What do Charles and John Wesley have to teach Catholics in the United States about the New Evangelization? With the release of Disciples Called to Witness: The New Evangelization (USCCB, 2012) and the Catholic Church’s upcoming synod on the “New Evangelization,” these two ministers seem as relevant as ever to how we think about evangelization in the modern world.
Charles and John Wesley were ordained in eighteenth century England, a time when the sacrament of Holy Communion was often regarded with indifference or neglect. Church historian John Bowmer remarks that the sacraments and Christian life were widely disparaged in this “new age of reason,” and most people in the Church of England aimed for the minimums of religious practice—receiving the Eucharist three times a year and treating it as an historic custom, rather than encounter with the living God. Unsurprisingly, most in the Church of England were not looking outward to form disciples or share the Gospel. In fact, many clergy and laity in the Church of England believed that England’s growing urban masses were beyond influence and simply had “no taste” for Christian liturgy and sacraments. Christianity was on its way to becoming a fruitless cultural niche.
This creeping indifference characterizes many U.S. Catholics today. As a recent Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) study confirms, most of the roughly three-quarters of self-identified U.S. Catholics who have drifted away from Sunday Eucharist have done so not deliberately, but simply due to the general busyness of modern life. While we as Catholics do not openly admit that there are some groups in society we perceive as beyond the possibility of openness to the Gospel, our parish practices reveal great shortcomings in this area, as we often default to ministering only to those who present themselves to us at parish events, with little thought for those who are absent. We cast out nets in familiar waters, but rarely lower the nets into the deeper, less comforting places. Defaulting to this status quo is certainly the wrong climate for embracing the call of the New Evangelization.
So what did the Wesley brothers do in their setting of indifference and perceived divisions? Did they tone down their sacramental devotion to appeal to the “rational” sensibilities of the age? Or scrap the Book of Common Prayer’s disciplines of daily liturgical prayer as obsolete? Did they insist that a particular “right” way of worship would solve all problems? Did they ignore suffering and injustice in England and focus only on an otherworldly, eternal salvation? None of the above. Instead, Charles and John Wesley set out for the mines, meadows, prisons, and town squares of England with an urgent Gospel message, a message meant to be lived.
Charles and John Wesley recognized that for Christians to authentically join in an eternal liturgy of praise and thanksgiving, their participation must be situated in the context of the Christian life. Christians not interested in the Eucharist? Take to open air preaching to tell of the person of Jesus Christ. Followers not finding a connection between human experience and the Paschal mystery? Organize the masses into groups for study, prayer, and lay preaching. Not reaching urban workers who viewed the Church of England as staid and stuffy? Witness to God’s love by doing Christ’s works of mercy and making prophetic stands—with all of these leading towards and flowing from the sacramental life of the Church of England.
As Karen Westerfield Tucker writes, at the heart of the Wesley’s evangelization was the desire that followers of Christ were to be Christians, “not in name only, but in heart and life.” Evangelization in this sense is not about one aspect of Christianity, but as Pope Benedict XVI writes, showing others “the art of living,” so that Christian faith “is not a kind of clothing to be worn privately or on special occasions,” but instead “something living and all-encompassing, capable of assimilating all that is good in modern times.”
Evangelization, especially this “new” evangelization in our times, is never about choosing one element of the faith to promote without seeking to cultivate ongoing conversion of all aspects of each of our lives. Pope Paul VI remarked that although some create separation between evangelization and sacramental practices, this is a sure mistake, for “the role of evangelization is precisely to educate people in the faith in such a way as to lead each individual Christian to live the sacraments as true sacraments of faith—and not to receive them passively or reluctantly.”
Charles and John Wesley demonstrated a confidence in the Gospel—that by bringing Jesus Christ into all aspects of the lives of those they ministered to, lukewarm members of the Church of England and the “unchurched” masses alike would be inspired by the Holy Spirit to draw close to Christ in the sacraments, especially Holy Communion. In Disciples Called to Witness, the bishops of the United States call on each person today to have a similar confidence that by “proposing anew” the unchanging message of encounter with the person of Jesus Christ, we too can trust and participate in the work of the Holy Spirit, drawing people out of indifference and into authentic Christian living.
Colleen Reiss Vermeulen lives in South Bend, Indiana where she is a Master of Divinity and Master of Nonprofit Administration candidate at the University of Notre Dame.
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Comments:
For 27 years I have been insisting that the new evangelization cannot be instituted (a seed planted that can actually grow and flourish) until we restore parish life with an assembly (it doesn't exist in any Catholic church I know of). The reason: it is the only way possible for Catholics to become a community in the realm of the concrete, the real world, a way of exiting the lukewarm and seemingly safe world of high abstraction. It is the only way for the Church to not be of this abstract world while living totally in the real world with the ability to use abstraction to guide persons into the real world, the glory of God's creation, the Kingdom of God in this eternal now.
An example: if there were truly a parish life, a Christian community, if a teenager got pregnant, she wouldn't have to go to Planned Parenthood or any of the other abstract outposts that know the concrete world only in terms of how to destroy it, a gnostic elevation to an idealized world far from the messiness of an actual life. There simply is no parish community that I know about that makes that life-affirmation for a teen available. You see, there are no Catholic communities other than satellite groups (adjunct gatherings) or parish ministries. Those groups, although valuable and work Our Lord asks of us, cannot constitute a parish life, a Christian community that can only occur in parish life through assembly life.
The fact is, pastors are trapped in the ideal of high subjectivity and radical individualism (they are held captive to the realm of high abstraction), and thus make no effort to establish an assembly life, trusting instead in each parish individual finding his-her own group outside the parish. Even parish ministries are isolated groups that don't come in contact with an assembly that constitutes the core of a parish community. The norm is absolutely no contact by the vast majority of persons attending Mass with any “inner-life” of a deformed parish life.
It is time to stop scapegoating lay Christians and look to the leadership. For only through a pastor's office of preaching, governing and sanctifying is a true community possible, and the only way others will know us as Christians is by that concrete (organic, i.e., relational) dynamic of Christian communities, which must, I must inform you, be centered in the Eucharist, the concrete, organic presence of Our Lord gifted to us so that in our entirety, not just our cognitive processes, we become Christ present to the world. THIS is where lay Christians will find sustenance and inspiration to go out into the world and spread the Good News. It just can't happen any other way.
You have painted a picture of one aspect of what a real parish community could look like, and God bless you for that. You also imply the sure sense that Catholics are a Eucharistic people, that radical and incomprehensible gift that truly makes life more abundant, if the pastors would only guide us into embracing it as a COMMUNION of all that gather in THIS place, in whatever parish you gather as the Body of Christ in union with all other Christian communities throughout the world.
Once I was walking in the hills and came across a large debris field of beer bottles and associated rubbish strewn around the Tolkienesque roots of an old hollow tree overlooking Berkeley where I have always loved to sit. I looked on in disgust and began consigning the litterers to Sheol—and then the Holy Spirit spoke: He directed my gaze upon an empty paper shopping bag. Doh! (Needless to say, I filled it and carried it down to my car.)
Our arms and legs and minds belong to Christ. Let's all get to work. †
First was the question on whether the Wesleys had a sacramental understanding of the church and, well, the sacraments. I read some of Charles Wesley's own journals at http://wesley.nnu.edu/charles-wesley/the-journal-of-charles-wesley-1707-1788/ and discovered that he did apparently have a sacramental understanding at least of communion, or rather that he called it a sacrament. Good enough.
The second was whether Wesley's understanding of the "new birth" (another phrase he uses, in the same way as Charles Colson would say "born again") is compatible with the Catholic view of salvation. I mean, if salvation is done *to you* by the church's infant baptism and other sacraments that sometimes have no effect on the heart, what do you have to share with others in evangelism? I am still skeptical on this count.
Put another way, I have known very few Catholics who could articulate how and when they were born anew, when the burden of sin was rolled away at the foot of the cross. Or, in Charles Wesley's own words, from the wonderful hymn And Can it Be:
Long my imprison'd spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night,
Thine eye diffused a quick'ning ray, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light!
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
Without a personal experience of new birth like this (or at least a conscious recognition of the flaming new life within, even if one can't remember being born), what is there to share with others? Finding that is step 1.
Step 2 is attaining a common Biblical understanding of the local church community. Gil had it right here, I think. I will add my own experience as well In the military, I was part of the Protestant Chapel community. At one post, the Catholic Chaplain was the senior chaplain as an O-6, and he habitually described all the chapel organizations together as his "network of volunteers." Of course, he kept the junior Protestant military members from attending Promise Keepers, so there were sharp limits in his mind to the reach of volunteering. But I was offended even more by his terminology. By the authority of the New Testament, I am Christ's fellow worker (look it up!), with all the privileges and responsibilities that come with that. I refused then, and refuse now, to be demoted to the unbiblical status of "volunteer."
Catholics desperately need the New Evangelization and I welcome them in it, but to gain the participation of its people, the two high hurdles it has to overcome are its soteriology (doctrine of salvation) and its ecclesiology (doctrine of the church). In the Catholic church, both of these are done *to you* in a way that Charles Wesley would have never recognized in his followers, and in a way that saps the energy of evangelism in the human heart before it can get started.
Thanks so much for this article. I totally agree.
As GlennB notes: "Modern Methodists are merely bold in their leftist politics and theology." That too is the legacy of the Wesley Brothers along with their evangelical zeal. To ignore that legacy, holding only their evangelical zeal is illogical.
Of course, there is something ironic about a student at UND lamenting a lack of fervor in Catholic evangelism nbut seeking a model in Protestant ministers, rather than the innumerable Catholic models.
The one thing I don't do is despair, which is the absence of hope, one of the three theological virtues. Satan will not defeat God’s plan for us. Yet I cannot keep my head in the sand as I watch pastors conform to the world of high abstraction that sustains high subjectivity, radical individualism and moral relativity (“I have MY reasons not to listen to you!). Yesterday morning at Mass a priest who has been honored on more than a few occasions felt the need to explain to us gathered that there are no demons, that people suffered from psychological or physical ailments that Jesus interpreted as possession. The question that entered my mind was, “How can he believe that God created the universe when he can’t believe what Jesus told us about demon possession?” Then I asked myself, “How can he, then believe also that the Holy Spirit can unite us as a community in love on an age of radical individuality?”
The work that you and others like you do and the ministries that make that work possible is a great blessing from God, and I agree that more and more will emerge as the slaughter of the innocent (abortion) and other forms of Satanic sacrifice of children escalate, but these activities will always remain "what THOSE Christians are doing over there", not “Look at that Christian community!” Again, this work is a great blessing from God because those God has called to this work accepted their call. But Jesus insisted that they (the world) will know us as Christians only by our love for one another, and I am convinced this most important work of all is not being done because it can only be established by a pastor, not any lay person. Let me explain:
The priest-pastor of any church is responsible for the governance of that church. And what is the core of that governance? UNIFYING IN LOVE. This means first and foremost that the pastor will not remain aloof or indifferent to what destroys unity (for example, a conservative not loving a parishioner simply because he is liberal or vice versa). Remember that the first task God set for John when he gave him the visions that John reports in Revelations was to restore unity in love. That is why John first addresses Ephesus, the most successful of all the Christian communities, a parish, unlike the other communities, that was doing absolutely everything right—they had a ministry for every need and everything required for the Christian life, what you described (again, vital for the life of the Church), but John reports that they no longer possess the most important thing of all, having love for one another as it was in the beginning, and that if that love is not restored, then their lamp will be taken from them, meaning they will not be able to be a light to the world, even though they do more sincere ministerial work than any other parish in existence!
My point that I have failed to make for 27 years is that the only way possible to restore that unity in love is through assembly life. If anyone knows another way, please explain. And why is it that pastors resist this one thing more than anything? Because Satan knows the major assault on the life of the Church is disunity (why we now have more than 44,000 Christian denominations and religious groups), because that disunity sends a message to the world that Christ is not capable of uniting even his own followers. And I’m stating matter of factly that the majority of parishioners are not succumbing to sloth, but to an interior recognition that there is no real love uniting them with their brethren, the singular and most important problem at Ephesus.
Even atheists can feed the poor, visit prisoners, heal the sick and a vast array of other things Christians accomplish. So what exactly is it that Christ offers that no one else can other than salvation? UNITY IN LOVE. Dean from Ohio is the first person I've encountered anywhere that has picked up on this most important point that I have been trying to make since my return to the Church 27 years ago. There are Catholics much more faithful than I who reside in far more holiness than I who don't grasp this failure to love in union (communion, the heart of the Eucharistic life), what Jesus commanded of us. Why is that? I'm certain it is the preternatural power of Satan who with his minions focuses almost exclusively on parish priests to convince them to avoid at all costs restoring the fundamental Christian way of life, communion, what from the beginning has been called assembly life. It doesn't need a new name, although it will in many respects look differently once it is restored. But when will that happen? When one pastor decides to obey Jesus' command and truly govern, a model will be established. And presently there just isn't any, and I know of no priest, regardless how holy and dedicated to his calling, who is willing to establish assembly life.
I must continue to insist that this is the major impediment of establishing the new evangelization, and will remain so until a parish priest somewhere begins to trust the Holy spirits’ power to unite us in love.
I want to address this concern of yours: "The second was whether Wesley's understanding of the ‘new birth’ (another phrase he uses, in the same way as Charles Colson would say ‘born again’) is compatible with the Catholic view of salvation. I mean, if salvation is done *to you* by the church's infant baptism and other sacraments that sometimes have no effect on the heart, what do you have to share with others in evangelism? I am still skeptical on this count."
First, a Catholic dying in Christ and being born again in his life does suffice. For example, Jesus ordered his disciples to bring the children to him when adults in their pious religious tradition would turn them away until they were adults. This is part of the reason we embrace baptism of children. Second, I was baptized at birth, radically rejected my faith at age 11, and returned to my faith for one reason only: a short time after my daughter was born I realized I did not have the strength or knowhow to raise a child, so I turned back to my faith and the sacramental life (going to Mass every day and regular confession). Yes, in that cleansed state of faith it is enough for a Catholic.
Five years later I was overwhelmed with an infused grace from God, what I believe many Protestants experience as being born again. I don't see this as something that was done to me, but simply a gift of grace that filled my soul (every person, Christian or not, receives this gift in some degree/fashion). But as a Catholic, my salvation doesn't depend on an experience. In other words, a Catholic is born again in Baptism, and experiencing that born-again fact is not required, for the soul is the ground of our entire lives. There have been saints who insisted they had never had a born again experience. For example, St. Theresa of Avilla tells of an elderly nun who said to her one day that she had never experienced any infused state, and St. Theresa was amazed because she knew with certainty that this elderly nun was a saint.
Jesus said blessed are those who do not see and believe. And a Catholic would expand and say, blessed are those who do not have the born-again experience but still believe. To share this belief as the elderly nun did in her Carmelite Order is enough, for those who genuinely believe, who have faith, reside in love of God and Neighbor.
Thanks for your heartfelt comment; I appreciate it very much. As I said, not everyone remembers when they were born again; that's OK. I don't hold with the importance of feelings; it is enough to know one has believed--placed all one's faith in Christ for salvation. Having an assurance of salvation based on Scripture and the Holy Spirit's inner confirmation is much more important.
The born again event, whether we recognize it or not, is crucial; the "experience" is not. There is always a moment when we are saved and the moment before we were not, whether we understand or recognize it has even happened or not, and it always has to do with belief, not something someone else does to us or for us:
"I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." - Jesus, in John 5:24 (NIV84)
There's no warrant in Scripture for infant baptism having any saving effect at all, although a father and mother and church publicly setting aside a child to God surely cannot go without effect in inviting God's personal work in that child's life. The scriptural pattern is belief, salvation, baptism. However, looking to God to save us covers a multitude of shortcomings in understanding in us all.
Getting back to the point of the article, you have something to share in evangelism, but it appears to me it that is not because of what was done to you as an infant, but because of your humility and faith and coming to God, believing he could rescue you and you could not. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
Thanks again,
Dean
In Him,
David.
Thanks for your humble engagement. And you are right with your summing up: "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life." - Jesus, in John 5:24
In this age of radical division among Christians it has become clear to me is that what is most important for a Christian is to participate in the life of Christ, and this occurs in all denominations, and that if we can embrace that most important commandment of Our Lord to love one another as he loves us, as you have done here, then there truly is hope for Christian unity.
Peace be with you, brother.
I suppose my long history of Twelve Step groups and some other work in the domain of group dynamics has me wondering if these have something rich to offer when deeply interwoven with our sacramental life. I have always felt they have brought me into deeper communion in the Eucharistic banquet.