Sentire Cum Ecclesia

Over Cape Bridgewater

The scenery is simply spectacular, but the going is tough on this leg. We did 20km today from the School Camp at the small Cape Bridgewater township around to the freshwater Bridgewater Lakes. I noticed that many of us were walking more on our own at our own pace more than yesterday. Perhaps everyone was talked out, perhaps the aches and pains are getting more pronounced (cold is gone, pain in the neck is gone, but now I have a dicky left knee – which I hope will also be gone by tomorrow morning!), perhaps everyone wanted to take in the scenery at their own pace.

Okay, so what is a pilgrimage? Part tourism indeed (read Egeria’s account of her 4th Century pilgrimage to Jerusalem), part serious hike (more than part on this camino), part exploration (“David! Where are you going now?”). For myself, it is all of these with the addition of prayer. I am very glad that this morning Fr Greg said mass for us at 6:15am. It was very simple, but the camp actually has a sort of non-denominational chapel that served for the purpose, and about half the pilgrims came to mass. Then I listen to the Divine Office using the iPhone app – all seven offices. And say the Angelus. And pray for all the people that I said that I would pray for. And listen to music. (Did I mention that Michael Nyman’s soundtrack for the film “The Piano” is the perfect accompaniment to the pounding waves of this coastline?).

I found today that the walking was very slow. We had hardly covered 9kms in the first three hours – but there was so much to stop to look at. You will find the same thing happens if you drive along the Great Ocean Road and stop to look everytime there is a sign pointing to something interesting on the coastline. I sped up a bit as we were getting toward the end. The glimpse of the Lakes in the distance spurred me on, and upon arrival I stripped off down to my compression pants and jumped in. It was freezing but refreshing. We then relaxed on the lawn eating our trailmix and tuna while waiting for the rest to arrive. A large hired school bus took us back to the camp at Cape Bridgewater, where we spent the remainder of the afternoon before having dinner down at the shore cafe which opened especially for us and provided a surprisingly good menu. 

There was something self-defeating in being brought back to where we started. That is the major flaw of this excellent adventure at the moment: the distance between Bridgewater Lakes and Nelson is just too great to be done in even two days, and on top of that, there is nowhere to stay in the middle. You would have to be a very hardy hiker, enthusiastic explorer and determined tourist to fulfil the pilgrimage via that route all the way with everything you need to survive out there on your back. (Which isn’t to say it isn’t an idea that tempts me). I am confident that in the future a solution will be found to this – once the camino becomes so popular that there is a demand to find a solution. Luke and the other pioneers of this pilgrimage have a number of good plans to enlist the support of the locals, the government (national parks/tourist) and the Church (both diocese and parishes) in support. I reckon one thing the camino needs is a plenary indulgence! I think that the local bishop can grant this…

Tonight in the chapel they are showing the film “The Way”. I’ve seen it, but watched a bit of it. There is something of that camino spirit on this trip, but this is definitely much tougher as far as the actual walking goes. We received the first sprinkling of rain tonight. And we expect much more later in the week. 

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On the Beach

We more or less walked the coastal route today from Portland to Cape Nelson light house and then to Cape Bridgewater. It was physically a lot more demanding than I expected – with a lot of ups and downs and winds and twists, and it was actually therefore much longer than google maps had indicated to the camino organisers. It billed at being about 32km, but clocked in at 37.4km. That may not sound like a great difference, but the reality is that around 36km in one day and strange aches and pains start appearing in various muscles  of the feet and legs. Still, everyone made it, even the two that took the wrong turn and ended up doing a 45km day. And one member of our group is 71 years old. He said to me at dinner tonight that he would never have undertaken the walk if he knew exactly how long it was, but I shook him by the hand and said: “You did it.”

Before leaving, I had a conversation with my myotherapist about my walking. “What do you think about while you are walking?”, he wanted to know. Well, I take in the scenary, I listen to music on my iphone, and I pray. “I think that must be the difference,” he said, “If you are praying that gets you to your destination rather than giving up along the way.” Today proved the truth of that. Everyone came through, and arrived at the camp at Cape Bridgewater. No one was hurt – which isn’t to say that we were not all hurting in our own particular physical ways. 

I am aware too that there are many on the Camino who are hurting in other ways. One pilgrim shared with us on the way the last 10 months since her daughter was hit by a car and suffered multiple fractures to the skull. The recovery has been slow, but it has been real – a sign of the power of prayer, she said. Is this why you are doing the Camino?, I asked. “I needed a chance just to get away and process everything we have experienced in the last ten months”, she answered, “and my husband was very supportive.”

One unexpected element along the way was snakes. Many of them. My first encounter this morning was with a dead one that I almost stepped on. I only realised it was dead after my initial recoil. But later in the day the reports started coming in thick of sightings along the path. The second encounter was when I had turned to speak to the bloke behind me and he said, “Did you see that? You just stepped over a snake!” But my final encounter was the most terrifying: I came around a corner at full bore (around 8.5 km/h) only to find a huge snake in my path. He (?) immediately went into fight mode rearing up ready to strike but then, as I hastily backed away, decided on flight instead, much to my relief. I had my walking poles ready to retaliate against any attack (the poles have more than one use on the trail). I think most of the ones we encountered have been Eastern Tiger Snakes – big, thick bodied buggers with yellow bellies. Other pilgrims later reported similar encounters. So, be warned if you plan this trip in the future! Talking about this later to Luke Mills, the creator of the Aussie Camino, he suggested that pilgrimage has always involved risk, and perhaps this is the particular risk of the Aussie Camino. How appropriate that, on a journey of spiritual discipline, the tempter should take the form of a serpent!

The way we walked today was scenically spectacular. We are not tourists, but that did not stop me taking many photographs of the journey. We mainly followed the Great Southern West Walk, which was along cliff tops and, for a goodly number of kms, on the beach. At this point, I put my music selection onto Michael Nyman’s soundtrack for the film “The Piano” – which was really appropriate for the crashing ocean waves, the broad sandy beach, and the thick fog of sea spray in the air.

Tonight’s dinner table was true Camino jolliment and cameraderie. I had brought six bottles of wine along which were shared among all present. We are staying at a school camp, which was also once the location of a Josephite convent. In the morning Fr Greg has offered to say mass for us at 6:15am before we leave at 7:30am, so I perhaps ought to get a bit of sleep! (I have just spent an hour or so talking to Luke about his vision for the Camino over a pipe). 

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Fr Kalka blesses the Scallop Shells at the Sending Mass

It is not my intention on this pilgrimage to write an exhaustive account at the end of each day. If you want to know what the Aussie Camino is, google it. You will find several good accounts from its creator, Luke Mills. In short, tomorrow morning, myself and about thirty others will leave Portland in Victoria where we are staying overnight and walk to Penola in South Australia, where we should arrive (Deo Volente) approximately 200kms later on Saturday night next week.

Yes, the Camino is connected with St Mary MacKillop – Portland is where St Mary’s family lived for many years and where she had her last lay teaching post. Penola, of course, is where she took the viel as a Sister of St Joseph and began the first Josephite school. But the Camino is not about St Mary, nor are we following any historical trail that St Mary herself is known to have travelled. 

Also, this is not Captain Catholic’s pilgrimage. I have met many of my companions, and some of them are lapsed or non-practicing Catholics, some have a tenuous hold on their faith, and some are not Catholic at all. Anyone who knows about the Spanish Camino knows that there is no requirement that participants be Catholic. In fact, it is almost as popular with non-Catholics as with Catholics.

That said, we (at least some of us) have been to Mass twice today. We started with Mass in the Mary MacKillop Heritage Centre this morning at 10:30am where Fr Kalka blessed our scallop shells and sent us on our way. Then we arrived in Portland in time for the Vigil Mass at All Saints Church (next door to Bayview College where the Lorreto Sisters have their school on the site of the old MacKillop cottage). 

Still, a topic of conversation over dinner later in the evening at Mac’s Hotel was “Why are you doing the Camino?” The answers were many and various – and honestly, like myself, there were many who did not know why they were taking this on, but simply were drawn to it. One lady I was talking too said: “I just realised that many are intending to walk on their own – I thought we would all be walking together”. I responded that for some of us, it is especially the isolation that we are looking forward to. “You don’t expect to find God out there do you?” Well, maybe. I am rather hoping he will find me. I then told her that during my training for this event (which began only 5 weeks and about 460kms of walking ago) there were points when I found I was really entering a bit of a “dark place”. “Don’t tell me that – that’s not why I came.”

This is a new venture – it is only the second time anyone has walked it (Luke and his small band of companions did it first last Easter). But already the idea has proved enormously popular. There are a few kinks in the route. At the moment, you couldn’t do the whole thing without either a backup vehicle or a very large fully accomodated overnight camping backpack. But I am sure that with time the idea will catch on. Maybe our passports (yes, we have real “Camino-style” passports with stamps!) will become historical items! 

I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know if I will even make it all the way. I have a bit of a cold, and a very bad neck. But I need to do this.

My spiritual director told me the other day when I went to be shriven before leaving “You know, historically there have always been two acceptable ways for men to avoid their reponsibilities? Going to war and going on pilgrimage. The Crusades achieved both.”

Well, I will content myself with my scallop shell rather than taking the cross. My responsibilities are where I left them. Tomorrow morning I am literally walking away from them. I don’t know what I am walking towards…

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Earlier today, I came across this photograph below, and did not immediately recognise the priest holding the monstrance.

Wondering if others would have the same difficulty, I did a quick survey of my co-workers in the Archdiocesan office, and found that about 6 out of ten claimed to have no knowledge of the subject, although they thought he looked familiar.

Do you recognise him?

(Credit)

I haven’t been blogging much lately, as you know. Lot’s been happening at this time of year, including teaching a new course for Anima Education on “The Challenge of Atheism” – which was a real challenge, I can tell you. But it was also one of our best attended courses ever, and I think both teacher and students benefited enormously. 

But I am writing this short post about a recent experience of “joy” that I had. Many people around the Archdiocesan offices know that for the last six weeks I have been playing “nanny” to 24 baby rats. Dot and Smudge, the two six week old female rats that I brought home in the last weekend of October, turned out to be both pregnant at the time the left the pet shop (we won’t go into details…). The result was that two weeks later Smudge produced a litter of eleven pups and, a week later, Dot produced thirteen more. 

The experience was somewhat overwhelming for me, and all will attest, including my wife and colleagues, that I have been somewhat obsessed with caring for my rats over the last six weeks. Well, last week ten of the first litter went back to the pet shop ($5 each) and this past week eleven of the second litter were sent back. Their cage, which is situated in my outdoor “hermitage/cave” now looks decidedly empty. No more bouncing and scuttling little rats at feed time, or sleeping bundles in the morning (you may not sympathise with this, but the experience of placing one’s hand into a warm soft heap of baby rats is actually very pleasant!). Aunty Smudge and Mummy Dot have only three young females left of their litters – Stripe (because she has one), Stumpy (because someone chewed off half her tail) and Persephone (because my daughter claimed the right to give at least one of them a “real” name). You can see in the picture Dot, Stripe and Persy with an expression on their faces which says “Where has everyone gone?”

The night before the last litter was packed off, I was walking the dog and reflecting on the experience overall. One reason I have identified that I have been so besotted with these little creatures is that I grew up on a farm where we always had a little of baby somethings around, be they puppies, kittens, chickens, piglets, lambs, joeys, emu chicks, whatever. This was an important experience of my childhood and yet it has been more than thirty years since I have had a pet that has given birth to a litter. So there was a bit of “return to childhood” about it all. I am sure there is more to it than that though, and doing the atheism course at the same time as raising the baby rats often had me wondering whether the rats believed in me (the god who daily provided clean bedding, gave them food and clean bedding and refilled the soy milk bowl). 

Anyway, as I was saying, I was walking the dog and took the opportunity of being out on the local oval alone to voice out loud my gratefulness by simply saying “Thank you God for my rats”. It was a simple act, but one which helped me to place it all in perspective and own it as a precious experience that was a gift from God. 

Today I found a link in Cathnews to an article in America Magazine by James Martin SJ on joy. In it, he says that if we are going to be truly honest with God in our prayer, we need to bring the joys and positive experiences of our lives to God as well as our needs and difficulties. Giving thanks, even for small things (eg. 24 baby rats), is a way of seeing all our experiences as gifts, and valuable ones at that. Out on the oval the other night, with the stars shining in a clear sky, one could be overwhelmed by the “bigness” of God – after all, he made all that, and on a scale far beyond my comprehension. But at another level, he was concerned for these little creatures, and saw somehow that bringing them into my life would bring me joy. 

So this post is just to say again: Thank you, God, for those baby rats. 

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I wonder what our Lutheran friends will make of this passage in Evangelii Gaudium (if they read it):

36. All revealed truths derive from the same divine source and are to be believed with the same faith, yet some of them are more important for giving direct expression to the heart of the Gospel. In this basic core, what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ who died and rose from the dead…

38. It is important to draw out the pastoral consequences of the Council’s teaching, which reflects an ancient conviction of the Church. First, it needs to be said that in preaching the Gospel a fitting sense of proportion has to be maintained. This would be seen in the frequency with which certain themes are brought up and in the emphasis given to them in preaching. For example, if in the course of the liturgical year a parish priest speaks about temperance ten times but only mentions charity or justice two or three times, an imbalance results, and precisely those virtues which ought to be most present in preaching and catechesis are overlooked. The same thing happens when we speak more about law than about grace, more about the Church than about Christ, more about the Pope than about God’s word.

The Lutheran tradition also knows a “hierarchy of truths” – or at least one truth that is at the top (or perhaps the foundation) of the heirarchy, namely the article of “justification by faith alone apart from works”. They call this the “article by which the Church stands or falls”. There is a version of Lutheran doctrine derisively called (by other Lutherans) “Gospel reductionism”. This makes the “chief article” the one article that judges all others, to the extent that one’s own personal idiosyncratic interpretation of the “chief article” can be used against set and firm teachings of the Christian tradition.

For Francis, the “heart of the Gospel” is the love of God revealed in the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. He later identifies this with the apostolic kerygma (cf. paragraphs 164 following) in a way that I think even C.H. Dodd could recognise. But it is quite clear that Pope Francis is not a “Gospel reductionist”, as he goes on to explain:

39. Just as the organic unity existing among the virtues means that no one of them can be excluded from the Christian ideal, so no truth may be denied. The integrity of the Gospel message must not be deformed. What is more, each truth is better understood when related to the harmonious totality of the Christian message; in this context all of the truths are important and illumine one another. When preaching is faithful to the Gospel, the centrality of certain truths is evident and it becomes clear that Christian morality is not a form of stoicism, or self-denial, or merely a practical philosophy or a catalogue of sins and faults. Before all else, the Gospel invites us to respond to the God of love who saves us, to see God in others and to go forth from ourselves to seek the good of others. Under no circumstance can this invitation be obscured! All of the virtues are at the service of this response of love. If this invitation does not radiate forcefully and attractively, the edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards, and this is our greatest risk. It would mean that it is not the Gospel which is being preached, but certain doctrinal or moral points based on specific ideological options. The message will run the risk of losing its freshness and will cease to have “the fragrance of the Gospel”.

So. All revealed truths are to be believed with the same faith, but in the preaching of the faith, the heirarchy of truths indicates we should place our primary focus on the central Kerygma. It then becomes possible to teach the fullness of the faith upon a firm foundation in a way that the beauty of all those truths which follow from the Kerygma are clearly seen and becomes “attractive” rather than repellant (as they often are today). And Francis has already indicated in this document that he sees the primary modus operandi of evangelisation in terms of attraction rather than proselytisation (cf. paragraph 14).

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For the moment, only a link – once I’ve read it, there will be more! PDF version here!

Quick observation: it wasn’t first up, but it was there as expected: a focus on the Kerygma

164. In catechesis too, we have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the centre of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal. The kerygma is trinitarian. The fire of the Spirit is given in the form of tongues and leads us to believe in Jesus Christ who, by his death and resurrection, reveals and communicates to us the Father’s infinite mercy. On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.” This first proclamation is called “first” not because it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.[126] For this reason too, “the priest – like every other member of the Church – ought to grow in awareness that he himself is continually in need of being evangelized”.[127]

165. We must not think that in catechesis the kerygma gives way to a supposedly more “solid” formation. Nothing is more solid, profound, secure, meaningful and wisdom-filled than that initial proclamation. All Christian formation consists of entering more deeply into the kerygma, which is reflected in and constantly illumines, the work of catechesis, thereby enabling us to understand more fully the significance of every subject which the latter treats. It is the message capable of responding to the desire for the infinite which abides in every human heart. The centrality of the kerygma calls for stressing those elements which are most needed today: it has to express God’s saving love which precedes any moral and religious obligation on our part; it should not impose the truth but appeal to freedom; it should be marked by joy, encouragement, liveliness and a harmonious balance which will not reduce preaching to a few doctrines which are at times more philosophical than evangelical. All this demands on the part of the evangelizer certain attitudes which foster openness to the message: approachability, readiness for dialogue, patience, a warmth and welcome which is non-judgmental.

This explains perfectly the Holy Father’s thinking in that interview!

Update: Just a thought that might give some clues: pay close attention to the footnotes. The sources for Pope Francis’ thought are telling. 

Oh how our hearts burn within us! Pope Francis and I share something in common: 

EG 7. “I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction”. (DCE 1)

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About five years ago, when my children were little (literally, they are now rivalling me for height), my oldest daughter set out to the pet shop to buy some pet mice. “Why mice?” asked the pet shop owner, “Have you considered rats?” (Little did we know that we had chosen to purchase mice from the foremost local breeder of domestic rats – Animal World in Boronia.) “Rats??” shrieked my wife – but as soon as she saw them, she was convinced. 

That day we bought Twitchy home, and he was a constant companion, for me as much as for my children. He would sit on my shoulder as we were watching television, and, if I fell asleep, he would still be there when I woke up. When he died two years later (rats have a short life span – if you buy them for your children, they will be introduced to death and grieving on a regular basis), we missed him so much we went out and bought two new rats, Tiffany and Minerva – both females, because unless you want lots of rats, don’t buy two of the same sex! They in their own turn expired, and by then the girls were sick of having the rats in their rooms (they make a bit of noise at night) and having to clean out the cage every couple of days. 

So we didn’t replace them, but I missed having the little rodents quite dreadfully. In fact, I have become so “rat friendly” that in order to remove a small infestation of ratus ratus (as opposed to ratus domesticus) from my ceiling, I decided to use a live catch trap and to release them “in the wild” rather than kill them (there must be a bit of Buddhist in me). 

But then the other day I came across this great bird cage on the hard rubbish collection in our neighbourhood, and I thought – that would fit nicely in my outdoor retreat (aka to my family members as “The Cave”), and I could put rats in it! So I brought it home, cleaned it up, adapted it as necessary so that it would provide a sheltered environment for small rodents, and then rang the Pet Shop to see when their next little would be available. “End of October”, they said.

Yesterday then was the day of the arrival of the new family members. And here they are. The one with the dot on her head is “Dot”, and so the other one had to be “Smudge”. 

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Many and various are the expectations for the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops to be held in October 2014 on the theme “The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of the Evangelisation.” 

Most bishops understand that this is an opportunity for the Church to strengthen her pastoral support for families and marriages while upholding the Church’s countercultural witness to God’s plan. For instance, when the Synod was announced, Bishop Anthony Fisher tweeted “Great news @Pontifex calling synod on family. It should help us be faithful to the Lord’s teaching on marriage & deal with current issues.”

On the other hand, there were many commentators who immediately saw it as the indication that the Pope was going to change the Church’s teaching and practice regarding the communion for divorced and remarried Catholics (such as this article from The Times reprinted in the Australian). Some, such as those on the Pastoral Council of the Diocese of Freiburg, even jumped the gun by issuing new guidelines without the permission of their bishop, let alone the pope and the synod of bishops.

And then there are those in between. In this statement, Bishop Egan of Portsmouth in England outlines three hopes he has from the Synod: 

1) “a renewed appreciation of the demanding yet beautiful vision of marriage and family life that the Church presents us with”

2) “to find new ways of celebrating and supporting parents, married couples and Christian family life”, and

3) “that it will give renewed attention to the situation of those Catholics who find themselves in ‘irregular unions’, or are divorced and remarried.”

Does he mean by this “that it will change the Church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage”? That would be reading far too much into it. Rather, like Pope Francis and Pope Benedict before him, he asks: “Is there some way of affording them mercy, help and reconciliation?” He also wonders:

Along with this, I hope that some help will also be given to those non-Catholics who wish to be received into the Church but find themselves prevented by an irregularity in their own or their partner’s marital status.

I have some interest in this myself, of course. For almost three years my pathway into the Church was blocked by the fact that I was in an irregular union at the time of my conversion. But to cut a long story short, mercy, help and reconciliation was given to me and to my wife by means of the Tribunal of the Catholic Church. It was a long and thorough process, but in the end, God’s grace and mercy led me through. I received a lot of support from priests and friends within the Church which made the journey easier. 

Now, a few days ago, Archbishop Mueller, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published in L’Osservatore Romano a very good summary of the Church’s teaching with regard to divorce and remarriage, and the reasons why those who enter into illegitimate marriages cannot receive communion until their marriage has been regularised or they have been reconciled to the Church by the sacrament of penance. 

In this article, significantly entitled “The Power of Grace”, he explains the way in which the Church shows God’s mercy to those who are in irregular unions:

A further case for the admission of remarried divorcees to the sacraments is argued in terms of mercy. Given that Jesus himself showed solidarity with the suffering and poured out his merciful love upon them, mercy is said to be a distinctive quality of true discipleship. This is correct, but it misses the mark when adopted as an argument in the field of sacramental theology. The entire sacramental economy is a work of divine mercy and it cannot simply be swept aside by an appeal to the same. An objectively false appeal to mercy also runs the risk of trivializing the image of God, by implying that God cannot do other than forgive. The mystery of God includes not only his mercy but also his holiness and his justice. If one were to suppress these characteristics of God and refuse to take sin seriously, ultimately it would not even be possible to bring God’s mercy to man. Jesus encountered the adulteress with great compassion, but he said to her “Go and do not sin again” (Jn 8:11). God’s mercy does not dispense us from following his commandments or the rules of the Church. Rather it supplies us with the grace and strength needed to fulfil them, to pick ourselves up after a fall, and to live life in its fullness according to the image of our heavenly Father.

I would quibble with his choice of words “to pick ourselves up after a fall” – it is after all precisely the power of God’s grace which raises us up when we fall – but otherwise he makes a very important point in the passage I have highlighted in bold. There are ways of “showing mercy” which are ultimately not “merciful” because they subvert justice and truth. The miracle of the paschal mystery, the fruits of which are bestowed upon us by the “entire sacramental economy”, is that in Christ Jesus God’s justice and mercy have embraced and (paradoxically) worked in favour of his mercy without denying his justice. He cites the exemplary case of Jesus words to the woman caught in adultery: “Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Interestingly, along the way, Archbishop Mueller makes direct reference to the Greek Orthodox practice of regarding second or third marriages within the category of “oikonomia” – a practice that historically arose directly out of the fact the Patriarch of Constantinople was willing to grant for the Emperor what the Pope of Rome refused to the King of England.

All that being said, there are those who are now saying that by publishing his article, Archbishop Mueller, the Pope’s man in charge of the doctrine of the faith, is “subverting” Pope Francis’ own purported desire to change the Church’s teaching on these matters. 

Who is right on these matters? Well, we shall see. But it is important to note that, in restating the Church’s teaching on marriage and divorce and the reasons for the Church’s practice in this important pastoral area, Archbishop Mueller has done everyone a favour. If a way is to be found in which the Church becomes a more faithful steward of the mercies and mysteries of God, then that is greatly to be desired. But she cannot be an unfaithful steward in these matters and then excuse herself to her Lord by saying “I was only doing what you would have done.”

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There have been endless (and I do mean endless – they are still going on) articles published in both print and online regarding the interpretation of Pope Francis’s interviews. Among the most contentious statements he is reported to have made was the one in the Jesuit interview where he said: 

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible…. The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

That ended up getting reported everywhere as “Church must not obsess over abortion, gay marriage” etc. And from there the fight was on.

I wrote in a post on this blog that what I thought Pope Francis was saying was that in our proclamation of the Gospel, we should get back to the primary kerygma of the New Testament. I now feel entirely vindicated in that interpretation by a speech he made yesterday on the topic of the New Evangelisation. 

This short speech seems to me to sum up just about everything the Holy Father has been trying to say since day one of his pontificate. It also gives (I think) the interpretative key to his encyclical, which shows that I wasn’t that far off in my interpretation of it in the Inform pamphlet I wrote. Basically, in my introduction to Lumen Fidei, I suggested that the pattern of the life of faith in Francis’ view is 1) encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, 2) the journey of faith from that point toward the horizon, 3) the telos or arrival point of communion with the Holy Trinity. 

In this speech, he elaborates on part two of that schema – what we are doing after our encounter with Jesus Christ on our journey to communion with the Holy Trinity. He says:

Here we move to the second aspect: [after] the encounter [with Jesus], to go out to encounter others. The New Evangelization is a renewed movement towards him who has lost the faith and the profound meaning of life. This dynamism is part of the great mission of Christ to bring life to the world, the Father’s love to humanity. The Son of God “went out” of his divine condition and came to encounter us. The Church is within this movement; every Christian is called to go out to encounter others, to dialogue with those who do not think the way we do, with those who have another faith, or who don’t have faith. To encounter all because we all have in common our having been created in the image and likeness of God. We can go out to encounter everyone, without fear and without giving up our membership.

I really like that highlighted bit – I think I could make that the mission statement of my work in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. 

But, and this is now the important bit, he goes on to clarify in more precise terms what he was saying in those ramblng interviews. 

Chew on this:

In the Church all this, however, is not left to chance or improvisation. It calls for a common commitment to a pastoral plan that recalls the essential and that is well centered on the essential, namely on Jesus Christ. It is no use to be scattered in so many secondary or superfluous things, but to be concentrated on the fundamental reality, which is the encounter with Christ, with his mercy, with his love, and to love brothers as He loved us. A project animated by the creativity and imagination of the Holy Spirit, who drives us also to follow new ways, with courage and without becoming fossilized! We could ask ourselves: how effective is the pastoral [plan] of our dioceses and parishes? Does it render the essential visible? Do the different experiences, characteristics, walk together in the harmony that the Spirit gives? Or is our pastoral [paln] scattered, fragmentary where, in the end, each one goes his own way?

And so I am convinced that he is indeed talking about the primative kerygma of the Church: the simple proclamation of the name of Jesus Christ, of his suffering, death and resurrection for the salvation of the world, and of the coming Kingdom of God. This is what Pope Benedict was talking about in the first paragraph of Deus Caritas Est, when he wrote:

Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction. Saint John’s Gospel describes that event in these words: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should … have eternal life” (3:16).  

So the Kerygma, the Proclamation, is essential to evangelisation! BUT does that mean that we shut up about everything else in the Christian faith? No, of course not. But we recognise a sequence of activity: first the Kerygma of the Gospel that brings about that first encounter, that first spark of faith; then the journey of Catechesis (the Didache or Teaching) of the Faith, which includes all the dogmas and the moral teachings of the Church, which leads to a life led within a fuller horizon.

And so Pope Francis ends his speech with these words:

In this context I would like to stress the importance of catechesis, as an instance of evangelization. Pope Paul VI already did so in the encyclical Evangelii nuntiandi (cf. n. 44). From there the great catechetical movement has carried forward a renewal to surmount the break between the Gospel and the culture and illiteracy of our days in the matter of faith. I have recalled several times a fact that has struck me in my ministry: to meet children who cannot even do the Sign of the Cross! Precious is the service carried out by the catechists for the New Evangelization, and it is important that parents be the first catechists, the first educators of the faith in their own family with their witness and with the word.

 As we are wont to say on this blog: “Evangelisation and Catechesis – it isn’t rocket science”. Perhaps I could modify that a bit to be a little more precise, and say “Proclamation and Catechesis” because it is becoming clear to me that in Catholic theology, Evangelisation includes both the primary Kerygma and the follow up Didache. 

But aside from all that: here we should have no argument. The Pope knows what he is about. We have not evangelised people when all we have told them is “Believe in God and be a good person” (to quote Archbishop Porteous of Hobart). Evangelising our culture does not begin with insistence “on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods”. Nor is Evangelisation simply what people falsely attribute to St Francis, ie. “Preach always and if necessary use words”. As Pope Paul VI said in the aforementioned Evangelii Nuntiandi (22):

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.

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