
Pope Francis meets with indigenous groups from the Peruvian Amazon at a coliseum in Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios province, Peru, Friday, Jan. 19, 2018. (Credit: AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd.)
Pope Francis meets with indigenous groups from the Peruvian Amazon at a coliseum in Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios province, Peru, Friday, Jan. 19, 2018. (Credit: AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd.)
ROME – A persistent line of criticism heading into next month’s Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, generally coming from more conservative and traditional quarters of Catholicism, is that the whole exercise is a distraction from the Church’s core mission of evangelization, meaning bringing souls to Christ.
That, for instance, was the gist of a complaint by German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, who’s pointedly asked, “What do ecology, economy, and politics have to do with the mandate and mission of the Church?”
What’s sometimes overlooked is that for Pope Francis, such subjects do not constitute an alternative to evangelization. As he sees it, they are evangelization, or at least an essential prolegomenon to it. When Christians stand with people as they face such struggles, the pope believes, they’ll eventually wonder why we’re doing it, and that’s when the conversation begins.
One of the clearest expressions of Francis’s vision came in a Saturday audience with members of the Community of Abraham, a charismatic group founded in northeastern Italy in 1989 and today present in Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine and Hungary as well. The audience was to mark the community’s 30th anniversary.
“The meekness that the Holy Spirit gives us makes us witnesses, because the path of the Holy Spirit isn’t proselytism, it’s witness,” Francis told the group. “If someone comes to proselytize, that’s not the Church, it’s a sect.”
It’s interesting that admonition came in a session with charismatics, who, over the years, have occasionally been accused of practicing a fairly heavy-handed form of proselytism themselves, and of sometimes betraying a sectarian mentality. Francis has come to admire much about the charismatic movement, calling it a “a current of grace” for our time, but clearly also wants to make sure it doesn’t relapse.
“The Church the Lord wants, as Pope Benedict XVI said, doesn’t grow through proselytism but by attraction, meaning the attractiveness of witness, and behind that witness there’s always the Holy Spirit,” Francis said.
“This is the methodology we’re called to live in the work of evangelization,” he said. “We need to walk together with the people of our time, listen to what they carry in their hearts, in order to offer them the most credible response with our lives, that is, the life that comes from God through Jesus Christ.”
“It always does me good,” Francis said, “to listen to that advice St. Francis of Assisi gave his brothers when they started to evangelize: ‘Go, preach the Gospel, and, if necessary, use words.’”
“Start with witness, and then they’ll ask you: ‘Why are you like this?’ That’s the moment to speak,” Francis said.
One certainly can’t accuse Francis of not walking his own talk. Consider his activity over just the last few days, almost none of which would constitute what’s traditionally been regarded as “evangelization” in the strict sense:
That, by the way, is pretty much a typical stretch for this whirlwind of a pope, and it’s only a partial rundown of his activity. (Yesterday Francis also met with representatives of the Italian railway system, leading some locals to quip that if he really wants to work a miracle, he could get the trains to run on time.)
One could well ask what all this has to do with promoting the life of faith, meaning getting people to go to Mass, confess their sins, pray the rosary, and do all the other things the Church has traditionally defined as hallmarks of personal sanctity.
It’s a debatable point, of course, but it seems abundantly clear how Francis himself would answer the question of what it’s got to do with the faith: “Pretty much everything.”