Culture and Evangelization

Culture and Evangelization | Russell Shaw

The hope borne by a new Catholic subculture comes with challenges

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Good news. Alongside the statistics of continuing Catholic decline in the United States, a new Catholic subculture is visibly emerging that raises hopes for the future of the Church in America. But there is a problem. Unless it is shaped by commitment to the new evangelization, this emerging subculture could be a caricature of Catholicism—a rigid throwback to the days of the immigrant Church.
 
All that obviously needs explaining, so let me explain.
 
Like Pope John Paul before him, Pope Benedict XVI has made “new evangelization” a high priority of his pontificate. Last year he created an office in the Roman Curia to promote the effort; next year “The New Evangelization for the Transmissin of the Christian Faith” will be the theme of a general assembly of the world Synod of Bishops. Recently, too, he proclaimed a Year of Faith, beginning during the Synod assembly and extending to November of 2013.
 
The new evangelization, Pope Benedict explains, is needed to deal with the situation existing where “nations once rich in faith and in vocations are losing their identity under the influence of a secularized culture” (Verbum Domini, 96). Plainly that applies to European countries like France, Germany, Spain, and Ireland where the light of faith has grown dim. But does anyone seriously imagine the Pope isn’t thinking also of places like Canada, Australia—and the United States? You can be certain he is.

Read the entire essay on www.CatholicWorldReport.com...

Comments

[Ed Peters]

Fine essay, of course. With one VERY unguarded remark: "Thomas Monaghan’s Ave Maria, Florida is a high-profile prototype of [the Catholic flight to semi-rural moral safety]." Good grief.

[Robert Miller]

The real question here is, as we used to say at Triumph 40 years ago: How do you create a 'Catholic tribe'?
The US never was a Catholic nation. So we have no resources of local tradition, like all of the European and Latin American countries have. The pre-1960s subculture of which Shaw writes was an amalgam of several European Catholic cultures that immigrants brought with them.
Archbishop Gomez' vision of a Catholic community finding its North American heritage in the works of the conquistadors and missionaries has the greatest promise, in my view, especially because the Church in the US is growing only on account of Latino immigration. This latter fact has enormous implications for the new evangelization in this country.
In the US, the new evangelization will create a "Catholic tribe" and "subculture" only if it makes the gathering-in of these immigrants -- spiritually, morally and materially -- its first priority.
Come to think of it, that's how the old subculture itself was created: Catholics in the US welcomed German, Irish, Polish and Italian Catholic immigrants, and gave them the spiritual, moral and material support they needed.

[Ed Peters]

RM, I didn't realize you were with Triumph. That facts adds to the respect (not always agreement, but certainly respect) with which I read your posts.

[Robert Miller]

Thanks, Ed. Coming from you, that's a very high compliment.
I was associated with Triumph from 1970-76 (first as assistant editor, later as associate editor). It was the privilege of a lifetime to work with the likes of L. Brent Bozell, Jr., Patricia Buckley Bozell, Frederick Wilhelmsen, E.Michael Lawrence, William H. Marshner, Gary Potter, John Wisner, Warren Carroll, Fathers Lorenzo Albacete, Mark Pilon and Sean (now Cardinal) O'Malley -- not to mention our recently deceased Emperor, Otto von Habsburg.
Thanks for the implied compliment to all of those wonderful Catholic lights as well.