APOSTOLIC LETTER
IN THE FORM "MOTU PROPRIO"
"UBICUMQUE ET SEMPER"
OF THE HOLY FATHER
BENEDICT XVI
Establishing the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New
Evangelization
It
is the duty of the Church to proclaim always and everywhere the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. He, the first and supreme evangelizer,
commanded the Apostles on the day of his Ascension to the
Father: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of
the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have
commanded you” (Mt 28:19-20). Faithful to this mandate, the
Church—a people chosen by God to declare his wonderful deeds
(cf. 1 Peter 2:9)—ever since she received the gift of the Holy
Spirit on the day of Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:14), has never tired
of making known to the whole world the beauty of the Gospel as
she preaches Jesus Christ, true God and true man, the same
“yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8), who, by his death
and Resurrection, brought us salvation and fulfilled the promise
made of old. Hence the mission of evangelization, a continuation
of the work desired by the Lord Jesus, is necessary for the
Church: it cannot be overlooked; it is an expression of her very
nature.
In
the course of history, this mission has taken on new forms and
employed new strategies according to different places,
situations, and historical periods. In our own time, it has been
particularly challenged by an abandonment of the faith—a
phenomenon progressively more manifest in societies and cultures
which for centuries seemed to be permeated by the Gospel. The
social changes we have witnessed in recent decades have a long
and complex history, and they have profoundly altered our way of
looking at the world. We need only think of the many advances in
science and technology, the expanding possibilities with regard
to life and individual freedom, the profound changes in the
economic sphere, and the mixing of races and cultures caused by
global-scale migration and an increasing interdependence of
peoples. All of this has not been without consequences on the
religious dimension of human life as well. If on the one hand
humanity has derived undeniable benefits from these changes, and
the Church has drawn from them further incentives for bearing
witness to the hope that is within her (cf. 1 Pt 3:15), on the
other hand there has been a troubling loss of the sense of the
sacred, which has even called into question foundations once
deemed unshakeable such as faith in a provident creator God, the
revelation of Jesus Christ as the one Saviour, and a common
understanding of basic human experiences: i.e., birth, death,
life in a family, and reference to a natural moral law.
Even
though some consider these things a kind of liberation, there
soon follows an awareness that an interior desert results
whenever the human being, wishing to be the sole architect of
his nature and destiny, finds himself deprived of that which is
the very foundation of all things.
The
Second Vatican Council already included among its central topics
the question of the relationship between the Church and the
modern world. In view of this conciliar teaching, my
Predecessors reflected further on the need to find adequate ways
to help the people of our time to hear the living and eternal
Word of the Lord.
With foresight, the Servant of God
Paul VI
noted that the task of evangelization, “as a result of the
frequent situations of dechristianization in our day, also
proves equally necessary for innumerable people who have been
baptized but who live quite outside Christian life, for simple
people who have a certain faith but an imperfect knowledge of
the foundations of that faith, for intellectuals who feel the
need to know Jesus Christ in a light different from the
instruction they received as children, and for many others”
(Apostolic Exhortation
Evangelii Nuntiandi,
n. 52). Moreover, having in mind those distant from the faith,
he added that the evangelizing action of the Church “must
constantly seek the proper means and language for presenting, or
representing, to them God’s revelation and faith in Jesus
Christ” (ibid., n. 56).
The Venerable Servant of God John Paul II
made this urgent task a central point of his far-reaching
Magisterial teaching, referring to it as the “new
evangelization,” which he systematically explored in depth on
numerous occasions—a task that still bears upon the Church
today, particularly in regions Christianized long ago. Although
this task directly concerns the Church’s way of relating ad
extra, it nevertheless presupposes first of all a constant
interior renewal, a continuous passing, so to speak, from
evangelized to evangelizing. It is enough to recall what was
affirmed in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Christifideles Laici:
“Whole countries and nations where religion and the Christian
life were formerly flourishing and capable of fostering a viable
and working community of faith, are now put to a hard test, and
in some cases, are even undergoing a radical transformation, as
a result of a constant spreading of an indifference to religion,
of secularism and atheism. This particularly concerns countries
and nations of the so-called First World, in which economic
well-being and consumerism, even if coexistent with a tragic
situation of poverty and misery, inspires and sustains a life
lived ‘as if God did not exist’. This indifference to religion
and the practice of religion devoid of true meaning in the face
of life's very serious problems, are not less worrying and
upsetting when compared with declared atheism. Sometimes the
Christian faith as well, while maintaining some of the externals
of its tradition and rituals, tends to be separated from those
moments of human existence which have the most significance,
such as, birth, suffering and death [...].
“On
the other hand, in other regions or nations many vital
traditions of piety and popular forms of Christian religion are
still conserved; but today this moral and spiritual patrimony
runs the risk of being dispersed under the impact of a
multiplicity of processes, including secularization and the
spread of sects. Only a re-evangelization can assure the growth
of a clear and deep faith, and serve to make these traditions a
force for authentic freedom.
“Without doubt a mending of the Christian fabric of society is
urgently needed in all parts of the world. But for this to come
about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric
of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries
and nations” (n. 34).
Making my own the concerns of my venerable Predecessors, I
consider it opportune to offer appropriate responses so that the
entire Church, allowing herself to be regenerated by the power
of the Holy Spirit, may present herself to the contemporary
world with a missionary impulse in order to promote the new
evangelization. Above all, this pertains to Churches of ancient
origin, which live in different situations and have different
needs, and therefore require different types of motivation for
evangelization: in certain territories, in fact, despite the
spread of secularization, Christian practice still thrives and
shows itself deeply rooted in the soul of entire populations; in
other regions, however, there is a clearly a distancing of
society from the faith in every respect, together with a weaker
ecclesial fabric, even if not without elements of liveliness
that the Spirit never fails to awaken; we also sadly know of
some areas that have almost completely abandoned the Christian
religion, where the light of the faith is entrusted to the
witness of small communities: these lands, which need a renewed
first proclamation of the Gospel, seem particularly resistant to
many aspects of the Christian message.
This
variety of situations demands careful discernment; to speak of a
“new evangelization” does not in fact mean that a single formula
should be developed that would hold the same for all
circumstances. And yet it is not difficult to see that what all
the Churches living in traditionally Christian territories need
is a renewed missionary impulse, an expression of a new,
generous openness to the gift of grace. Indeed we cannot forget
that the first task will always be to make ourselves docile to
the freely given action of the Spirit of the Risen One who
accompanies all who are heralds of the Gospel and opens the
hearts of those who listen. To proclaim fruitfully the Word of
the Gospel one is first asked to have a profound experience of
God.
As I stated in my first Encyclical
Deus Caritas Est:
“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” (n. 1).
Likewise, at the root of all evangelization lies not a human
plan of expansion, but rather the desire to share the
inestimable gift that God has wished to give us, making us
sharers in his own life.
Therefore, in the light of these reflections, having examined
everything carefully and having elicited the opinions of
experts, I establish and decree the following:
Art. 1.
§ 1. The Pontifical Council for Promoting
the New Evangelization is established as a Dicastery of the
Roman Curia in compliance with the Apostolic Constitution
Pastor Bonus.
§ 2.
The Council pursues its own ends both by encouraging reflection
on topics of the new evangelization, and by identifying and
promoting suitable ways and means to accomplish it.
Art. 2.
The
action of the Council, which is carried out in collaboration
with the other Dicasteries and Organisms of the Roman Curia,
with respect for their relative competencies, is at the service
of the particular Churches, especially in those territories of
Christian tradition where the phenomenon of secularization is
more obviously apparent.
Art. 3.
Among the specific tasks of the Council are particularly the
following:
1º. to examine in depth the theological and pastoral meaning
of the new evangelization;
2º. to promote and to foster, in close collaboration with
the Bishops’ Conferences concerned—which may establish ad
hoc organisms—the study, dissemination, and
implementation of the Papal Magisterium related to topics
connected with the new evangelization;
3º. to make known and to support initiatives linked to the
new evangelization that are already being put into practice
in various particular Churches, and to promote the
realization of new projects by actively involving the
resources present in Institutes of Consecrated Life and in
Societies of Apostolic Life, as well as in groups of the
faithful and in new communities;
4º. to study and to encourage the use of modern forms of
communication as instruments for the new evangelization;
5º. to promote the use of the Catechism of the Catholic
Church as an essential and complete formulation of the
content of the faith for the people of our time.
Art. 4.
§ 1. The Council is directed by an
Archbishop President, assisted by a Secretary, by an
Under-Secretary and by an appropriate number of Officials, in
accordance with the norms established by the Apostolic
Constitution
Pastor Bonus
and by the General Regulations
of the Roman Curia.
§ 2.
The Council will have its own Members and may avail itself of
its own Consultors.
I
order that all that has been established by this Motu Proprio
may have full and permanent value, notwithstanding anything to
the contrary, even if it be worthy of particular mention, and I
establish that it be promulgated through publication in the
daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano and that it come
into force on the day of its promulgation.
Given at Castel Gandolfo on the 21st day of September 2010, the
Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist, the sixth year
of my Pontificate.
BENEDICTUS PP. XVI
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Copyright 2010 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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