{"id":345,"date":"2007-12-14T07:07:01","date_gmt":"2007-12-14T07:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/todays-doctrinal-note.html"},"modified":"2007-12-14T07:07:01","modified_gmt":"2007-12-14T07:07:01","slug":"todays-doctrinal-note","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/todays-doctrinal-note.html","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Doctrinal Note"},"content":{"rendered":"

The text<\/a>\u00a0of the “summary points”<\/p>\n

1. The Doctrinal Note<\/em> is devoted principally to an exposition of the Catholic Church\u2019s understanding of the Christian mission of evangelization, which is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the word “Gospel” translates “evangelion” in the Greek New Testament. “Jesus Christ was sent by the Father to proclaim the Gospel, calling all people to conversion and faith. \u2018Go out into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every creature\u2019 (Mk 16,15).” [n. 1]
\n2. The Doctrinal Note<\/em> cites Pope John Paul II\u2019s Encyclical Letter “The Mission of the Redeemer” in recalling that “\u2018Every person has the right to hear the Good News [Gospel] of the God who reveals and gives himself in Christ, so that each one can live out in its fullness his or her proper calling.\u2019 This right implies the corresponding duty to evangelize.” [n. 2]
\n3. Today there is “a growing confusion” about the Church\u2019s missionary mandate. Some think “that any attempt to convince others on religious matters is a limitation of their freedom,” suggesting that it is enough to invite people “to act according to their consciences”, or to “become more human or more faithful to their own religion”, or “to build communities which strive for justice, freedom, peace and solidarity”, without aiming at their conversion to Christ and to the Catholic faith.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Others have argued that conversion to Christ should not be promoted because it is possible for people to be saved without explicit faith in Christ or formal incorporation in the Church. Because “of these problems, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has judged it necessary to public the present Note<\/em>.” [n. 3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The prepared statements of the curial members at the press conference, including Cardinal Arinze:<\/a><\/p>\n

Since I come from a country in Africa South of the Sahara, I would like to apply some anthropological implications of evangelization discussed by this Doctrinal Note to areas in Africa South of the great desert. In these regions, African Traditional Religion has been the dominant religious and cultural context for centuries. It is also from that context that most converts to Christianity in these countries in the past two hundred years have come.
\nAfrican Traditional Religion, making allowance for local variations, is generally marked by belief in one God, in spirits good and bad and in ancestors, with consequent worship which never puts the spirits and ancestors at the same level as the one God who is Creator. This traditional religion permeates a culture which has a marked sense of the sacred, which believes in life after death, which sets high value on marriage, family and human life, and which has a marked sense of community and desire for celebration.
\nThe Christian missionaries found this religious context a providential preparation, a fertile ground to bring the Gospel, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. Reflecting on this Doctrinal Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, one can make the following four observations on evangelization in these areas marked by African Traditional Religion:
\n1. Missionary proposal of faith in Jesus Christ pays tribute to the human freedom of the African and to his capacity to know and to love that which is good and true. “The obedience of faith” (Rm 16:26) which is given to God who reveals, not only does not do violence to human intellect and will, but it rather ennobles them. To help another human being who freely listens, reasons and reflects, to accept the Message of salvation in Jesus Christ, is an encounter which does honour both to the missionary and to the convert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The text\u00a0of the “summary points” 1. The Doctrinal Note is devoted principally to an exposition of the Catholic Church\u2019s understanding of the Christian mission of evangelization, which is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the word “Gospel” translates “evangelion” in the Greek New Testament. “Jesus Christ was sent by the Father to proclaim the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nToday's Doctrinal Note - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/12\/todays-doctrinal-note.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Today's Doctrinal Note - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The text\u00a0of the “summary points” 1. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}