VATICAN CITY (CNS): The challenges of being human and of living in a world that does not always want to hear about faith do not lessen the obligation to proclaim the Gospel and to call the baptised to live their faith more fully, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington said.
“We already know our difficulties, the tensions, our restlessness, our faults and our human weakness,” Cardinal Wuerl told members of the Synod of Bishops on the new evangelisation on October 17.
Nevertheless, God calls members of the Church to proclaim salvation in Christ to the ends of the earth and to re-propose the Gospel “to those who are now distant from the Church”, said the cardinal, who was serving as the synod’s relator.
Summarising – in Latin – the speeches Pope Benedict XVI and synod members gave from October 7-17, the Washington cardinal also formulated more than a dozen questions participants might want to discuss in their small groups before drafting propositions to present to the Pope.
The “two great pillars of evangelisation” must be a commitment to know and proclaim the truth of Christ and to do so with love, he said.
In the more than 230 speeches delivered at the synod, Cardinal Wuerl said, members agreed that the duty to proclaim the Gospel “is not just the responsibility of clergy and religious”.
Lay people shared the obligation as well, so the Church must prepare them, educate them and support them, he said.
The cardinal asked members to consider in their small groups concrete ways to increase people’s awareness of their responsibility.
“It is the task of the individual Catholic to invite people back to the practice of the faith,” he said.
The family and the parish deserved special recognition and special support, because they were the places where most people first encountered the faith and where they most grew in faith, he said.
Cardinal Wuerl asked members to consider ways the Church could devise a program of catechesis that was “basic, complete and inspiring in the search for truth, goodness and beauty” and suggested the small groups discuss the idea advanced by several synod members of formally establishing the ministry of catechist in the Church.
Attacks on the family and increasing secularisation around the globe meant the Church may have to re-evaluate its normal way of proceeding, he said.
The situation was even more complicated for Catholics living in countries where they were a tiny minority or where they faced limits on their freedom to exercise the faith.
