The New Evangelization
The Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization was the first new office of the Roman Curia opened by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. It will give form to a vision of mission frequently proposed, as in this 1996 address of Pope John Paul in Germany:
The new evangelization is therefore the order of the day…. The task of evangelization involves moving toward each other and moving together as Christians, and it must begin from within; evangelization and unity, evangelization and ecumenism are indissolubly linked with each other…. Because the question of the new evangelization is very close to my heart as bishop of Rome I consider overcoming the divisions of Christianity ‘one of the pastoral priorities.’ (John Paul II, 1996: 3, 5)
This thorough integration of the ecumenical unity of Christians and the mission of the Catholic Church contrasts with Catholic and non-Catholic mission thinking before the Second Vatican Council, including participants in the 1910 Edinburgh World Mission Conference that this volume celebrates. How did the Catholic Church and its ecumenical partners move from mutual proselytism, competition and estrangement to a greater understanding and practice of mission, embodied in the vision of a new evangelization?
This short essay will recount 1) some salient points about the Edinburgh Conference, 2) the mission situation in the half century before the Council, 3) the shifts in missiology brought about by the Second Vatican Council and the modern ecumenical movement, and 4) the developments in relationships among Christians, ecumenical dialogues and the expanded interpretations of the magisterium in the half century since the Council.
The Edinburg Conference 1910
Many credit 1910 as beginning the modern ecumenical movement because of several decisions: 1) to be a church sponsored rather than a nondenominational gathering; 2) to refrain from targeting Latin America, Russia and several Middle Eastern countries as ‘mission territories’ because of Catholic and Orthodox churches there; 3) to promote relationships and
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ecumenical methodologies which became essential to the ecumenical movement, and 4) to propose institutional continuity (Stanley 2009; Rouse 1954: 353). High Church Anglican pressure insured the gathering’s ecclesial nature and the first two elements that presaged the ecclesial character of the twentieth century ecumenical movement. In spite of this Anglican desire to avoid theology, the interest of participants, including Bishop Charles Brent, led to the founding of the Faith and Order movement. The only Catholic engagement was a letter from a progressive Italian bishop and there was no Orthodox participation (Stanley 2009: 11- 12).
However, it is ironic that for this conference: 1) in the title of this third world conference the word ‘ecumenical’ was dropped because of its ambiguity, 2) the theological and church order discussion were excluded, so the Faith and Order movement began to emerge in another venue, but with many of the same actors, 3) almost immediately (1916) American Protestant missionaries dissented from the Edinburgh decision to exclude Catholic Latin America, and targeted missionary expansion there (Piedra 2002: 4) owing to the newness of the Pentecostal movement (1906) its participation was not considered, and 5) those Protestants uncomfortable with the ecclesial character and perceived liberalism of Edinburgh founded their alternative Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association in 1917 (Frizen 1992). The meeting occurred before the Fundamentalist-Modernist ruptures that so burden Protestant ecumenism. Both evangelical and ecumenical Protestant mission work in the twentieth century are rooted in Edinburgh (Walls 2002: 38).
Nevertheless, processes and relationships were set in motion that would lead to the founding of the Life and Work and Faith and Order movements which united in the World Council of Churches (1948), the entry of the Catholic Church into the modern ecumenical movement (1962-1965), and the integration of the International Missionary Council into the World Council of Churches (1961) (Fey 1986: 171).
Catholic Missions and Ecumenism: Before the Council
The mission thrust of the Catholic Church was disrupted by the French Revolution, the liberation of Rome from the papacy, and the First World War. Nevertheless, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed strong missionary initiative, revitalization of traditional orders like the Jesuits and Franciscans, and new focused missionary zeal in groups like the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Society of the Divine Word, Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers) and national foundations like Mill Hill, Missionaries of Paris, Maryknoll and the Paulists.
One of the ironies of early twentieth century was the influence on Catholic missiology of the successful Protestant missionary expansion of the previous century. Catholics believed their church to be the one true
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church, and therefore sought to bring not only non-Christians, but fellow Christians to the fullness of the truth. In doing so, a group like the Paulists, for example, adopted methods for American evangelism not only from their founder Isaac Hecker, but also from the culture so deeply rooted in American Protestant piety and zeal (Bosch 1993: 275, 290; Dries 1993: 252). In Germany in the nineteenth century, Catholics followed Protestant university initiatives in setting up chairs of missiology (Bosch 1991: 491; see Oborji’s chapter in this volume). Both Catholic and Protestant scholars note the importance of John R. Mott’s Student Volunteer Movement on the Catholic Student Mission Crusade (Dries 1998: 87; Latourette 1922: 442). The International Missionary Council followed Catholic missiological developments as closely as any of its Protestant member churches, with reports provided by Catholic missiologists as early as 1932 (Hublou 1932; Stransky 1966).
Latourette’s early report indicates the positive ecumenical perspective that a thoroughly Christ-centered missionary outlook provided: ‘One of the most interesting and possibly significant religious developments in the past few years is a marked awakening among Roman Catholics in the United States in foreign missions.’ (Latourette 1922: 439). In this he is thinking clearly of the Christian influence for the whole missionary family, and not merely Catholic or Protestant.
Also during this period, the Catholic Church claimed to mediate Christian salvation exclusively, and missionary movements were often devoted to making converts of fellow Christians as well as non-Christians, even if official documents made more careful distinctions. From its beginnings in 1622 the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith had the task of spreading the faith, protecting the faith among the Catholic diaspora, and dialogue to restore unity. The bull establishing the congregation acknowledged the church’s culpability in the divisions that marred the church’s mission: ‘In consequence of our sins … unity was lost and continues to be lost’ (Metzler 1985: 165). This congregation carried the responsibility for dialogue with other Christians until 1960.
There were those aware of the inevitable pluralism even in so-called ‘Catholic cultures’, and the need to collaborate in common witness, as one writer suggests in speaking of Latin America in 1931:
Whether it is desirable or not, these lands have ceased to protect officially any one faith and their citizens are determined to discuss all types of religion and philosophy. Under such conditions, I feel that Protestantism will appeal to some people who are no longer Catholic … If there was ever a time when any religious organization had a monopoly on any part of the world, it seems to me that such time has passed … But this does not mean that we are to act hostile toward each other, calling each other names, regarding each other as enemies. But rather, while maintaining our peculiar beliefs, to act brotherly, as far as our humanity will allow us, toward all who believe in God. (Dries 1989: 98).
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It would take the second Vatican Council and its Decree on Religious
Freedom (DH 1965) to make such sentiments central to the Catholic
understanding of mission. (Schreiter 1994: 113-25)
Another factor that laid the groundwork for an opening to a shared ecumenical vision in mission was common experiences in the world at mid- century. Like Protestant and Catholic relationships built in the foxholes and prisons of Europe during the Second World War, those struggling, often suffering, in mission fields or as minorities in distant places, developed common experiences and mutual support in the internment camps of China and other parts of Asia, as well as difficult situations in Africa.
The phenomenon of decolonization, though affecting different sections of the world in different ways, had a common impact on expatriate missionaries, on the perception of the Christian missionary project around the globe, and on the debates about how best to proceed as new levels of inculturation became possible (Neil 1966). In fact, in an amazingly few decades following the Council, the issues facing all mission communities, Catholic, historic and evangelical Protestant, and Orthodox began to look very similar, even when solutions varied: focus on God’s mission, partnership between younger churches and their churches of origin, justice, evangelical methods, inculturation, liberation, common witness, the mission of the whole people of God, inter-religious dialogue, and the theological basis of mission. (Scherer 1994: Bosch 1991: Thomas 1995; Dries 1989: 253).
The Ecumenical Mission Shift in the Council
The debates on Ad Gentes and its implementation and challenges are well documented in other essays in this volume (see also Bevans and Gros 2009). However, there were some decisions in the ecumenical realm needed to make common witness possible in the new evangelization.
First, a hard fought discussion on religious freedom was necessary to not only give credibility to the Catholic call for common Christian mission, but also to understand the very nature of gospel witness in a free society. Brazilian Cardinal Rossi articulated clearly the missionary and pedagogical transformation necessary in Latin America (Bevans and Gros 2009: 230). It is ironic to note that during the Council Cardinal Silva Henriquez was called in to the Holy Office to be reprimanded for considering Chile to be a missionary country (Bevans and Gros 2009: 169) in 1964. By 2007 the Conference of Latin American Bishops Conferences (CELAM) took as its theme ‘Disciples and Missionaries of Christ: the Way, Truth, and Life’. It was necessary for the Catholic Church to be a supporter of religious freedom for common ecumenical witness and renewal of mission in traditionally Catholic lands to be possible.
Second, some theological clarifications were necessary before a move could be made from the program to convert all to the Catholic Church, even
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fellow Christians to a vision of unity through ecumenical dialogue, and to common missionary witness and to living in the real communion we confess, even if yet imperfect.
The church had to recognize the ecclesial reality of other churches and ecclesial communities, if yet lacking some of what Catholics claimed necessary for the full visible unity of the church. This necessitated recognizing that the one, true church of Jesus Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, but is not totally identified with its structures in any time or place. Furthermore, it was necessary to recognize that some elements that Christ willed for the church are realized in communities separated from the Catholic Church in ways that can renew all Christians. This allows for sharing of gifts, learning from one another, and beginning the pilgrimage of dialogue that will discern together the shape of that unity for which Christ prayed in service to his mission in the world.
Thirdly, as the church turned away from conversion and ‘return’ in its approach to other Christians, it was critical to move away from the approach to the Eastern churches that implicitly denied them status as churches in the proper sense. In the centuries before the Council, Catholic missionary strategy toward the Eastern Orthodox was to either unite with parts of churches separated from their Orthodox patriarchates or to form churches with the liturgies, spiritualities and customs of the Orthodox churches of the region, but in union with Rome. This method of ‘uniatism’ had to be reviewed, and dialogue was to become the normal route toward restoring communion. The Council did not repudiate the Eastern churches already in union with Rome, but the approach for the future was to be dialogue not proselytism. In several cases, in the Middle East for example, this enabled Catholic religious orders to work for and with Orthodox churches in their mission and service with no intent to proselytize. This principle of dialogue and recognition as sister churches became especially important in discussing the Orthodox Catholic dialogue after 1989 and the relations that developed in Eastern Europe.
Collaboration is possible in respect and good faith, long before full ecclesiological agreement is achieved. Missiologists had been learning from one another for years. Even before the Council, levels of collaboration had begun in the rebuilding of Western Europe, for example among Catholics and Protestants in Britain (Rouse 1954: 688), and were approved on a limited and controlled scale by the Holy See in 1949 (Rouse 1954: 692). Already, in 1964 Cardinal Richard Cushing of Boston collaborated with Rev. Billy Graham the evangelist in his Boston crusade.
Ecumenical Developments Following the Council
Mission structures in Western Protestantism tended to follow the lines of voluntary association and independent churches, rivaling the mission boards of the churches of Europe and the United States. This development
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has some similarities to Catholic missionary orders (Motte 1981; Jenkinson and O’Sullivan 1991), mission societies, and new lay movements in the years after the Council (Gold 1992). International initiatives have given rise to other local discussions of common witness, for example in the United States (Lingas 1995). Mission societies like the American Society of Missiology (1973) and its journal Missiology are important venues for mutual interaction.
Early on following the Council there were discussions of Ad Gentes in Protestant circles (Gensichen 1967; Glasser 1985) The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (formerly Propagation of the Faith). (Metzler 1985) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (formerly Secretariat) have their appropriate roles (Duprey 1985: 29-40; Delaney 2001: 26-28l), and their collaborative mission as outlined in Ad Gentes (15, 29).
The World Council of Churches
The World Council of Churches is a primary venue for formal Catholic relations with the wider Christian community in mission. Since 1984 there has been a staff person appointed to and funded by the Holy See to the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. This has enabled coordination and dialogue from the inside (Delaney 2001: 27; Thomas 2010: 91-95). The Joint Working Group of the World Council and the Vatican has produced a series of important studies on proselytism, common witness and other themes that touch on the mission work of the churches together (Scherer and Bevans, ed. 1992: 18-26, Briggs 2004: 144-146).
There have been eleven mission conferences since Edinburgh, and since 1973 Catholics have been intimately involved (Motte 1995; Briggs 2004: 125-48). Catholic input and responses to these texts have been an important enrichment to the dialogue and to the quality of the final texts (Stransky 1980, 1981, 1990; Mutiso-Mbinda 1983; Fitzgerald 1991; Schreiter 2005; Cooney 1996). While these mission texts are important, one shrewd participant notes that ‘one of the most significant developments that has emerged from these gatherings is that of modeling new ways of participation’ (Motte 1987: 26).
Mission and the theological dialogue serving Christian unity (Faith and Order) are in different sections of the World Council. Therefore, internal dialogue is necessary from time to time. An example is the Faith and Order text, The Nature and Mission of the Church. Special Catholic mission perspectives have been offered in this process (Klein 2001; Sjada 2001) in addition to the general Catholic membership in Faith and Order.
Mission in the dialogues
One of the unexpected developments after the Council was a series of dialogues to develop with Western Christians absent from the ecumenical movement: conservative evangelical, Pentecostal, and even agencies of
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these evangelistic movements (Rusch, Gros and Meyer, eds. 2000: 373-85, 713-79). One of the important learnings from some of these dialogues, especially the Evangelical Roman Catholic Dialogue on Mission (Rusch Gros and Meyer, eds. 2000: 399-437) was that the focus on the goal of mission enabled discussion of sensitive theological issues from a whole new vantage point (Bevans 1995; Armstrong 2010).
Furthermore, when it came to discussing ecclesiology itself, evangelicals were able to understand Catholics and the biblical message of koinonia much more effectively from the eschatological perspective of common service to the kingdom (Best et al. 2007: 268-95). The Orthodox-Catholic 1993 text on uniatism and proselytism is an important reiteration of Catholic mission practice with the Orthodox, especially significant since the reopening of Eastern Europe to mission activity (Rusch Gros and Meyer, eds. 2000: 680-85). A number of other dialogues have also focused on mission (International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission 2007). Cardinal Walter Kasper is promoting the harvesting of the nearly fifty years of theological dialogue as part of the reception process (Kasper 2009). Other harvesting efforts have included the agreements on mission as well (Mulhal and Gros 2006: 212-43), and more needs to be done to make these agreements effective resources for mission education.
Ecumenical policy in Catholic evangelization
A)MISSION IN THE ECUMENICAL INITIATIVES OF THE MAGISTERIUM
Catholic ecumenism focuses on the theological agreements necessary to restore full communion, and therefore gives pride of place to dialogue on sacraments, soteriology and ecclesiology (Kasper 2009). However, the Council and subsequent directives are also clear that collaboration in mission is essential to Catholic ecumenism. Three texts of the 1990s are particularly important: the 1993 Directory for the Application of Principles
and Norms on Ecumenism (PCPCU), Pope John Paul’s twelfth encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995), and ‘The Ecumenical Dimension in the Formation of
Pastoral Workers’ (PCPCU 1998).
The Directory synthesizes the thirty years of ecumenical directives, in the context of the 1983 Code of Canon Law. It devotes a whole chapter to cooperation and common witness, including a focus on mission, building on twenty-five years of official teaching:
The common witness given by all forms of ecumenical cooperation is already missionary. The ecumenical movement has, in fact, gone hand in hand with a new discovery by many communities of the missionary nature of the Church. Ecumenical cooperation shows to the world that those who believe in Christ and live by his Spirit, being thus made children of God who is Father of all,
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can set about overcoming human divisions, even about such sensitive matters as religious faith and practice, with courage and hope. (PCPCU 1993: 205-9)
The text then goes on to outline suggested structures for common witness, and the variety of areas where ecumenical collaboration is encouraged: Bible and liturgical translation, prayer and study together, catechetics, social service and witness, education, inter-religious dialogue, environment, medicine, and media. In many places the Catholic Church is a member of national, regional and local councils of churches.
The Formation text outlines important dimensions that should be part of all seminaries and pastoral worker’s training: 1) interpretive principles, 2) the hierarchy of truths, and 3) the results of ecumenical dialogues to date, clarifying for prospective Catholic leaders the common faith we share, remaining differences and issues that need to be resolved. The document suggests that a course in ecumenism be provided early in training. This will be especially important for cross-cultural ministers as they move into a new ecumenical context with its unique history of relations among Christians. They will need to be helped to find opportunities for common witness and moving sensitively out of their isolation into ecumenical cooperation. The suggested curricula also are to include ‘the search for unity and the task of