The great English writer, G.K. Chesterton, once wrote: “Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision, progress nowadays means we are always changing the vision.” The situation in which Catholic evangelists and catechists find themselves today, is one without a clear, common vision.
Vision
This is not to say that the Church has no vision, or that there is no Catholic vision, rather, that those being evangelized do not have a set vision. The people that evangelists seek to share the Gospel with, and the people catechists seek to form in the faith, no longer share the Christian vision that has been central from the time of Christ.
Today, most people do not know the Christian story, let alone have a Christian worldview. Meanwhile, evangelists and catechists are trying to share the doctrinal and moral teachings of the Church and are falling on deaf ears. An important book from Monsignor James Shea, From Christendom to Apostolic Mission, provides a lot of clarity and key language to help explain the current dilemma and offers helpful solutions.
The problem, as laid out in the book, is that the Church is no longer living in a Christendom culture, rather, in a time more akin to the age of the apostles after the ascension of Christ. So, the Church needs to function, not as it did when society’s ruling vision was a Christian one, rather, the Church must adopt an apostolic mission, and seek to convert the minds and imaginative vision of the world, as the first Christians did.
In short, the problem is that the 21st century cannot be categorized as a Christendom culture, yet the Church and her institutions are evangelizing and catechizing as if it were. The solution is that the Church must develop an apostolic mission and evangelize and catechize as the early apostles and Christians did to bring about a new Christendom.
The distinction between Christendom and apostolic mission is very important, both for Monsignor Shea’s book and for a clear and helpful appraisal of issues facing the Church today. To explain briefly, Christendom, or a Christendom culture, refers to an age where the dominating vision of society (the majority but not necessarily the entirety) is a Christian one. The culture has a Christian mind and sees through Christian eyes. Life is understood as being a great human drama, a part of God’s salvation history, and though not everyone has a deep, mature sacramental relationship with God and His Church – the ruling vision of the times is the Church’s vision.
On the contrary, apostolic mission refers to the mode that the Church existed in at the time of the apostles and the first Christians. Most of the people around the first Christians either ignored them or despised them; most people were unfamiliar with the actual claims of the Church, and a true, Christian vision of the world was held by the vast minority of people.
It was, however, a time of great growth when the Church spread like wildfire and Christians held to the faith earnestly and fervently. Even amidst trial and persecution, the Church held strong and even grew at some of these darkest and most challenging times. As Tertullian famously stated, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”
When looking at these two categories, Christendom and apostolic mission, it seems clear and can be historically demonstrated, that we are living in times more akin to the latter. The Christian vision is not the dominating vision of the world, and the Church today is often ignored or despised. Thus, Monsignor Shea concludes that the style and method of evangelization and catechesis need to shift from the modes that worked in the era of Christendom, to the modes that worked in the early church at the time of the apostolic mission.
One of the major problems that seem to exist in the Church today, resulting from Christendom methods in a time that calls for an apostolic mission, is the presentation of doctrinal and moral teachings before there is true Christian conversion. A very prevalent mistake today in both evangelization and formation is the preaching of Church teaching, especially regarding morality, to people who do not yet have the capacity to receive them.
Almost all of the nones (persons with no religious affiliation) who we seek to evangelize, and a majority of Christians who are being catechized, do not have a Christian vision or worldview. Most people have some fleeting vision that is an amalgamation of society’s fads as well as their own personal experiences. Most have not truly encountered Jesus Christ in a personal way or had a true conversion of their entire mind and life, and so when presented with Church teaching that requires a foundation of faith and a Christian vision, there is little to no success.
To put it simply, a large number of people who are being evangelized and catechized might not believe in a personal God, or believe in the revelation brought by Jesus Christ, or have a sacramental vision of the world and an understanding of God’s providence and love, so they cannot possibly be expected to enter a youth ministry night or a parish mission that is discussing sexual ethics or specific Church teachings and leave with a converted mind and heart.
In an age of apostolic mission, the entire mind and heart must be converted. Evangelists and catechists must first introduce people to the Church’s vision, to the person of Jesus Christ and the story of salvation history, before doctrinal and moral teachings are explicated. Jesus followed this strategy himself when giving one of the hardest teachings, his teaching on the Eucharist in John 6.
The Lord does not simply state that one must eat his flesh and blood at the outset and then allow people to either follow him or turn away. Jesus begins first by laying the foundation for a sacramental and miraculous vision through the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves of bread and fish. Then, He calls the people to faith in him and his divinity by emphasizing belief: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” Jesus said, “Everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (Jn 6:40).
Only then does Jesus introduce the “hard saying” on the Eucharist – when he shifts his language from belief to consumption. Jesus said to those listening,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:53-56).
This is the example that Jesus left, and this is the model we must follow.
Evangelists and catechists need to present the Christian story of salvation history; they need to lay the foundations for a Christian vision of the world and to baptize the imaginations of people. The solution to a post-Christendom age is to follow the strategies of the pre-Christendom age – to convert the entire mind and heart of those who really do not know the Christian story and do not have a Christian vision.
Malcolm Muggeridge recorded Archbishop Fulton Sheen saying, “Never worry, Christendom is over – but not Christ.” This is the hope for the modern evangelist and catechist. The age of a Christian vision is over, yet Christ still reigns, and like the first Christians, we can introduce the world to their King. We do this not by perpetuating old strategies and institutions that “we’ve always used,” but to follow the example of the early church and introduce the world to the Risen Christ.
We must, by both our actions and our teaching, share the joy of the Gospel, proclaim the story of God’s salvation of His children, and embody the beauty of a relationship with the Lord; we must give the Christian vision of the world. In an age starving for love, desperate for joy, and constantly grasping for more, I think we would do well to live out and to share the words of St. Augustine,
To fall in love with God is the greatest romance, to seek Him the greatest adventure, to find Him the greatest human achievement.
7 thoughts on “Proclaiming a Christian Vision”
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“Modernism” is the idea that we’ve got everything solved. Mistakes were made in the past but we’ve corrected them.
Everyone admits that the Church has made mistakes in the past, which sometimes took centuries to undo. Yet the attitude here is that today’s teachings are flawless. We’ve got everything solved. There is no chance, none, that future generations will see that we got some things wrong.
Jim Gokey: The writings that the early Church fathers used for teaching what the deposit was continue to be available for us in Scripture. The Church compiled the documents in the fourth century for their future use. We can also avail ourselves of Scripture for understanding its teachings. It is no longer a commodity for the few.
I agree with the high level premise of this article, but I think I am completely at odds with the underlying strategy. I completely agree that the church’s doctrine developed and imposed over the past 2,000 years is an impediment to conversion. The doctrine and the vision of “Christendom” that has developed is not the same as the message that Christ brought us. I agree that we need to go back to the message Christ brought – and that was never about doctrine. Going back to an article from a few days ago, the earliest Christians didn’t even know whether they should consider Jesus to be God. That wasn’t heavily argued about until 400 years later. Jesus’s divinity is a pretty foundational dogma/doctrine/teaching, but it wasn’t important to the earliest Christians as they spread the faith. That should tell us something about all of the add-on teachings we’ve developed over the years – i.e. that they’re largely unnecessary and they miss the mark while pushing people away from the church.
Unlike the author, I don’t think the doctrine is simply something that needs to be hidden until you get the potential convert hooked, and this isn’t a problem that only applies to converts. Existing Catholics are leaving because of the misguided, overly-heavy focus on doctrine. The church is tearing itself apart over doctrine and rules. Jesus would be very disappointed if he knew this is what happened to his message over the past 2,000 years. The world hasn’t lost a Christian vision. “Christendom” has lost its Christian vision/message.
I think you miss the point of what the deposit of faith is and how, for the past 2000 years, that deposit has been revealed. The early church fathers took what was given and taught to them and began to reveal the true meaning of what that “deposit” was, and in so doing, we have what is true, good and beautiful in our Catholic Doctrine of faith today. I think this article is spot on from a high level point of view. Respectfully yours. Jim.
Hi Jim,
I don’t think it’s that I miss the point – it’s that I reject the point. The deposit of faith, the teachings that the Catholic church has built and added onto over the past 2,000 years, should not compete with one another or the teachings of Jesus. And as we’ve built and added, it’s become harder and harder to round the square pegs to make them fit together nicely. We have a set of teachings held together by bubble gum and scotch tape.
The deposit of faith, rather than being God’s revelation to us through flawed men, seems to me to be men using God to manipulate other others for their own gain. Why would God wait 1,950 years to “reveal” to us that Mary was assumed into heaven? It was an event that either happened or it didn’t. The same logic applies to all of the other Marian dogmas that were invented hundreds of years after the fact. Those events either happened or they didn’t. Or how did we end up with the contradictory teachings on the necessity of baptism? Dogma from long ago states unequivocally that baptism is absolutely necessary for folks to enter heaven. Eventually, that was (rightly) seen to be too harsh so we rounded the corners to say it’s actually up to God’s mercy. This way we wouldn’t be definitively condemning non-Catholics who were “good people” to hell along with unborn babies. The lack of actual belief in the teachings around baptism are evident in the fact that we now wait weeks to months after birth for baptism – weeks and months where infant mortality is incredibly high compared to other periods of life. The deposit of faith is constantly changing depending on what is necessary to keep people engaged and serve the needs to the church (i.e. those in power). It has nothing to do with God revealing more to us.
As I said, I don’t think I’m missing the point here. I think we just disagree on which pieces are of God and which pieces are of men. The Catholic church is going to have change at some point or it will whither. Just like the printing press and its ability to spread information helped spur the Protestant Reformation, the church is going to find itself in trouble with the revolution of the internet. Thanks largely to the internet, it is becoming very obvious how the church is run (sexual abuse, corruption, etc), how the claims of universality aren’t really accurate (the massive divisions in the church from top to bottom), and how the claims to unchanging teachings are falling apart as historical information from independent sources is more readily accessible. I don’t see this as a bad thing, but it does require change on the church’s part if it is going to succeed moving forward.
Thanks for your response. I wish you well as we chart a course into the future both for the church and society at large.
The apostolic Church emphasized the post-resurrection Christ and His Spirit within us. This is what it means to preach Christ to the world; and, this is what gives people the capacity to receive the remainder of Church teaching. This converts the entire mind and heart of those who really do not know the Christian story and do not have a Christian vision.
Vatican II, in Sacrosanctum Concilium 59, says of the sacraments: “They not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it; that is why they are called ‘sacraments of faith'”.
A relationship with Christ is primarily by faith. The Church needs to get back to the priorities of the apostolic period in order to get the same results.