2012 PLENARY ASSEMBLY
PROLUSIO OF THE CARDINAL PRESIDENT

 

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ECUMENISM FOR THE NEW EVANGELIZATION[1]

Cardinal Kurt Koch

 

“The challenge of the new evangelisation is a clarion call to the universal Church and demands of us that we continue with commitment our search for full Christian unity.”[2] With these words Pope Benedict XVI announced the establishment of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation during the first vespers of the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in 2010. The universal Church was summoned to action in a particularly impressive way during the XIII Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on “The New Evangelisation for the Transmission of the Christian Faith”. The requirement that the New Evangelisation must have an ecumenical dimension was called to mind during the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelisation, above all by the gratifying presence and interventions of the numerous Delegati fraterni. This issue now forms the major subject of the Plenaria of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. It is our task to reflect in a thoroughgoing manner upon the nexus between the mission of the New Evangelisation and the search for the unity of all those who believe in Christ and are baptised in his name.

 

1. New Evangelisation and Christian Unity

The interdependence of New Evangelisation and the search for Christian unity is fundamentally as old as Christianity itself, reaching back to the Last Supper, where Jesus, before his suffering and death, prayed for the unity of his disciples “so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21). With this final clause in the prayer of the Lord in his testament, John the Evangelist demonstrates that the unity of Jesus’ disciples is not an end in itself but stands in the service of the compelling proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ in today’s world, and represents the vital prerequisite for the credibility of the Christian message. The goal of the prayer for unity, as Pope Benedict XVI underlines in his interpretation of the High Priestly prayer of Jesus, consists in the fact that through the unity of the disciples the truth of his mission is rendered visible to mankind, and Jesus himself is legitimated: “It becomes clearly visible that he really is the Son.”[3]

a)  Ecumenical unity in the service of credible evangelisation

In view of the profound earnestness of Jesus’ testament it is not surprising that his intention, and together with it the interdependence of evangelisation and the ecumenical search for Christian unity, was fully apparent to the Second Vatican Council. Already in the first paragraph of its Decree on Ecumenism it proceeds from the foundation of all ecumenism, that Christ intended and instituted the “one and only” church. It then contrasts this confession with the empirical fact that a number of Christian communities claim before mankind to incorporate and represent “the true heritage of Jesus Christ”. Because this can lead to the erroneous impression that “Christ himself is divided”, the Decree on Ecumenism expresses the conviction that the existing discord contradicts the clear will of Christ and is a “stumbling-block to the world” and “inflicts damage on the most holy cause of proclaiming the good news to every creature”.[4] These clear words thus address the profoundly abnormal situation of divided Christianity. That Christians who believe in Jesus Christ as the Redeemer of the world, and have been baptised into his one body, continue to live in separated churches and ecclesial communities is the great stumbling-block that Christianity today offers to today’s world too, and which fully deserves to be termed a scandal. Ecclesial schisms are indeed to be identified as the division of that which is essentially indivisible, namely the unity of the body of Christ, and they damage the credibility of the proclamation of the gospel. Already in its first sentence therefore, the Decree on Ecumenism names as “one of the chief concerns of the Second Sacred Ecumenical Vatican Council” “promoting the restoration of unity among all Christians”. If we take to heart this clear vision of the Council, it should be abundantly clear that the New Evangelisation can only succeed if the original goal of the ecumenical movement is revitalised, that is, finding once more the visible unity of all Christians. The Christian witness must also, above all in the world of today, have an ecumenical key-note so that its melody resounds not as a cacophony but as a symphony.

This insight into the close interrelationship of evangelisation and ecumenical obligation was already present at the beginning of the ecumenical movement in the 20th century, which takes it crucial starting point from the first World Mission Conference in Edinburgh in Scotland in 1910, emerging in fact from a very vital “ecumenical prayer movement” of that time.[5] The missionaries assembled in Edinburgh were confronted by the scandal that the various Christian churches and ecclesial communities were competing against one another in their missionary endeavours, and were thus damaging the credible proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ on distant continents, as, together with the Christian gospel, they transmitted European church divisions into other cultures. But since an authentic witness to the work of salvation of Jesus Christ in the world is only possible if the churches can overcome their divisions in both the doctrine of the faith and in church life, in Edinburgh the Anglican Mission Bishop Charles Brent above all postulated intensive efforts towards overcoming those differences in doctrine and church order which were obstacles to their unity.

With this insight which can be called prophetic, that the divisions within Christianity represent the greatest hindrance for world mission, not only has the first World Mission Conference become the starting point of the modern ecumenical movement, but the missionary commission of the church has steadily gained in importance on the ecumenical agenda. Since Edinburgh, ecumenical commitment and missionary engagement are viewed in unison, and ecumenism and evangelisation are seen as it were as twin sisters who mutually challenge and foster one another, following an inherent logic. Since Christian mission means gathering humanity into the one all-embracing love of God as it appeared in Jesus Christ, it is intrinsically a “sign of unity”: “As sin scatters people apart from one another, faith gathers them together again into a new humanity”.[6] It is therefore to be valued as a beautiful ecumenical sign that in the anniversary year of the centenary of the Edinburgh World Mission Conference, Pope Benedict XVI established the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation, in the conviction that all churches living in traditionally Christian territories urgently need a renewed missionary impulse, as the “expression of a new, generous openness to the gift of grace”.[7]

b)  Secularisation as a failure of Christendom

The same insight into the indissoluble interdependence of evangelisation and ecumenical responsibility also emerges when we look back at history, more precisely, at the fact of division at the time of the Reformation. Joseph Lortz the Catholic church historian and ecumenist who has rendered great service in his historical research on the Reformation, above all in Germany,[8] reached this verdict already in 1950: “Because of this split, the power of the Christian message to attract has been decisively impaired.”[9] For Lortz it was perfectly clear that the Reformation was “not only a split” but “much more than that”, and still “essentially a split”.[10] Lortz was equally aware that splitting Christendom represents the opposite of what the Reformation originally intended: “The Reformation set out to reform the head and the members of the one Church that belongs to all Christians. That has not been achieved, what has happened instead was the rupture that split the church and Christendom apart. The central and essential mission of the Reformation has not been accomplished.”[11] And Lortz added the clear wish: “This fact must penetrate ever more deeply into the consciousness even of Protestant Christians”.[12] It is therefore gratifying to realise that this conviction is shared and kept alive today by the Protestant ecumenist Wolfhart Pannenberg: “The Reformation, in view of its failure in the 16th century and in view of the centuries of negligent acquiescence in the consequences of that failure, still remains unfinished. Finishing the Reformation however demands the restoration of Christian unity.”[13]

On the basis of this fundamental acknowledgement that the Reformation was originally intent upon a comprehensive renewal of the whole church and not the foundation of new churches, that nothing was further from its purposes than the “separation of evangelical particular churches from the one catholic church”, and that in consequence the development of specific Lutheran and Reformed churches means “not the success of the Reformation but its failure”[14], Wolfhart Pannenberg has repeatedly pointed out that modern secularization – or more precisely the emptying of the Christian faith of its mission for social peace in the sense of the constituting, maintenance and renewal of social order – is to be understood as an unwanted and unintended but tragic consequential effect of the splitting of the Western church in the 16th century. The emancipation of the modern cultural world, in the first instance from the controversies of the conflicted denominational churches among themselves and ultimately from Christianity itself, must be judged as the result and the ultimate point of arrival through exhaustion of the church schism and the subsequent bloody confessional wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially the Thirty Years War. Because, as its tragic consequence, Christianity from then on could only be grasped historically in the form of the various denominations which had fought against one another in bloody conflict. This historical constellation had the inevitable result that denominational peace had to be bought at a very high price for Christianity itself. Confessional differences, and then as a later consequence Christianity as a whole, were ignored in order to provide a new basis for social peace, as Pannenberg has rightly indicated. “That modern secularism expresses itself in alienation from Christianity is not a fate that has come upon the churches through outside factors. It is the consequence of their own sins against unity, the consequence of the church divisions of the 16th century and of the inconclusive religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries which left the inhabitants of territories embracing more than one denomination with no choice but to reconstruct their life on a common basis unaffected by sectarian differences.”[15]

As Christians in Europe it is not permissible for us to suppress from our historical memory the fact that the modern declaration of Christian faith as a purely private matter of the individual and its marginalisation out of the public social realm is tragically the fault of Christianity itself. It is therefore, as the Catholic theologian Johann B. Metz states, “virtually a ‘home-made’ privatisation of Christianity”.[16] This judgement implies in reverse that the pre-requisite for restoring the public mission of Christianity means overcoming the inherited divisions through a re-found Christian unity. In this sense, the 16th century Reformation has remained and must remain unfinished until unity in the spirit of the gospel is restored in a renewed catholic church. To the extent that the ecumenical movement involves the – belated – success of the Reformation itself, what is at stake for ecumenism in this New Evangelisation, not only with regard to the credibility of individual churches but also and above all with regard to the authenticity of Christianity as a whole in our modern societies, becomes unmistakeably clear. If the modern privatisation of religion is in fact grounded essentially in the failure of the Reformation, then Christianity in Europe will only be able to regain relevance for society as a whole when the failure of the Reformation has been overcome. The ecumenical process of overcoming church division can therefore not remain without consequences for the relationship of modern secular culture to the subject of religion as a whole and of Christianity in particular. The reasons that have, from a historical perspective, led modern culture to turn its back on religion and the Christian church can at least no longer remain in force in the face of a Christianity that has overcome its divisions.[17] Joseph Lortz had already rightly stressed that regaining “the power of the Christian message to attract” has, as its central precondition, “the union of the Christian denominations and, first of all, a preparation for such a union.”[18]

c) Evangelisation and ecumenism facing new challenges

Coming to terms with the details of this complex historical background to the nexus between evangelisation and ecumenism seems pertinent not only because we are approaching the commemoration of the Reformation 500 years ago, where we must speak not only of its blessings but also of its tragedy.[19] Rather, this historical remembrance leads instead to the insight that the ecumenical and missionary situations have changed substantially, and we are confronted once more with quite new challenges. Over recent decades Europe has become increasingly and more extensively mission territory, as Father Alfred Delp, who gave his life for his faith during the National-Socialist terror, expressed it already in the 1940s with the lapidary admonition: “We have become mission territory. This realisation must be acknowledged.” This missionary situation applies today to all churches and ecclesial communities, it lends a new urgency to ecumenical rapprochement and collaboration among all Christians, and must spur all Christians on to confront this new challenge with united strength.

That is made more difficult by the fact that the new missionary situation has effects reaching deep within the churches themselves. This is evident above all in the fact that the foundations of the faith, which were previously presupposed as a shared basis for ecumenism, have been brought into question, and new rifts have opened up above all in the sphere of ethics. As a consequence, the previous denominational differences have shifted to a large extent from the plane of dogma to questions of conduct and ethics. This involves above all the complex new questions of bio-ethics, the protection of human life from conception to natural death, and the fundamental significance of marriage and family and the responsible conduct of human sexuality. In this predominance of controversial ethical questions one must discern a fundamental change in the ecumenical situation. While the watchword of an eariler phase of the ecumenical movement was that “faith divides – action unites”, this has today been virtually turned upside down, so that faith unites and ethics primarily divides. But if the Christian churches and ecclesial communities cannot speak with one voice on the great ethical questions of our day, that hinders both Christian ecumenism and the credibility of the New Evangelisation, since it is precisely in the ethical questions that the joint witness of ecumenical Christianity is most urgently required. With regard to the vital nexus between New Evangelisation and ecumenism in particular, this represents without a doubt an elementary active demonstration of the credibility of Christianity today.

Not only the ecumenical but also the missionary situation has been subject to a fundamental ground-shift in recent decades. On the one hand the direction in which mission history has previously moved, principally from North to South and from West to East, has been substantially transformed. And on the other hand, the critical discernment of the historical link between missionary activity and colonisation has to a large extent provoked the conclusion that the missionary activity of the church has come to an end together with decolonisation. This false conclusion was contradicted by Pope John Paul II in the Encyclical Redemptoris missio on the continued validity of the missionary task of the church, with his conviction that we have by no means reached the end of mission but rather stand at the beginning of a new phase of Christian mission, and that the mission of evangelizing the world forms part of the intrinsic identity of the church.

This conviction – which was so fundamentally formative for the Second Vatican Council – has, with admirable consistency and continuity on the part of all Popes since the Council, been placed at the heart of church life and ecumenical responsibility, above all within the perspective of the New Evangelisation.[20] In his splendid 1975 Apostolic Letter Evangelii nuntiandi Pope Paul VI saw the most elementary definition of the identity of the church in its work of evangelisation: “To evangelize is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelise.”[21] Since Pope Paul VI diagnosed the real drama of humanity today as the profound breach between the Christian gospel and secular culture, he hoped for a healing of this breach from a new evangelising élan. In his long pontificate Pope John Paul urged a comprehensive New Evangelisation as the pastoral way of the church into the future, while stressing decisively that it did not involve a “re-evangelisation” but a New Evangelisation, with three new elements: “New in its zeal, in its methods and in its mode of expression”.[22] As his successor Pope Benedict XVI continues the work of a New Evangelisation in the conviction that the starting-point of every evangelisation is “not a human plan for expansion”, but on the contrary the “desire to share the inestimable gift that God has wished to give us, making us sharers in his own life”.[23]

This clear demonstration that Christian mission originates in the dynamic of love and is intended in the first instance as witness to the love of God which appeared in Christ, reveals the innermost kernel of the new evangelisation, which can of course only be actuated with the common effort of the whole ecumenical community. It is therefore the foremost need of the current ecumenical moment that Christian churches and ecclesial communities unite in reflecting anew on their missionary task.[24] That both concerns, mission and ecumenism, are inseparably bound up with one another, can also be deduced from the observation that on the one hand, wherever the missionary spirit threatens to falter, the original intense striving to regain Christian unity is also placed on the back-burner. And on the other hand, wherever the stumbling-block of continued church division is taken for granted or is no longer even perceived as a stumbling block, no special missionary endeavours are undertaken. In a positive sense this means that the New Evangelisation can only succeed if it is put into effect as an ecumenical responsibility. Only if Christians and churches collaborate with one another can they bear credible witness to the good news in today’s world. In the words of Cardinal Kasper, the crucial challenge today can be epitomised in the guideline: “A missionary church must also be an ecumenical church; an ecumenically engaged church is the prerequisite for a missionary church.”[25]

 

2. Credible ways of ecumenical New Evangelisation

Just as the first evangelisation, which took place in cultures that had until then had no contact with Christianity, was able to proceed in a situation where Christians did not yet live in divided churches, in the same way the New Evangelisation can only be realised credibly in an ecumenical dimension. The ecumenical movement today therefore must place itself at the service of the New Evangelisation. In order for this to be achieved in a credible manner, the next step is to ask more precisely what conditions must be taken into account. The first basic condition no doubt consists in the fact that the missionary dynamic can only take root when it arises from joy in the gospel, when Christians are convinced that with the gospel of Jesus Christ they have been entrusted with such a great gift that they cannot keep it for themselves. On the other hand, they may not impose it on others, they can only pass the gift on and invite others to accept it. New Evangelisation can only take place when the heart of Christians, filled with the joy of faith, touches the hearts of others; and when their reason too speaks to the reason of others. This is a process of freedom, or more precisely the invitation to others to commence communication and enter into a vital dialogue, as Pope Benedict XVI defined the basic mission of the church: “We impose our faith on no-one. Such proselytism is contrary to Christianity. Faith can only develop in freedom. But we do appeal to the freedom of men and women to open their hearts to God, to seek him, to hear his voice”.[26]

a) Evangelisation without proselytism

The keyword ‘proselytism’ addresses a problem that is of fundamental significance with regard to ecumenism, to which we must devote closer attention in order to arrive at the ecumenical consensus necessary for the New Evangelisation. The word proselytism of course bears within it the difficulty that it can be used in varying senses.[27] In a positive or at least neutral connotation the word can define all endeavours of a religious community to gain new members. In ecumenical discussion of course the negative connotation of the word predominates, which is understood as all endeavours of a religious community to gain new members at any price and with the application of all methods which may in some way be effective, acting according to the morally decadent principle that the end justifies the means. This negative connotation has become dominant in the ecumenical movement since the study document adopted by the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in New Delhi in 1961, which states: “Proselytism is not something totally distinct from authentic witness: it is the corruption of witness. Witness is distorted when – subtly or openly – cajolery, bribery, undue pressure or intimidation are applied in order to achieve a seeming conversion”[28].

The Second Vatican Council in its Declaration on Freedom of Religion rejected every form of proselytism, when for example it emphasised that “in spreading religious faith and in introducing religious practices everyone ought at all times refrain from any manner of action which might seem to carry a hint of coercion or of a kind of persuasion that would be dishonourable or unworthy especially when dealing with poor or uneducated people”[29].

This raises the difficult question of how the principle of religious freedom and its concomitant rejection of proselytism can be reconciled with the evangelising mission of the church. In this regard the history of the drafting of the conciliar Declaration on Religious Freedom provides a helpful pointer.[30]

In the draft of the Declaration on the Freedom of Religion which was presented to the Central Committee during the lead-up the Council in 1962, the key-word “proselytism” was still used expressly: “vitatis omnibus apertis vel consortis improbi proselytismi molimentis seu mediis improbiis vel inhonestis“. But that word was not retained because it seemed as though this passage was directed exclusively at Catholic missionaries. The Council wished thereby to prevent another misunderstanding: that with its Declaration on the Freedom of Religion the Second Vatican Council had heralded the end of the mission activity of the Church. That this was in no way the case is unmistakeably demonstrated in Article 14 of Dignitatis humanae: “The Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that truth which is Christ himself, and also to declare and confirm by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself”. The Declaration on Religious Freedom does not in any way express an obligation to renounce missionary witness to the truth of the faith, but it expresses an obligation to renounce all those means which are not consonant with the good news of Jesus Christ, and instead to apply solely the means of the gospel itself, which consist in the proclamation of the word and the testimony of life, even to the extent of martyrdom. Or to use the precise words of Cardinal Johannes Willebrands: The conciliar Declaration on Religious Freedom “contributes to an intensification of missionary work in that it causes it to become more true and more pure”[31].

This is even more relevant for the New Evangelisation which is to be realised in a context that is totally shaped by mankind’s longing for freedom.

b) Evangelisation and interreligious dialogue

The evangelizing task of the Church and the principle of religious freedom – which the Second Vatican Council deliberately grounded in the “dignity of the human person” as an expression of its relevance to every individual in his religious conduct – reciprocally challenge and foster one another. Therefore it is precisely in the ecumenical context that the question arises in its most acute form, whether the conviction of the absolute truth of Christian faith, which is the starting point of every evangelisation in so far as it is indissolubly bound up with the universality of the person of Jesus Christ and his message, is in fact capable of dialogue, or whether Christian mission should be replaced by interreligious dialogue.[32]

For the New Evangelisation to be conducted in a credible manner, it must proceed on the basis that the universality of Christian faith cannot by any means imply an absolute claim of a material truth located in the sphere of human cognition alone, which we have at our disposal and which we can assert against other religions. It is instead the opposite of marginalisation and polarisation, self-assertion and intolerance. The universality of the truth to which the Christian faith testifies is the person of Jesus Christ, who says of himself : “I am the truth.” This truth is however pure, universal, all-inclusive, non-exclusive, personal love which has appeared in Jesus Christ, as Pope John Paul demonstrated in his Encyclical Redemptoris missio: “The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be concretely available to all.”[33]

Even in the current concert of religions, the Christian faith today cannot on principle renounce the confession of the universality of the truth of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ if it does not wish also to renounce itself and its service to humanity. The service Christianity renders to society and which cannot be delegated, consists in pointing to Christ and the radical and universal love of God revealed in him. Christians who confess this love of God experienced in the person of Jesus Christ bear witness constantly to this love, but in earthly and often enough in frail forms which fall far behind this love. It therefore forms an elementary part of the Christian faith to admit and confess that we are professing something which does not lie under our power, and which we can ultimately only testify to in a pithy manner by pointing away from ourselves and towards Christ and the radical and universal love revealed in him, as John the Baptist did. Only in the basic stance of John the Baptist pointing towards the coming Lord is it possible to represent credibly even today the specific claim of the Christian faith to universal truth. And only with this basic stance is Christian evangelisation, which does not consider conviction and tolerance as opposites but as equally important, able to do justice to the challenge confronting the task of New Evangelisation in the multi-religious life situation of mankind today.

 

3. The core content of the New Evangelisation

This claim by the Christian faith must be presented jointly by the Christian churches and ecclesial communities in today’s world, and therefore the new evangelisation must demonstrate an ecumenical dimension. This dimension commands our attention above all when we take a further step and ask after the direction of the New Evangelisation and its primary content. The New Evangelisation will at heart consist in leading people in our current secularised society to the mystery of God, and introducing them into a personal relationship with God, in the conviction that one cannot give another person enough if one does not give him God. The heart of all ecumenical endeavours for the New Evangelisation must be the question of God.[34] Therein consists the fundamentally simple secret of the grand word “New Evangelisation” which describes the fundamental mission of Christianity, which we must realise, according to Pope Benedict XVI, in ecumenical community. In the centrality of the question of God he discerns the great common challenge to ecumenism, as he stated in the ecumenical service on the occasion of his meeting with representatives of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) in Erfurt in autumn 2011, commenting on the special significance of the passionate search for God in the life and work of the Reformer Martin Luther: “Man was created to have a relationship with God: we need him. Our primary ecumenical service at this hour must be to bear common witness to the presence of the living God and in this way to give the world the answer which it needs.” [35] With these brief and profound words, the central core of the pastoral program of the New Evangelisation is described: the following suggestions outline it in somewhat more concrete detail.

a) Re-awakening the awareness of God in society

When we look into contemporary society, we must without doubt conclude that the question of God is knocking energetically at ecumenical church doors,[36] even if that may in the first instance seem to be counter-factual. Our age is not characterised by an intensive search for God but rather by being oblivious of God and deaf towards him. The awareness of the presence of God in the world has become weakened in the public sphere above all, as is shown by the broken or at least unclarified relationship of contemporary society to the phenomenon of religion as a whole. One can identify strong tendencies towards considering religion a socially irrelevant or perhaps even troublesome factor and to be pushed towards the margins of social life. These tendencies find forcible expression for example in the fact that in the preamble to the Reform Treaty of the European Union, any reference to God as well as any acknowledgement or mention of Europe’s Christian heritage had to be omitted. Even the initial discussion on the so-called Charter of the European Union brought to light the fact that any public mention of God in Europe, where 80% of the population have after all been baptised as Christians, can no longer obtain a majority. That makes it very clear that Europe has for some time been in the process of a unique and difficult historical experiment whose outcome no-one can predict. Europe’s attempt to construct societies or a community of states which on principle reject a religious foundation, represents such an innovation in the history of culture that one is compelled to conclude that Europe is the only truly secularised continent.[37] On the other hand the question arises with increasing urgency, whether this modern secularism has really led to a secular society, or whether this secularism itself is not constantly in danger of falling prey to mysterious and uncanny new twilights of the gods, which can appear in personal, social and political life whenever earthly and worldly realities are put in the place of God and thereby deified. A glance at history shows that the worst of atrocities have always occurred when earthly realities such as blood and soil, nation and party doctrine take the place of God and are therefore idolised in a terrible way. It must always give us pause for thought that the most terrible mass murders have been perpetrated in the period of so-called enlightened European modernity in the name of anti-Christian and neo-pagan ideologies like National Socialism and Stalinism.[38] The twentieth century has more than confirmed the base formula of Christian faith, that humanity which is not grounded in divinity degenerates all too quickly into bestiality.

In view of these terrible experiences, Christian ecumenism is obligated to unceasingly foster the awareness that the vital defence against such threatening idolisation presupposes public reference to God, and an awareness of the responsibility of all before God in personal, social and political life, as Pope Benedict XVI has rightly called to mind: “Without a transcendent foundation, without a reference to God the Creator, without an appreciation of our eternal destiny we risk falling prey to harmful ideologies.”[39]

The focus of the ecumenical obligation of the new evangelisation must therefore be the testimony to the centrality of the question of God. With regard to the God–crisis unequivocally discernible in our society, ecumenical Christianity is challenged to spell out anew the most elementary lesson of Christian faith, that Christianity in its innermost core is faith in God and the life of a personal relationship with God, and that all else follows from that.

b) Proclaiming the God with a human face

In view of his great challenge, the path of a New Evangelisation must be directed primarily towards “bearing witness to God in a world which has difficulty finding him”.[40] For us Christians however God is neither a God remote from this world nor a philosophical hypothesis on the origin of the cosmos, but a God who has shown us his face and spoken to us and become human in Jesus Christ. In the New Evangelisation therefore the witness to Jesus Christ who is true man and true God must be central. Such a revitalisation of Christocentric proclamation imposes itself also because the crisis of faith in which we find ourselves today is most profoundly a crisis of the biblical and ecclesial belief in Christ. It has become apparent above all that not a few people, even Christians, are deeply moved by all the human dimensions of Jesus of Nazareth, but have difficulty professing faith in this Jesus as the only begotten son of God who is present among us as the Resurrected One. To that extent they have difficulty confessing the creed of the church. Even within the church and within ecumenism, we often no longer succeed in discerning in the human Jesus the face of the Son of God, and not simply an outstanding and particularly good human being. Looking realistically at Christianity today, one discovers a great and disquieting loss of meaning of the Christian faith in Jesus as the Christ in whom God himself became man.

But the Christian faith stands or falls with this creed. If Jesus was simply a human being of 2000 years ago, as many assume today, then he would have returned irretrievably to the past, and only the effort of our memories could bring him into the present more or less clearly. Only if the Christian belief that God himself became man is true, and Jesus Christ is true man and true God and therefore participates in the presence of God which encompasses all time, can he be our true contemporary not only yesterday but also today. Then we can not only confess with joy that he is “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6) but also have every reason to tell other people about Jesus Christ so that they come to know him with enthusiasm. For the New Evangelisation in an ecumenical perspective above all, this results in that priority which Cardinal Walter Kasper defined as “Christological concentration”[41] and which is also the core concern of Pope Benedict XVI, as he recently expressed it: “Mission is not an external appendage to the faith but rather the dynamism of faith itself. Those who have seen, who have encountered Jesus, must go to their friends and tell them, ‘We have found him, he is Jesus, the One who was crucified for us’ ”.[42]

c) Sheltering human dignity in the mystery of God

The centrality of the question of God and christocentric proclamation are the elementary perspectives of the New Evangelisation, also and especially from an ecumenical viewpoint. Christian faith is convinced that the revitalisation of these two perspectives is of benefit to human dignity and human life. This connection is already evident in the fact that the radical crisis regarding God which has befallen our societies will bring in its train with the same inherent logic an equally dangerous crisis of mankind: the “death of mankind” threatens to follow closely in the footsteps of the “death of God”, proclaimed in Europe by Friedrich Nietzsche. For wherever God is banished from the life of society, there is a serious risk that the dignity of mankind will be trodden underfoot. The silencing of God in the public sphere cannot in any way be of service to mankind, for if according to biblical conviction man is the inviolable image of God, the evaporation or suppression of the awareness of God in contemporary society dangerously corrodes the dignity of human life.

The symptoms of this danger are all too palpable in our society today. Both at the end and at the beginning of human life we are witnessing a drastic breakdown of respect for life, which is directly connected to the suppression of the awareness of God in the public sphere. The clearest symptom of the endangerment of mankind can without doubt be seen in the imbalance between the moral and legal protection of human life. The protection of things is clearly more substantially regulated than the protection of human life in its various phases and manifold diversity. Cars, for example, are better protected than the unborn and the dying, so one has to agree with the verdict of the Viennese pastoral theologian Paul M. Zulehner when he suggests that in today’s society one should have the good fortune to “come into the world as a car”.[43]

In view of this great ethical challenge, and above all in the face of the anthropological revolution implicit in the rapid developments in bio-medical research, the pastoral program of the New Evangelisation in the ecumenical community must consist in proclaiming the living God, to bring home to people the mystery of God as a sheltering refuge, and – whether it is opportune or not – to stand up for the divine right of the human being to life, from conception to natural death. The New Evangelisation finds its meaning above all in awakening joy in the greatness of mankind through the proclamation of the living God, and thereby regaining the vision of the beauty of Christian faith.

 

4. The ecumenism of the martyrs as the innermost core of the New Evangelisation

Thus it immediately becomes clear that witness is the vital category of the New Evangelisation, according to the sensitive perception of Pope Paul VI that mankind today does not need teachers so much as witnesses, and teachers only to the extent that they are perceived in the first instance as witnesses. Ecumenical Christianity can with gratitude call to mind that the most trustworthy witnesses and the most convincing exegetes of the gospel are the martyrs who have given their lives for the faith.[44] For the New Evangelisation today they can be helpful guides for us, especially since Christianity at the end of the second and at the beginning of the third millennium has once more become a church of martyrs.[45] In today’s world, 80% of those who are persecuted for their faith are Christians: the Christian faith is thus the most persecuted religion.

This shocking balance sheet presents ecumenical Christianity with a great challenge to offer empathetic solidarity in suffering. Since today all Christian churches and ecclesial communities have their martyrs, one must speak of an ecumenism of martyrs. In the midst of the tragedy this also contains a beautiful promise. In spite of the drama of Church schisms, the steadfast witnesses to the faith in all Christian churches and ecclesial communities have shown how at a deeper level God himself upholds the communion of the faithful, who – by sacrificing their lives – fulfil the ultimate demand of witness to their faith. While we Christians here on earth still stand in an imperfect communion with one another, the martyrs in heavenly glory already live in full and perfect communion. The martyrs are therefore, as Pope John Paul II stated so vividly, the “proof that in the total offering of oneself for the cause of the gospel every element of division can be overcome”.[46]

The ecumenism of the martyrs in our latitudes has proven itself above all in the National Socialist and Communist concentration camps, where courageous Christians from different churches encountered one another and understood that they were “united against a godless, inhuman, totalitarian Nazi or Communist injustice system”.[47] This ecumenism of the martyrs confirmed and still confirms anew today the conviction of the Church father Tertullian, that the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians. Today too as Christians we may live in the same hope that the blood of the martyrs of our time will one day prove to be the seed of the full unity of the body of Christ. The ecumenism of martyrs therefore forms the innermost core of the New Evangelisation, since a glance at history reveals that the most compelling protagonists of reform and renewal of the Church were always saints led by the light of the gospel. Therefore they are the real protagonists of the New Evangelisation also today.

The ecumenism of the martyrs reveals that, on the one hand, the service of restoring Christian unity demands the utmost human fortitude, while on the other hand that unity can never be the work of man, but can only be received as a gift of God. But it is up to us to be open to this gift and to pray for it with that great confidence and challenge that Pope John Paul II expressed with a prophetic sign in the Jubilee Year 2000 by opening the doors of the basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls together with the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. By interpreting this prophetic gesture in the sense that he wanted to open the doors into the new millennium not just with two but with six hands, he gave expression to his deepest ecumenical hope, that following the first millennium in the history of Christianity, the age of the undivided church, and the second millennium which led to deep divisions in both East and West, the third millennium has to accomplish the great task of restoring the lost unity of Christianity. When we become aware that this task can only be realised if all Christian churches and ecclesial communities orientate themselves in a new way to the gospel of Jesus Christ, then it must be self-evident that we can only fulfil the challenge of the New Evangelisation with our united efforts, and therefore with ecumenical responsibility.

 

 

ENDNOTES

[1] Prolusio at the General Assembly of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome on 12 November 2012.

[2] Benedetto XVI, La Chiesa è un’immensa forza rinnovatrice. La celebrazione dei primi vespri della solennità dei Santi Pietro e Paolo il 28 giugno 2010, in: Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI  VI, 1 2010 (Città del Vaticano 2011) 984–987, cit. 987.

[3] J. Ratzinger – Benedict XVI., Jesus von Nazareth. Zweiter Teil: Vom Einzug in Jerusalem bis zur Auferstehung (Freiburg i. Br. 2011) 113–114.

[4] Unitatis redintegratio, No. 1.

[5] W. Cardinal Kasper, Katholische Kirche. Wesen – Wirklichkeit – Sendung (Freiburg i. Br. 2011) 427.

[6] J. Ratzinger, Considerationes quoad fundamentum theologicum missionis ecclesiae / Überlegungen zur theologischen Grundlage der Sendung (Mission) der Kirche, in: R. Vorderholzer / Ch. Schaller / F.–X. Heibl (Hrsg.), Mitteilungen Institut Papst Benedikt XVI. Band 4 (Regensburg 2011) 15–22, cit. 16.

[7] Benedict XVI, Motu proprio, Ubicumque et semper.

[8] See J. Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland (Freiburg i. Br. 1962).

[9] J. Lortz, Wie kam es zur Reformation? (Einsiedeln 1950) 10; in English, How the Reformation came, 18. Behind this verdict stands Lortz’s conviction that Europe on the one hand is deeply rooted in Christianity, in the precise sense that the peoples of the European continent were only fused into a cultural unit through Christianity, but that on the other hand Europe is alienated from Christianity to a threatening extent. With the alert eyes of an historian, Lortz already then expressed his diagnosis of the age in the words: “The so–called Christian West has been de–Christianised for a long time. It would be more to the point to call it the apostasized West. Reliable statistics from all countries support this shocking truth – only most of the time we do not see reality soberly enough.” Among all the factors that have led to this de–Christianisation of Europe, no single cause is, according to Lortz, “as important as the Reformation”, or more precisely, the “split in Christendom opened by the Reformation” (18).

[10] Ibid. 18.

[11] Ibid. 18.

[12] Ibid. 19.

[13] W. Pannenberg, Über Lortz hinaus?, in: R. Decot und R. Vinke (Hrsg.), Zum Gedenken an Joseph Lortz (1887–1975). Beiträge zur Reformationsgeschichte und Ökumene (Stuttgart 1989) 93–105, cit. 94.

[14] W. Pannenberg, Reformation und Einheit der Kirche, in: Pannenberg, Ethik und Ekklesiologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Göttingen 1977) 254–267, cit. 255; English in The Reformation and the unity of the church in Pannenberg, The Church, Philadelphia 1983, 24–5.

[15] W. Pannenberg, Einheit der Kirche als Glaubenswirklichkeit und als ökumenisches Ziel, in: Pannenberg, Ethik und Ekklesiologie. Gesammelte Aufsätze (Göttingen 1977) 200–210, cit. 201; English in The unity of the church, in The Church. On this whole question cf. Pannenberg, Christentum in einer säkularisierten Welt (Freiburg i. Br. 1988).

[16] J. B. Metz, Glaube in Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Mainz 1977) 31.

[17] Cf. K. Koch, Hat das Christentum noch Zukunft? Zur Präsenz der Kirche in den säkularisierten Gesellschaften Europas, in: Communio. Internationale katholische Zeitschrift 32 (2003) 116–136; Ders., Brauchen wir ein öffentliches Christentum?, in: M. Delgado / A. Jödicke / G. Vergauwen (Hrsg.), Religion und Öffentlichkeit. Probleme und Perspektiven (Stuttgart 2009) 99–118.

[18] J. Lortz, Wie kam es zur Reformation? (Einsiedeln 1950) 10; How the Reformation came, 10.

[19] Cf. K. Koch, Tragik oder Befreiung der Reformation? Unzeitgemässe Überlegungen aus ökumenischer Sicht, in: Stimmen der Zeit 210 (1992) 234–246.

[20] Pontificio Consiglio per la promozione della nuova evangelizzazione (ed.), Enchiridion della nuova evangelizazzione. Testi del Magistero pontificio e conciliare 1939–2012 (Città del Vaticano 2012).

[21] Paul VI, Evangelii nuntiandi, No. 14.

[22] Homilies and addresses of Pope John Paul II during his Apostolic Journey to Central America from 2–10 March 1983 = Verlautbarungen des Apostolischen Stuhls 46 (Bonn o. J.) 120.

[23] Benedict XVI, Motu proprio, Ubicumque et semper.

[24] Cf. K. Koch, Mission oder De–Mission der Kirche? Herausforderungen an eine notwendige Neuevangelisierung, in: G. Augustin / K. Krämer (Hrsg.), Mission als Herausforderung. Impulse zur Neuevangelisierung (Freiburg i. Br. 2011) 41–79.

[25] W. Kasper, Eine missionarische Kirche ist ökumenisch, in: Ders., Wege zur Einheit der Christen = Gesammelte Schriften. Band 14 (Freiburg i. Br. 2012) 621–634, cit. 623.

[26] Benedetto XVI, La “vendetta“ di Dio è la croce. Il “no” alla violenza. La solenne concelebrazione eucaristica sulla spianata della “Neue Messe” in München il 10 settembre 2006, in: Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI  II, 2 2006 (Città del Vaticano 2007) 230–235, zit. 234.

[27] Cf. S. Ferrari, Proselytism and human rights, in: J. Witte, Jr. and F. S. Alexander (Ed.), Christianity and Human Rights. An Introduction (Cambridge 2010) 253–266.

[28] F. Lüpsen (Ed.), Neu Delhi–Dokumente (Witten 1962)) 104–106. Ecumenical Review 13/1 October 1960, 79–89.

[29] Dignitatis humanae, No. 4.

[30] Cf. J. Hamer und Y. Congar (Hrsg.), Die Konzilserklärung über die Religionsfreiheit (Paderborn 1967).

[31] J. Cardinal Willebrands, Religionsfreiheit und Ökumenismus, in: Ders., Mandatum Unitatis. Beiträge zur Ökumene (Paderborn 1989) 54–69, cit. 63.

[32] Cf. K. Koch, Glaubensüberzeugung und Toleranz. Interreligiöser Dialog in christlicher Sicht, in: Zeitschrift für Missions– und Religionswissenschaft 92 (2008) 196–210.

[33] John Paul II, Redemptoris missio, No. 10.

[34] Cf. Cardinal W. Kasper, Ökumenisch von Gott sprechen? in: I. U. Dalferth / J. Fischer / H.–P. Grosshans (Hrsg.), Denkwürdiges Geheimnis. Beiträge zur Gotteslehre. Festschrift für Eberhard Jüngel zum 70. Geburtstag (Tübingen 2004) 291–302.

[35] Benedict XVI., Ökumenischer Gottesdienst im Augustinuskloster Erfurt am 23. September 2011.

[36] Cf. K. Koch, Die Gottesfrage klopft an die ökumenische Türe, in: Catholica 54 (2000) 1–13.

[37] Cf. W. Kasper, Ökumene und die Einheit Europas, in: Ders., Wege zur Einheit der Christen = Gesammelte Schriften. Band 14 (Freiburg i. Br. 2012) 665–684.

[38] Cf. A. Besancon, Le malheur du siècle. Sur le communisme, le nazisme et l’unicité de la Shoah (Paris 1998).

[39] Benedetto XVI, In piena sintonia con la Sede Apostolica. Ai partecipanti all’assemblea generale della Caritas Internationalis il 27 maggio 2011, in: Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI  VII, 1 2011 (Città del Vaticano 2012) 722–725.

[40] Benedetto XVI, La goia del servire. Intervista televisiva in occasione del viaggio apostolico in Germania, in: Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI  II, 2 2006 (Città del Vaticano 2007) 88–102, cit. 92.

[41] W. Kasper, Neue Evangelisierung als theologische, pastorale und geistliche Herausforderung, in: Ders., Das Evangelium Jesu Christi = Gesammelte Schriften. Band 5 (Freiburg i. Br. 2009) 243–317, zit. 293.

[42] Benedetto XVI, “In Cristo Dio si è mostrato come ragione e amore”. La “lectio divina” durante la visita al Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore, in: Insegnamenti di Benedetto XVI  VI, 1 2010 (Città del Vaticano 2011) 208–216, cit. 214.

[43] P. M. Zulehner, Ein Obdach der Seele. Geistliche Übungen – nicht nur für fromme Zeitgenossen (Düsseldorf 1994) 54.

[44] Cf. H. Moll, Martyrium und Wahrheit. Zeugen Christi im 20. Jahrhundert (Weilheim–Bierbronnen 2009); P.–W. Scheele, Zum Zeugnis berufen. Theologie des Martyriums (Würzburg 2008).

[45] Cf. R. Backes, „Sie werden euch hassen“. Christenverfolgung heute (Augsburg 2005); R. Guitton, Cristianofobia. La nuova persecuzione (Torino 2010); Kirche in Not (Hrsg.), Religionsfreiheit weltweit. Bericht 2008 (Königstein 2008).

[46] John Paul II, Ut unum sint, No. 1.

[47] W. Cardinal Kasper, Katholische Kirche. Wesen – Wirklichkeit – Sendung (Freiburg i. Br. 2011) 428.