I recently overheard a conversation between two Catholics about evangelization. They seemed unequivocally against it, at least in its more typical form of intentionally sharing the Gospel with non-Christians. To them, in this age of human rights, active evangelization necessarily means the compromise of another person’s religious freedom. To promote one’s own religion, to them, is to degrade someone else’s notions of the numinous.
The discomfort modern Catholics stereotypically feel with the practice of evangelization can make this an awkward time of the liturgical year, this time of Ascension and Pentecost, when Jesus gives the Great Commission, that “repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Luke 24:47) It’s true that, on the surface, we Catholics don’t seem to have much in common with the missionary branches of Christianity, like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose dogged evangelization efforts relate closely to their belief that the end times are now, lending an effective urgency to Christ’s command to go out in his name to all the world.
Continue reading “The Great Commission in an age of disaffiliation”