Francis said “proselytization is solemn nonsense” and re-assured Eugenio Scalfari that he did not intend to convert him, they heard the Pope saying that evangelization was a waste of time and that converting people to Catholicism was “nonsense.”
Pope Francis does not have the theologian’s precision that characterized Pope Benedict XVI nor the philosopher’s clarity of thought and expression that marked Bl. Pope John Paul II. He is a pastoral Pope, interested in people and passionate about meeting them on their own terms, wherever they are. Unfortunately, Pope Francis seems more concerned with the individual contact and warm personal style than he does with clarity of teaching.
To understand Pope Francis’s words, we should first understand what he means by “proselytization.” To proselytize is to attempt to convert someone to your religion. This simple definition is clear enough, but the word also carries a connotation of using coercion of some sort. To use guilt, emotional blackmail, or psychological pressure to get a person to accept a religion is both immoral and ineffective. Even if they convert, they have done so under pressure, and thus it is not a true conversion.
To understand the Catholic approach to evangelization, it is worth considering Pope Benedict XVI’s teachings on a visit to Brazil in 2007. Addressing the Latin American Bishops, the Pope said, “To you who represent the Church in Latin America, today I symbolically entrust my encyclical Deus Caritas Est, in which I sought to point out to everyone the essence of the Christian message.” Pope Benedict then explained that the Church “does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by ‘attraction,’ … just as Christ draws all to himself by the power of his love.”
The first Christians converted the Roman Empire because of the radiant love they showed. As John Zmirak has written,
“What impressed the Romans was how the Christians lived, and their willingness to push back against the corruptions of a dying, death-dealing culture. Christians did not kill their unwanted infants – in fact, they went to the city gates and rescued the infants whom pagans had abandoned. Christians did not divorce, as Romans did; they were more likely to be chaste before marriage and faithful afterward – which led Roman aristocrats to seek out Christian wives… In an increasingly totalitarian Roman state, Christians were even willing to say no to the emperor. These radical acts of resistance to the social and political culture, carried out at personal cost that sometimes included martyrdom, won over jaded residents of the crumbling empire.”
This is the point Pope Francis is making: people must be attracted by the love Christians exhibit rather than some form of emotional, psychological, or social coercion. So in the interview, he says to Eugenio Scalfari, “It is love of others, as our Lord preached. It is not proselytizing; it is love. Love for one’s neighbor, that leavening that serves the common good.” Scalfari replies, “Love your neighbor as yourself?” And the Pope says, “Exactly so.”
Neither Pope Benedict nor Pope Francis have any intention that Catholics should stop evangelizing. However, they are aware that a preaching that consists only of laying down the law or presenting doctrinal precepts to be affirmed is in adequate. Preaching the Gospel must be in words and works. The Gospel of love must be shown through lives of self-sacrificial love.
When Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and preach the Good News, he expected us not only to proclaim the message, but first to be transformed by it. Once we are transformed by the Gospel of the Risen Lord, we will be able to radiate his life and love into the world with great power. This is the same message communicated by Bl. Pope John Paul in his apostolic letter, Into the New Millennium .
In that manifesto for the New Evangelization, John Paul II reminds all Catholics of the primacy of love as the heart of the evangelistic effort, and with ringing tones he calls us:
“Let us go forward in hope! A new millennium is opening before the Church like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ. The Son of God, who became incarnate two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, is at work even today: we need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart to become the instruments of his work… Now, the Christ whom we have contemplated and loved bids us to set out once more on our journey: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19). The missionary mandate accompanies us into the Third Millennium and urges us to share the enthusiasm of the very first Christians: we can count on the power of the same Spirit who was poured out at Pentecost and who impels us still today to start out anew, sustained by the hope “which does not disappoint.”
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Fr. Dwight Longenecker is the parish priest of Our Lady of the Rosary Church in Greenville, South Carolina. Browse his books, visit his blog and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com.
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MORE FROM THE DISASTROUS NEW POPE
Matt Kennedy
October 1, 2013
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This time Pope Francis decides to correct Jesus’ faulty missiology:
“Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good …”
Compare with:
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:18-20)
It’s a good thing we have the Pope to interpret scripture for us. I mean who would have known that when Jesus instructed his followers to make disciples of all nations and baptize them in the name of the Trinity and teach them to follow all his commands, he really meant: get to know everybody and tell them to follow their own consciences.
In answer to a question about whether or not there is an absolute “good’, the Pope answered:
“Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good …Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”
Compare with:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? (Jer 17:9)
“None is righteous, no, not one; 11 no one understands; no one seeks for God. 12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” 14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 in their paths are ruin and misery, 17 and the way of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:12-18)
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. (Eph 2:1-3) No one is good but God alone. (Mark 10:18)
It’s difficult to believe that any pope asked about the nature of truth and goodness would encourage fallen human beings to follow whatever ‘vision’ of good they possess. Not only is it morally absurd (the Nazis, Khmer Rouge, and the Klu Klux Klan were/are all following their vision of the good) it is biblically repugnant. No one is good but God. The human heart is deceived. When groups of human beings do what is right in their own eyes, it never ends well. This is precisely why Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin and rebellion (John 16:8) and commissions his church to call all human beings to repent and surrender to him. Apart from Jesus Christ the world is not and can never be “a better place” no matter how much people follow their vision of good.
Now we wait. It shouldn’t be long before we’re treated to the now familiar sight of conservative Catholic bloggers desperately trying to persuade us and themselves that Pope Francis really didn’t say what he said, that he was mistranslated or that he is misunderstood. Nonsense. The Pope is not a stupid man. He knows the import of his words and the media/cultural context in which he speaks them. At some point my Catholic friends need to face facts. This pope is a disaster for Rome. It’s not as if he is the first papal disaster … but he’s the first in quite a long time. He’s going to undo at least some of John Paul II’s and Benedict’s work. Liberal Catholicism will rise from the dead and gain ground. The sooner you realize that the more prepared you’ll be to endure the next 15 or so years of his papacy.
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THE POPE’S ‘LONG PATH’
Baptist Press
Russell D. Moore
October 1, 2013
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It’s another week and thus another interview with Pope Francis. This one, I’m sorry to say, is more than just confusing. It’s a theological wreck.
In an interview with La Repubblica in Rome, the Pope responded to a question about whether there is a “single vision of good” by saying, “Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.”
The Pope also said, “The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood.” When the reporter commented, “Some of my colleagues who know you told me that you will try to convert me,” the Pope said, “Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.”
From Augustine’s “Confessions” to “Well, everyone has his own ideas about good and evil….” is a mighty long path.
First of all, I am a Protestant so, of course, I do not accept the church’s claims about the papal chair as Vicar of Christ. But though I protest, I don’t throw rocks (no Petrine pun intended). My mother’s side of the family was and is Roman Catholic, and some of the most significant influences in my life personally and intellectually are Roman Catholics.
Second, I don’t dislike Pope Francis. I think he is quite right about the primacy of Christ’s Gospel over the culture wars. In my much smaller pool and from my much smaller perch, I’ve tried to say that outrage itself isn’t a Christian virtue. Our mission ought to be toward reconciliation, not the vaporization of our perceived enemies.
But.
If Pope Francis wishes to reclaim the gospel’s primacy, he must simultaneously speak with kindness to those outside of its reach and speak of the need for good news. What these interviews seem continually to do is what evangelical theologian Carl Henry warned Protestants of in the 20th century, of severing the love of God from the holiness of God. God is, Henry said, against both the liberal Social Gospel and obscurantist and angry fundamentalism, the God of both justice and justification.
Without speaking to the conscience, and addressing what the sinner already knows to be true about the day of giving an account, there is not love, only the consigning of the guilty conscience to accusation and condemnation. If the church is right about the personhood of unborn children (and I think it is), then why would we not be “obsessed” about speaking for them, and for the women and men whose consciences are tyrannized by their past sins?
It is not good news to say to such consciences, “Well, we’re all brothers and sisters,” if what they feel in their psyches and read in their Bibles (and in their Catholic catechisms) is that those who commit such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God. We must speak with tenderness and gentleness, but with an authoritative word from God, that there is a means of reconciliation. The burdened conscience doesn’t wish to hear “It’s all OK.” The burdened conscience is freed by “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ” (Romans 8:1).
There’s little purpose in refighting the Protestant Reformation here, but we do, in some sense, return to Martin Luther’s problem. With a guilty conscience, he could find no way to reconciliation in himself or by the purported economy of grace. In the church, he saw rules and rituals but, in that, felt only condemnation.
But opposite a harsh, rule-oriented Christianity is a way that is just as condemning, a way that we’ve seen often in hyper-Protestant communions: the tendency to downplay sin at all. This leaves sinners like us in a kind of earthly purgatory that never purges, and leads us to hide from the face of God because, like our first parents, we know who we are and what we’ve done.
I’m in no position to advise the Bishop of Rome, but I hope we’ll see a fuller-orbed message from him. I’m with Pope Francis on the need for kindness but I pray it will be a convictional kindness that addresses both the reality of God’s holy justice and His reconciling love.