"Arise and bear witness": Pope Francis message for World Youth Day 2021

 I had missed the fact that the celebration of World Youth Day 2021 in the universal Church had been transferred to the Solemnity of Christ the King this year - an understandable occurrence in the light of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic earlier this year.

Pope Francis' message for the celebration of the day, released in September, is on the website of the Holy See. The major part of the message is a meditation on the encounter between St Paul and Jesus on the road to Damascus. At each point in his reflection, Pope Francis makes an application of St Paul's experience to that of young people today. It makes a lovely read for anyone who wishes to be active in the life of the Church.

At the end of his message, Pope Francis makes a series of appeals to young people:

Today Christ speaks to you the same words that he spoke to Paul: Arise! Do not remain downcast or caught up in yourself: a mission awaits you! You too can testify to what Jesus has begun to accomplish in your lives. In Jesus’ name, I ask you: 

- Arise! Testify that you too were blind and encountered the light. You too have seen God’s goodness and beauty in yourself, in others and in the communion of the Church, where all loneliness is overcome. 

- Arise! Testify to the love and respect it is possible to instil in human relationships, in the lives of our families, in the dialogue between parents and children, between the young and the elderly. 

- Arise! Uphold social justice, truth and integrity, human rights. Protect the persecuted, the poor and the vulnerable, those who have no voice in society, immigrants. 

- Arise! Testify to the new way of looking at things that enables you to view creation with eyes brimming with wonder, that makes you see the Earth as our common home, and gives you the courage to promote an integral ecology. 

- Arise! Testify that lives of failure can be rebuilt, that persons spiritually dead can rise anew, that those in bondage can once more be free, that hearts overwhelmed by sorrow can rediscover hope. 

- Arise! Testify joyfully that Christ is alive! Spread his message of love and salvation among your contemporaries, at school and in the university, at work, in the digital world, everywhere. 

The Lord, the Church and the Pope trust you and appoint you to bear witness before all those other young people whom you will encounter on today’s “roads to Damascus”. Never forget that “anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love. Every Christian is a missionary to the extent that he or she has encountered the love of God in Christ Jesus” (Evangelii Gaudium, 120).

Realities and ideas: Francis vs Benedict?

Just before Easter, the aether carried a conversation (here and repeated uncritically here) which suggested that Pope Francis' principle that "realities are greater than ideas" put him at odds with Pope Emeritus Benedict, particularly as the latter had expressed himself in a recently published interview.

Pope Francis' articulation of the principle is found in the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium nn.231-233 (but see my comment below about the English of the first sentence of n.232):

Realities are more important than ideas

231. There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.

232. Ideas – conceptual elaborations – are at the service of communication, understanding, and praxis. Ideas disconnected from realities give rise to ineffectual forms of idealism and nominalism, capable at most of classifying and defining, but certainly not calling to action. What calls us to action are realities illuminated by reason. Formal nominalism has to give way to harmonious objectivity. Otherwise, the truth is manipulated, cosmetics take the place of real care for our bodies. We have politicians – and even religious leaders – who wonder why people do not understand and follow them, since their proposals are so clear and logical. Perhaps it is because they are stuck in the realm of pure ideas and end up reducing politics or faith to rhetoric. Others have left simplicity behind and have imported a rationality foreign to most people.

233. Realities are greater than ideas. This principle has to do with incarnation of the word and its being put into practice: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is from God” (1 Jn 4:2). The principle of reality, of a word already made flesh and constantly striving to take flesh anew, is essential to evangelization. It helps us to see that the Church’s history is a history of salvation, to be mindful of those saints who inculturated the Gospel in the life of our peoples and to reap the fruits of the Church’s rich bimillennial tradition, without pretending to come up with a system of thought detached from this treasury, as if we wanted to reinvent the Gospel. At the same time, this principle impels us to put the word into practice, to perform works of justice and charity which make that word fruitful. Not to put the word into practice, not to make it reality, is to build on sand, to remain in the realm of pure ideas and to end up in a lifeless and unfruitful self-centredness and Gnosticism.

Even a cursory reading of this passage, written in the context of an exhortation whose subject is the new evangelisation, indicates Pope Francis' concern that ideas and realities should be aligned with each other, and not that ideas should he superceded by realities:

.....Ideas disconnected from realities give rise to ineffectual forms of idealism and nominalism, capable at most of classifying and defining, but certainly not calling to action. What calls us to action are realities illuminated by reason.....

And the most fundamental reality is that of the Incarnation of the Word:

.... The principle of reality, of a word already made flesh and constantly striving to take flesh anew, is essential to evangelization....

[The first two chapters of Luigi Giussani's foundational text, The Religious Sense (and remember that Pope Francis, as Cardinal Bergoglio presented the Spanish translation of this book at its launch in Argentina, and acknowledges his debt to the movement Communion and Liberation) are instructive background reading to this passage in Evangelii Gaudium. They are entitled "The First Premise: Realism" and "The Second Premise: Reasonableness".]

The English of the first sentence of Evangelii Gaudium n.232 as published on the Vatican website does not appear to be the same as the French and Italian (nor, so far as I can tell, of the Spanish and Portuguese), which would be more carefully translated into English as "The idea -  the conceptual elaborations - is a function of the grasping/perception, of the understanding and of the conduct/operation of the reality":

232. Ideas – conceptual elaborations – are at the service of communication, understanding, and praxis.

232. L’idée – les élaborations conceptuelles – est fonction de la perception, de la compréhension et de la conduite de la réalité.

232. L’idea – le elaborazioni concettuali – è in funzione del cogliere, comprendere e dirigere la realtà.

The non-English languages seem to better express the alignment of ideas to reality that is the intent of this section of Evangelii Gaudium. Likewise in this paragraph, what appears in English as referring to "what calls us to action" appears in the French and Italian as "what engages us" ... the sense being not dissimilar, though perhaps appearing more idiomatically correct.

In the light of the above, I was struck by the first of the answers in Pope Benedict's recently published interview. This seemed to express exactly the balance of "reality" and "idea" that Pope Francis has presented in Evangelii Gaudium and which Luigi Giussani offers in the first two chapters of The Religious Sense. It also strikingly includes a similar assertion of the necessity of the encounter with the community of the Church as part of the reality of faith as does n.233 of Evangelii Gaudium:

....faith is a profoundly personal contact with God, which touches me in my innermost being and places me in front of the living God in absolute immediacy in such a way that I can speak with Him, love Him and enter into communion with Him. But at the same time this reality which is so fundamentally personal also has inseparably to do with the community. It is an essential part of faith that I be introduced into the “we” of the sons and daughters of God, into the pilgrim community of brothers and sisters. The encounter with God means also, at the same time, that I myself become open, torn from my closed solitude and received into the living community of the Church. ....

.... Faith is not a product of reflection nor is it even an attempt to penetrate the depths of my own being. Both of these things may be present, but they remain insufficient without the “listening” through which God, from without, from a story He himself created, challenges me. In order for me to believe, I need witnesses who have met God and make Him accessible to me. In my article on baptism I spoke of the double transcendence of the community, in this way causing to emerge once again an important element: the faith community does not create itself. It is not an assembly of men who have some ideas in common and who decide to work for the spread of such ideas. Then everything would be based on its own decision and, in the final analysis, on the majority vote principle, which is, in the end it would be based on human opinion. ....

Evangelii Gaudium: comment on two snippets

Pope Francis observes (Evangelii Gaudium n.127), in connection with the idea that evangelisation necessarily involves inter-personal communication, that:

..... there is a kind of preaching which falls to each of us as a daily responsibility. It has to do with bringing the Gospel to the people we meet, whether they be our neighbours or complete strangers. This is the informal preaching which takes place in the middle of a conversation, something along the lines of what a missionary does when visiting a home. Being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others, and this can happen unexpectedly and in any place: on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey.

One can see the parallel to recruitment to a trade union. It is a bit of a mantra of trade union recruitment that "most people don't join a union because no-one has asked them". Similarly, the apostolate of a Catholic organisation such as the Legion of Mary draws heavily on creating opportunities for personal contact with those whom one wishes to bring to Christ. Pope Francis (Evangelii Gaudium n.128) gives a very useful exemplification of the form that this every day evangelisation might take.

But there is an intriguing, and quite un-developed, snippet in the next paragraph. Here Pope Francis brings the question of individual personal contact back to that of inculturation:

If the Gospel is embedded in a culture, the message is no longer transmitted solely from person to person. In countries where Christianity is a minority, then, along with encouraging each of the baptized to proclaim the Gospel, particular Churches should actively promote at least preliminary forms of inculturation.

What is un-developed here is that relation between person-to-person contact and that situation where there is a communication at a (community) cultural level. I suspect that a lot more could be made of how these two elements complement each other and arise from/inform each other. The hazard of an evangelisation that occurs exclusively at the level of culture, and does not penetrate to the level of the personal, is only too apparent in those countries of formerly-strong Catholic culture and weak Catholic practice in daily life. Likewise, person-to-person contact has to impact the culture, or it becomes just "what Catholics do in private on a Sunday".

The second snippet I wanted to comment on is taken from Pope Francis' lengthy treatment of the homily (Evangelii Gaudium nn.135-159). It can be found in n.146:

The first step, after calling upon the Holy Spirit in prayer, is to give our entire attention to the biblical text, which needs to be the basis of our preaching.

Pope Francis assumes that the homily will address the Biblical text(s) provided in the Scripture readings of the Mass of the day. This is an assumption shared by a whole generation of priests and, indeed, it would be wrong not to recognise that preaching on the given texts is just as much a feature of Pope Benedict XVI's homilies as it is of Pope Francis' homilies. However, the rubric (General Instruction on the Roman Missal nn.65-66) allows a wider range upon which the homily can be based (my emphasis added):

The Homily is part of the Liturgy and is highly recommended, for it is necessary for the nurturing of the Christian life. It should be an explanation of some aspect of the readings from Sacred Scripture or of another text from the Ordinary or the Proper of the Mass of the day and should take into account both the mystery being celebrated and the particular needs of the listeners....

On Sundays and Holydays of Obligation there is to be a Homily at every Mass that is celebrated with the people attending and it may not be omitted without a grave reason. On other days it is recommended, especially on the weekdays of Advent, Lent and Easter Time, as well as on other festive days and occasions when the people come to church in greater numbers.

In my own experience, the blind insistence that a homily must be preached at a weekday Mass, and that it must be about the Scripture readings of the day, leads to some of the most dire homilies I have ever heard (cf Pope Francis' comment that "We know that the faithful attach great importance to it, and that both they and their ordained ministers suffer because of homilies: the laity from having to listen to them and the clergy from having to preach them!" in Evangelii Gaudium n.135).  Pope Francis is quite right, I think, to devote the attention to the homily that he does in Evangelii Gaudium - an effective homily impacts greatly on the manner and depth of the participation of the faithful in the Liturgy, lifting it above the "rather average" that leaves them lukewarm.

It is particularly frustrating when one turns to the Collect for the saint being celebrated on the day and can recognise in its words the particular charism of that saint .... which would provide material for a much more useful and succinct homily than a vague wandering around a (more or less) obscure Biblical text. Likewise when one encounters the text of the Preface - yesterday evening, for example, Father used the proper Preface for Eucharistic Prayer 2 which, in the new English translation, provides a wonderful exposition of the core of Christian teaching ("kerygma"), and which is fascinating for its relevance to the idea of the new evangelisation that is the subject of Evangelii Gaudium. The second reading from the Office of Readings can also provide a useful alternative source for a homily.

I suspect that, if we look at his major homilies (rather than the daily homilies at Casa Santa Martha), we will find that Pope Francis widens his scope to move from the Scripture readings to the needs of the particular celebration. This seems to be what the "three words" structure of his preaching is about.

At a human level, I feel that when I am listening to a priest preaching a homily I am entitled to expect him to (a) have something genuinely worthwhile to say and (b) to have prepared properly how and what he is going to say. (I can recognise that I am atypical of most parishioners in my expectations here; but I do see others respond positively to the more "substantial" homily when it is delivered.) The clerical collar does not provide a particular privilege in this regard. When priests insist on preaching every day at Mass, and insist on that homily being about the Scripture readings of the day, it is only the most exceptional among them who will meet these two criteria day in and day out.

Evangelii Gaudium: "missionary disciples", "inculturation" and "popular piety"

In Chapter 3 of Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis turns his attention to "The Proclamation of the Gospel". In a section headed "We are all missionary disciples" (n.119 ff) Pope Francis writes (n.120):

In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples (cf. Mt 28:19). All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients.

Though he acknowledges the desire for a training or formation for evangelising (cf n.121), Pope Francis is clear that all are called to evangelise and that the answering of that call should not be put off on the grounds that training is needed. The genius of a number of movements or organisations in the Church lies precisely in their ability to empower for evangelising activity Catholics who would otherwise not engage in such activity. I know, for example, of the impression that my own mother made on her contemporaries in her teens/twenties - inspired by their engagement in a Young Christian Worker section in a Lancashire cotton town. (It also prompted her to become an active trade unionist.) The Legion of Mary likewise, and perhaps notably in this context because of its espousal of a "master and apprentice" system of formation (cf p.66 of the Legion Handbook):

The notion is general that the formation of apostles is mainly a matter of listening to lectures and studying textbooks. But the Legion believes that such formation cannot be effective at all without the accompaniment of the work itself; and indeed that talk about the apostolate, divorced from the actual work, can have the opposite effect to that intended.

The system of the "Generazione nuova" (Gen) within the Focolare is similar, with members of the older age groups acting as animators for the younger participants.

In these first pages of Chapter 3, Pope Francis also addresses the question of culture in the context of evangelisation. It is interesting to read how, treating first of the notion of culture, Pope Francis then goes onto speak of the Christian faith being received within the culture of a person (nn.115-117):

The human person is always situated in a culture: “nature and culture are intimately linked”. Grace supposes culture, and God’s gift becomes flesh in the culture of those who receive it.

Rather than the culture changing the Gospel, it is the Gospel that permeates the culture. Inculturation is less an adaptation of the Gospel and more an insertion of the Gospel in the culture.

It is also interesting to note what one can be forgiven for thinking is Pope Francis prime model of a practice of a Christian faith that is truly inculturated: the practice of popular piety (cf Evangelii Gaudium nn.122-126). This is, of course, a very different understanding of inculturation than that which is sometimes proposed.

Once the Gospel has been inculturated in a people, in their process of transmitting their culture they also transmit the faith in ever new forms; hence the importance of understanding evangelization as inculturation. Each portion of the people of God, by translating the gift of God into its own life and in accordance with its own genius, bears witness to the faith it has received and enriches it with new and eloquent expressions. ... Herein lies the importance of popular piety, a true expression of the spontaneous missionary activity of the people of God...

Popular piety enables us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on. 

Pope Francis argues strongly, in three sentences, each of considerable significance, that the practices of popular piety - perhaps more lively in his home continent than in Europe - are an expression of a substantive theological insight:

Only from the affective connaturality born of love can we appreciate the theological life present in the piety of Christian peoples, especially among their poor....No one who loves God’s holy people will view these actions as the expression of a purely human search for the divine. They are the manifestation of a theological life nourished by the working of the Holy Spirit who has been poured into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5). 

Pope Francis' final thought on inculturation comes at the end of this section of Chapter 3, where he considers the need to proclaim the Gospel to different cultures (nn.132-134), and suggests an evangelising import of the work of theologians:

Proclaiming the Gospel message to different cultures also involves proclaiming it to professional, scientific and academic circles. This means an encounter between faith, reason and the sciences with a view to developing new approaches and arguments on the issue of credibility, a creative apologetics...

A theology – and not simply a pastoral theology – which is in dialogue with other sciences and human experiences is most important for our discernment on how best to bring the Gospel message to different cultural contexts and groups.The Church, in her commitment to evangelization, appreciates and encourages the charism of theologians and their scholarly efforts to advance dialogue with the world of cultures and sciences. I call on theologians to carry out this service as part of the Church’s saving mission. In doing so, however, they must always remember that the Church and theology exist to evangelize, and not be content with a desk-bound theology.  

Evangelii Gaudium: "No to spiritual worldliness"

Pope Francis devotes five paragraphs to discussing "spiritual worldliness" as one of the temptations faced by pastoral workers. They can be found in Evangelii Gaudium nn.93-97, and they contain the famous/infamous/incomprehensible reference to "self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism".

At the end of n.93, Pope Francis quotes Henri de Lubac:

..... if [spiritual worldliness] were to seep into the Church, “it would be infinitely more disastrous than any other worldliness which is simply moral”.

The quotation is taken from the very end of de Lubac's book translated into English as The Splendor of the Church. The full passage from which the quotation is taken provides an instructive commentary on this section of Evangelii Gaudium.  It comes at the end of a chapter in which de Lubac has presented the analogy between the figure of Mary and the Church, as de Lubac points out that we who are members of the Church do not show forth the light that is seen in our Lady.

.... the greatest danger we are to the Church, the most subversive temptation, the one that is ever and insidiously reborn when all the rest are overcome, and even strengthened by those victories, is what Abbot Vonier called the temptation to "worldliness of mind ... the practical relinquishing of other-worldliness, so that moral and even spiritual standards should be based, not on the glory of the Lord, but on what is the profit of man; an entirely anthropocentric outlook would be exactly what we mean by worldliness. Even if men were filled with every spiritual perfection, but if such perfection were not referred to God (suppose this hypothesis to be possible) it would be unredeemed worldliness". [De Lubac here references Abbot Vonier's The Spirit and the Bride.]

If this spiritual worldliness were to invade the Church and set to work to corrupt her by attacking her very principle, it would be something infinitely more disastrous than any worldliness of the purely moral order - even worse than the hideous leprosy that at certain moments in history inflicts so cruel a disfigurement on the Bride; when religion seems to set up the scandalous "in the very sanctuary itself ..."

None of us is wholly immune to this sort of evil....

Pope Francis' judgement offered in n.97 is strong:

Those who have fallen into this worldliness look on from above and afar, they reject the prophecy of their brothers and sisters, they discredit those who raise questions, they constantly point out the mistakes of others and they are obsessed by appearances. Their hearts are open only to the limited horizon of their own immanence and interests, and as a consequence they neither learn from their sins nor are they genuinely open to forgiveness. This is a tremendous corruption disguised as a good.

POSTSCRIPT

I am still on the hunt for the origins of  that phrase "self-absorbed promethean neopelagianism".

UPDATED Evangelii Gaudium: "the most precious of the devil's potions"

In the second part of Chapter 2 of Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis addresses the "Temptations Faced by Pastoral Workers". [See below for UPDATE.] In nn78-83, Pope Francis identifies a certain tiredness or torpor that can afflict those who engage in pastoral work on behalf of the Church's mission.

It is first of all worth noting that, in adopting the term "pastoral workers", Pope Francis addresses his words to all the faithful, to bishops, priests and deacons, to religious and to lay people who are engaged in the mission of the Church. In n.78, Pope Francis words appear to be addressed more particularly to those in consecrated life when he identifies "three evils which fuel one another":

...... one can observe in many agents of evangelization, even though they pray, a heightened individualism, a crisis of identity and a cooling of fervour.

But in the next paragraph n.79, he addresses similar words in the context of the media and intellectual climate that affects perhaps the lay person more than the religious:

..... many pastoral workers, although they pray, develop a sort of inferiority complex which leads them to relativize or conceal their Christian identity and convictions. This produces a vicious circle. They end up being unhappy with who they are and what they do; they do not identify with their mission of evangelization and this weakens their commitment.

Pope Francis summarises this consideration of a tiredness in undertaking the evangelising mission of the Church in n.83, citing Joseph Ratzinger and then Georges Bernanos writing in The Diary of a Country Priest:

Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with themselves, they [pastoral workers] experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like “the most precious of the devil’s potions”.

The full passage from which the quotation of Bernanos is taken is, first in French and then in the translation of my English language copy:

Le péché contre l’espérance – le plus mortel de tous, et peut-être le mieux accueilli, le plus caressé. Il faut beaucoup de temps pour le reconnaître, et la tristesse qui l’annonce, le précède, est si douce! C’est le plus riche des élixirs du démon, son ambroise.

The sin against hope - the deadliest sin and perhaps also the most cherished, the most indulged. It takes a long time to become aware of it, and the sadness which precedes and heralds its advent is so delicious! The richest of all the devil's elixirs, his ambrosia.

I suspect that many of us can recognise in this something of our own lives in the Church.

UPDATE

In following up a footnote to Evangelii Gaudium n.93 - which references Henri de Lubac's book Meditation sur l'Eglise, published in English as The Splendor of the Church - I have found a chapter in that book entitled "Our Temptations concerning the Church".  The themes of this section of Evangelii Gaudium are recognisable in de Lubac's chapter, though de Lubac addresses them in a wider historical context that more represents a general reflection on the nature of the life of the Church than a critique of the immediately present experience of the Church. That in itself perhaps gives us an indication as to how we should read Pope Francis' words.

(The referenced citation in Evangelii Gaudium, though, does not come from the chapter "Our Temptations concerning the Church" but from the last pages of a chapter dedicated to "The Church and our Lady". The attention given in this chapter to the maternity of the Church is a favourite theme of Pope Francis.)

There is an onward reference that can be taken from this footnote in Evangelii Gaudium. At the end of his chapter, Henri de Lubac inserted the following footnote:

A more far-reaching examination of some of the problems discussed in this chapter will be found in Fr Karl Rahner's Die Chancen des Christentums heute.

I have not been able to follow up this onward reference as such. I did, however, find on pp.109-111 of Fr Rahner's Opportunities for Faith an account that has clear resonance to the idea of those who, though they pray, do not live out the implications of that for their relationships of charity towards others. To be fair, it should be pointed out that it is not at all obvious that Pope Francis' words in this regard share the "transcendental" philosophical perspective of Fr Rahner's account, intending as it does to recognise an implicitly present grace in an interpersonal encounter.

Henri de Lubac's chapter does make interesting reading for the way in which it might enable us to understand some of Pope Francis' more challenging and, for some at least, obscure analyses of the situation of the Church.

Evangelii Gaudium: "No to the inequality which spawns violence"

In Chapter 2 of Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis considers "briefly the context in which we all have to live and work", as a preliminary to taking up questions more directly related to the work of evangelisation. He does not claim an exhaustive analysis, and indicates a primarily pastoral perspective. Among the challenges that Pope Francis identifies is that of "the inequality which spawns violence", treated in nn.59-60 of Evangelii Gaudium.

...until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence.

Pope Francis identifies the source of this violence, not just in the reaction that is likely from those who are excluded, but from a structurally unjust situation in which injustice tends to expand its influence for evil.

By way of commentary on the concern sketched out by Pope Francis in these two paragraphs, I turned to an analysis of different types of violence in one of the four pastoral letters of Archbishop Oscar Romero. It forms part of the third pastoral letter, dedicated to the Church and the Popular Political Organisations. The analysis occurs on p.19 ff of the pdf text here. What Pope Francis articulates as "exclusion and inequality" is expressed by Archbishop Romero as "Instituionalised Violence":

It is the result of an unjust situation in which the majority of men, women, and children in our country find themselves deprived of the necessities of life.

This violence finds expression in the structure and daily functioning of a socio-economic and political system that takes it for granted that progress is impossible unless the majority of the people are used as a productive force under the control of a privileged minority.

Archbishop Romero continues to delineate the repressive violence of the state, terrorist violence, spontaneous violence, violence in legitimate self-defence and finally the power of non-violence, before addressing the Church's moral judgements on these different types of violence - p.21ff of the pdf text.

But what is very thought provoking, and provides a vivid commentary to Pope Francis words in Evangelii Gaudium, is the identification by Archbishop Romero of the range of those responsible for the exclusion and inequality/structural violence, for which he cites the teaching of the meeting of Latin American Bishops at Medellin (my italics added):

(They) are those who monopolise economic power instead of sharing it, those "who defend them through violence", and all "those who remain passive for fear of the sacrifice and personal risk implied by any courageous and effective action".

It is that reference to "those who remain passive" that is most challenging and perhaps has widest application!

Evangelii Gaudium: A mission embodied in human limits

The fourth section of Chapter One of Evangelii Gaudium is entitled "A Mission Embodied within Human Limits". There are a couple of paragraphs in this section that contain examples of Pope Francis' beauty in use of language.

In no.42, Pope Francis writes about the nature of faith. My italics, not present in the original text, indicate the phrases which caught my attention :

.... we will never be able to make the Church’s teachings easily understood or readily appreciated by everyone. Faith always remains something of a cross; it retains a certain obscurity which does not detract from the firmness of its assent. Some things are understood and appreciated only from the standpoint of this assent, which is a sister to love, beyond the range of clear reasons and arguments. We need to remember that all religious teaching ultimately has to be reflected in the teacher’s way of life, which awakens the assent of the heart by its nearness, love and witness.

No. 45 is the paragraph which summarises this section, and it is the image of shoes soiled by the mud of the street which caught my eye:

We see then that the task of evangelization operates within the limits of language and of circumstances. It constantly seeks to communicate more effectively the truth of the Gospel in a specific context, without renouncing the truth, the goodness and the light which it can bring whenever perfection is not possible. A missionary heart is aware of these limits and makes itself “weak with the weak... everything for everyone” (1 Cor 9:22). It never closes itself off, never retreats into its own security, never opts for rigidity and defensiveness. It realizes that it has to grow in its own understanding of the Gospel and in discerning the paths of the Spirit, and so it always does what good it can, even if in the process, its shoes get soiled by the mud of the street.

One should note, for those who might read this as a compromise of the call to Christian perfection, that Pope Francis has just indicated in no.44 that the need to" accompany with mercy and patience" those who are being evangelised does not imply "detracting from the evangelical ideal".