Orlando, Fla., Jul 4, 2017 / 11:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The way we evangelize should grab the world by the shoulders and shake it out of its apathy, Bishop Robert Baron told a crowd of Catholic leaders Tuesday. Evangelization is especially urgent as the 'nones' - the number of the population who do not identify with a religion, continues to grow, he said. Bishop Baron, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and well-known evangelizer for Word on Fire, addressed the crowd of Catholic bishops and leaders gathered at the Catholic Convocation in Orlando, Florida through a live video feed on July 4, the last day of the gathering.   “We do have a fight on our hands, but the great saints of our church have always loved a good fight, and we should too.”     In a talk entitled “Equipping Evangelizers”, the bishop with more than 15 years of evangelizing experience said that there are three main challenges and three main opportunities that Catholic evangelists face today.  1. The first challenge: Scientism   The culture’s embrace of “scientism”, or the philosophical belief that the only valuable knowledge is scientific knowledge, is one of the great challenges that evangelists face today, Bishop Barron said.   “Let me be clear: the Catholic Church has nothing against the sciences, the church stands with the sciences at their best,” he said. “What the Church opposes is scientism, or the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge.”   Actually, scientism as a philosophy is self-refuting, he noted.   “Scientism is not discoverable through the scientific method. Where did you empirically verify and test through experimentation that only scientific knowledge is valuable? Scientism is a philosophical position and therefore self-refuting,” he said.   But it can be challenge for evangelizers, who are speaking to the world about God.   “When we (as a culture) isolate ourselves from all references to the transcendent, we do damage to the human heart, we do damage to the human spirit,” he said.  2. The second challenge: The culture of “meh”   There’s a rampant apathy in today’s society, especially among young people, who have been formed not to embrace anything as objectively true, Bishop Barron said.   “If there is no objective truth, no objective value, what that produces is a culture of ‘meh’, or as the kids say, ‘whatever’” Bishop Barron said.   But objective truths and values form a firm foundation that sends us on mission, he said, pointing to an example used by St. John Henry Newman, who said a river gets its energy and verve from its firm foundation.   “Knock down the banks, and what’s going to happen? That river is going to open up into a big, lazy lake. Placid, with no energy, no purpose,” Bishop Barron said.   “Our society today is like a big lazy lake, all of us floating individually, tolerating each other, not getting in each other’s way, but without energy, without purpose.”   But evangelization, the declaration of the good news of Jesus, is the antithesis of this apathy, he said.   “Once you’ve been grasped by the power of God...you know where to go and you do it with energy.”    3. The third challenge: The culture of self-determination   What was once a fringe philosophical idea known as voluntarism, which stemmed from philosophers like Nietzsche and other recent existentialists, is now mainstream thought among the millennial generation in the United States, Bishop Barron said.   The core belief of this philosophy, embraced widely by young people, is that freedom defines identity, he noted.   “My freedom comes first, and then I determine essence, who I am, the meaning of my life. It’s all based on my freedom - my sexualtiy, my gender, purpose of my life is all up to me,” he explained.   But to evangelize is to say that “your life is not about you, your life is not up to you,” Bishop Barron said. “Remember the ecstatic expression of St. Paul: it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in mean. When you’ve been seized by the power of Jesus Christ, your little ego-drama becomes pretty unimportant,” he said.     The Bishop then presented three opportunities for evangelization based on the three transcendentals: truth, goodness and beauty.  1. The first opportunity: An intelligent truth   “I hate dumbed-down Catholicism,” Bishop Barron emphatically told the audience.   “What do I mean by that? It puts a huge stress on the superficial, the ‘banners and balloons Catholicism’ as I call it. We are a smart religion. When we don’t express Catholicism in a smart way, people fall away,” he said.   In particular, the Bishop urged catechists, apologists and evangelists to equip themselves with a good grasp on one of the great arguments for the existence of God. Young people often don’t have a robust understanding of God beyond a vague and irrelevant deity, he noted.   His favorite argument is based on contingency - that existence flows from God, and everything on the world gets its existence from him, because nothing created itself.   “The God that I’m talking about sustains the whole universe moment to moment the way a singer sustains a song. Continual creation - that’s the God the great Church talks about, that we must convey to our young people,” he said.  2. The second opportunity: The goodness of radical Christians   When the Christian life is embraced fully and radically, it’s goodness stands out to the world, Bishop Barron said.   The best example of this in the 20th century was Mother Teresa, who evangelized the world by her radical witness of goodness - caring for others indiscriminately, he said.   Throughout the history of the Church, he said, it was the “goodness and radicality of the Christian life that got the attention of the world,” through great saints like Benedict, Dominic and Francis.   “We need to recover what all these great figures found - this splendidly radical form of the Christian life. When it’s lived publicly, it evangelizes,” he said.  3. The third opportunity: Authentic beauty   Perhaps the best opportunity from which to start evangelization is with the authentic, objective beauty of the faith, Bishop Barron said.   And he’s not just talking about something subjectively satisfying like, say, deep-dish Chicago pizza, he said.     “The objectively valuable and beautiful is not like that, it’s something so intrinsically good and beautiful that it seizes us, it stops us in our tracks - something called aesthetic arrest,” he said.   It’s an easy place to start evangelizing because it’s as simple as “show, don’t tell.”   “Just show people the beauty of Catholicism - show them Cathedrals, show them the Sistine Chapel, show them Mother Teresa’s sisters at work. Don’t tell them what to think and how to behave, show the beauty of Catholicism, and that has an evangelical power,” he said.   “There’s nothing more beautiful than the dying and rising of Jesus Christ,” he said, and the apostles in the New Testament communicate this with a “grab-you-by-the-shoulders” urgency.   “These are people who have been seized by something so powerful and so overwhelming that they want to grab the world by the shoulders and tell them about it,” he said. “We need to be filled with the same ‘grab-you-by-the-shoulders’ enthusiasm” about the beauty of our faith, he added.   “Yes we face obstacles, but the saints always loved a good fight, and we should love a good fight too, because we go forth with this great truth, goodness, and beauty of Jesus Christ.”   Read more

Orlando, Fla., Jul 3, 2017 / 03:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An encounter with the Lord frees us from sin and fear, and frees us for mission and evangelization, said Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore in his homily at the closing Mass for the USCCB’... Read more

Orlando, Fla., Jul 2, 2017 / 08:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The rapidly changing realities of the Catholic Church in the U.S. bring a host of challenges and unknowns, but also great opportunities for evangelization and engagement, said experts at a gathering of Catholic leaders. “The future of U.S. Catholicism is being forged in areas once not central to U.S. Catholic life,” said Dr. Hosffman Ospino, associate professor of theology and religious education at Boston College. “Are we paying attention?” Dr. Ospino spoke at the “Convocation of Catholic Leaders: The Joy of the Gospel in America” event on July 2 in Orlando, Florida. He explained to more than 3,500 attendees from parishes and Catholic organizations around the country how the face of the Church in the United States is rapidly changing. In particular, he pointed to the rapid growth throughout the nation, particularly in the South and West of Hispanic communities. He also noted swift growth of other faith communities, particularly Asian Catholic communities and, within some localities, communities of immigrants from Africa.  These changes have swiftly changed the face of American Catholic life. Fifty years ago, over 80 percent of American Catholics were of European descent. Today, that number is less than 50 percent, with 40 percent of all Catholics claiming Latino heritage, 5 percent of Asian or Pacific Islander descent, 4 percent African-American and 1 percent of Catholics of Native American descent.  Among Catholics under the age of 30, those numbers are even more diverse. To address these very shifts in American Catholic life, Catholics should imagine what the future of the Church will look like, Ospino said. “What kind of community of faith will our children and grandchildren inherit?” he asked, encouraging Catholics in attendance to consider the best stories and guidance the Church can offer.  Ospino also suggested Catholics reimagine their relationship with the public square. He warned that the ‘culture wars’ which have been a marker of American discourse in recent decades have hampered, in some cases, the Church’s ability to speak effectively to communities on the margins.  “It has become impossible to speak about anything because one is expected to take an ideological position to make a point,” he commented. “The Gospel, my friends, is not an ideology, to be a co-opted to advance an ideological position. The Gospel is a message of life and communion,” Ospino said to applause. Catholics should look for other means of engaging and reaching these growing segments of the Church, and participate in the U.S. Bishops’ National Encuentro parish gathering process as part of this engagement, he continued. Dr. Ospino’s talk was followed by a panel discussion, describing the different ways the Church is growing and changing in the United States. Jesuit Father Thomas P. Gaunt, SJ, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, explained that demographic changes in the United States do not apply just to Latino Catholics, but to all sections of the Church in the United States. He noted that populations of U.S. Catholic life are shifting away from the historic centers in the Northeast to booming job markets in the South and West. In addition, he noted, shifts are impacting African-American and Asian communities.   Meanwhile, according to CARA’s research, nearly a third of U.S. Catholics are not connected to a local church. While this disparity is a sign for needed improvement, Fr. Gaunt suggested that this gap can also be seen as a resource. “How do we re-invite and re-engage them once more?” he wondered.  Kerry Weber, executive editor of America magazine, also pointed to these communities on the peripheries and noted that most of these communities have been engaged in the Church for decades or even centuries. The challenge for Catholic journalists, she said, is to show the diversity of the Church that has always been here.  Helen Alvare, professor of law at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, pointed to the great strides the Church has made both in promoting its view of the human person in the public square and improving her own witness to the living out of respect for the human person in daily life.  On one hand, she said, “there is an embracing of the role of women in the Church and in the public square,” and embracing of men’s integral role in raising children in the home. Furthermore, “there is a huge emerging consensus that the Church's beautiful way of marriage sex and the family is freeing for all people.”  However, there have also been challenges. She noted that in the past several decades, challenges to the family have been a major contributor to social inequality. In addition, she said, the Church has experienced “profound losses of ideas” and understanding of teaching.  She urged participants not to be afraid to share the Church’s message and vision for the human person – even as it confronts the messages and priorities of the secular world.   “Since when has the Church's message anywhere not been scandalizing to the world?” she remarked. At the same time, however, Catholics should articulate the fullness and meaning of the faith, and not rely purely on constitutional and legal arguments.  “We have to tell them what we're going to use our religious liberty for,” she insisted.   Franciscan Father Agustino Torres, CFR, works extensively with Latino youth in New York City and explained that Latino youth – one of the largest growing populations of Catholics in the United States, “don't want just a program,” but an example of the Church’s message. He pointed to the Church’s teaching on love and sexuality as a concrete example of doctrine that youth can apply to their lives, finding Christ in the process.  “It makes the Church relevant to young people,” Fr. Torres said.   Daniel Owens, who spoke with his wife Melanie on the powerful encounter of love provided in the Church’s message of chastity, echoed Fr. Torres’s insights, saying that he sees a “real opportunity” in sharing the message of the Gospel, and added that the Theology of the Body has the unique ability to speak to the questions many youth face today. Outside of any specific program or message, however, Fr. Torres stressed the importance of encounter, particularly when reaching out to young people. Within many cultures, particularly Latino youth, young people feel torn between different cultures and identities asking for their attention.  “If the Church were to say 'you belong here, this is your home,’ you're going to get an army of missionary disciples,” he said. Read more