A former Dominican church in the Netherlands, now a bookstore.
The following passages are from the Introduction to the Lineamenta of the 13th Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which will meet next year to discuss the "New Evangelization".
***
The transmission of the faith is never an individual, isolated undertaking, but a communal, ecclesial event. It must not consider responses as a matter of researching an effective plan of communication and even less analytically concentrating on the hearers, for example, the young. Instead, these responses must be done as something which concerns the one called to perform this spiritual work. It must become what the Church is by her nature. In this way, the matter is placed in context and treated correctly and not extrinsically, namely, by placing at the centre of discussion the entire Church in all she is and all she does. Perhaps in this way the problem of unfruitfulness in evangelization and catechesis today can be seen as an ecclesiological problem which concerns the Church's capacity, more or less, of becoming a real community, a true fraternity and a living body, and not a mechanical thing or enterprise.
"The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature." This statement from the Second Vatican Council summarizes the Church's Tradition in a simple and complete way. The Church is missionary, because she finds her origin in the mission of Jesus Christ and the mission of the Holy Spirit, according to the plan of God the Father. Furthermore, the Church is missionary, because she returns and relives her beginnings by proclaiming and witnessing to this revelation of God and by gathering together the scattered People of God, so that in this way she might fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah which the Church Fathers applied to her: "Spread your tent, extend the curtain of your dwelling without saving, lengthen the cord, strengthen your poles, so that you might be widened to the right and to the left and your descendants will possess nations, will populate once deserted cities" (Is 54:2, 3).
***
We are living in a particularly significant, historic moment of change, of tension and of a loss of equilibrium and points of reference. These times are increasingly forcing us to live immersed in the present and in passing things which make it increasingly difficult for us to listen, to transmit an appreciation for the past and to share values on which to build the future for new generations. In this context, the Christian presence and the work of the Church's institutions are not easily perceived and, at times, are even looked upon with great reservation. In the last decades, repeated criticism has been levelled at the Church, Christians and the God we proclaim. Consequently, evangelization is facing new challenges which are putting accepted practices in question and are weakening customary, well-established ways of doing things. In a word, the situation is requiring the Church to consider, in an entirely new way, how she proclaims and transmits the faith. The Church, nevertheless, is not approaching these challenges totally unprepared. She has at her disposal the fruits of former assemblies of the Synod of Bishops which were specifically dedicated to the topic of the proclamation and transmission of the faith, in particular, the Apostolic Exhortations Evangelii nuntiandi and Catechesi tradendae. In the two related synodal assemblies, the Church lived a significant moment of self-evaluation and revitalization of her mandate to evangelize.
