Scott Hahn - Evangelizing Catholics: A Mission Manual for the New Evangelization

Evangelizing
Catholics

A Mission Manual For The
New Evangelization

Scott Hahn

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.

Huntington, Indiana

Unless stated otherwise, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright 2006, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Other quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965 and 1966 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Quotations from papal and other Vatican-generated documents available on vatican.va are copyright Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

Copyright 2014 by Scott Hahn and The St. Paul Center. Published 2014.

19 18 17 16 15 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission in writing from the publisher. Contact: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750; 1-800-348-2440; .

ISBN: 978-1-61278-773-2 (Inventory No. T1578)

eISBN: 978-1-61278-355-0

LCCN: 2014933124

Cover design: Lindsey Risen

Cover art: Christ Washing the Disciples Feet, detail of Christ and six disciples, c. 1303-05 (fresco), Giotto di Bondone (c.1266-1337)/Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel, Padua, Italy; Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library

Interior design: Dianne Nelson

Printed in the United States of America

To Pope Francis

Table of Contents

Part I
The Call:
Understanding the New Evangelization

Part II
The Response:
Models and Methods for the New Evangelization

Chapter 8

Part III
The Message:
The Content of the New Evangelization

Part I

The Call: Understanding the New Evangelization

Chapter 1

The New Evangelization: A Birds-Eye View

What is the New Evangelization?

In some ways, thats a question more easily answered by showing rather than telling. We understand it when we encounter it. We know it when we see it. And over the past few years, Ive seen it, up close and personal, in the lives of three of my friends.

Here are their stories.

A Conversion

The year: 2009. The place: The Planned Parenthood abortion facility in Bryan, Texas.

Every morning, as the facilitys director, Abby Johnson, left her car and walked toward her office, one of several young pro-life sidewalk counselors would call out to her.

Over the next two years, through her friendships with those sidewalk counselors and other Catholics at the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life, the Baptist-turned-Episcopalian made the decision to enter the Catholic Church.

Johnson received the Eucharist for the first time in December 2011.

An Awakening

A second story. This one took place in 2004, on Good Friday.

That spring, actor Kevin James was in New York City filming the move Hitch with Will Smith. Although James, who was raised Catholic, hadnt officially left the Church, he wasnt practicing the faith either. God and the Mass werent priorities, and his knowledge of what the Church taught, like that of many Catholics his age, was minimal.

On Good Friday, however, his dad called. During the conversation, James Sr. reminded his son that on that day in particular he needed to tone down the partying and remember what Christ had done for him. As they talked, James walked by a movie theater showing Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ. He asked his father if it would be appropriate to see that movie on Good Friday. The response? Absolutely.

Eight years later, in an interview with Raymond Arroyo, James described what happened over the next three hours as life-changing.

A Homecoming

One final story one that begins in 1960.

That year, the Beckwith family of New York City welcomed their son, Francis, into the world. Soon after, the family moved to Nevada, and when the time came for the young Beckwith to begin kindergarten, his parents enrolled him in St. Viators Catholic Elementary School, trusting, as their parents before them did, that the teachers there would instill in their son the fundamentals of the Catholic faith.

Beckwiths religious education began, however, just as the Second Vatican Council came to an end, and continued throughout the tumultuous 1970s. Inside the Church, it was a time of liturgical experimentation and catechetical confusion. Outside the Church, it was a time of moral upheaval and social revolution. The latter problem only exacerbated the former problem, and not until Beckwith stumbled upon the books of Norman Geisler, R. C. Sproul, and Francis Schaeffer did he find the systematic presentation of truth he needed to help him make sense of the world.

Unfortunately, what he found also led him away from the Catholic Church and into evangelical Protestantism.

Decades passed. Beckwith earned his Ph.D. in philosophy and began an illustrious scholarly career, finally settling down as a professor of Church-State Relations at Baylor, the worlds largest Baptist University.

In 2006, his reputation as one of evangelical Christianitys most serious thinkers got him elected president of the Evangelical Theological Society. Around the same time, Beckwiths enduring respect for the Church of his childhood began to grow. Attracted to the work of John Paul II, he presented a paper on the popes contributions to philosophy at a Boston University conference. Afterward, one of the scholars in attendance came up to him with a simple question: Why arent you Catholic?

Beckwith didnt have an answer. So he spent the next year trying to find one reading the earlier writings of John Paul IIs successor, Joseph Ratzinger; hashing out doctrines that he perceived as stumbling blocks to his return to the Church; and talking the question over with his wife and friends. He also devoted long hours to reading the Church Fathers. But it wasnt until his Catholic nephew called and asked Beckwith to be his Confirmation sponsor that the moment of reckoning came. Beckwith knew he had to make a decision, and at long last he knew what that decision needed to be.

Beckwith stepped down from his position as head of the Evangelical Theological Society in May 2007, and he returned to the Catholic Church.

A Call

Together, these three snapshots of conversion and reversion give us a composite of the New Evangelization.

In the lives of Abby Johnson, Kevin James, and Francis Beckwith, we see that unlike evangelization in centuries past, the New Evangelization isnt just about shipping off missionaries to foreign shores or sending out mendicant preachers to proclaim the Gospel to pagans. Nor is it evangelization strictly in the sense that many Protestants conceive of evangelization sharing the Good News with an unbeliever, getting him to confess his faith in Christ, and then moving on to the next unbeliever.