Because materialism, secularism and individualism are “rapidly enveloping our society and culture,” Washington Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl urged Catholics to actively participate in the church’s new evangelization efforts “to proclaim the Gospel anew.”
Cardinal Wuerl said in an address at The Catholic University of America: “This is a time when voices need to be heard that says there is an anchor, there is a basis, a moral foundation to the choices we make.” The “subtle influences” of materialism, secularism and individualism, he added, “need to be cleared away before we can plant the seeds” of faith. Cardinal Wuerl spoke on “Why the New Evangelization Now?” to the D.C. Council of the Knights of Columbus. The March 28 address was attended by nearly 200 Knights along with university students and staff.
Quoting Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Wuerl said the new evangelization is “an effort to re-propose the Gospel — what we do and how we express our faith” — to those who already know the faith but for whom it holds no interest. Last June, the pope announced that he was establishing a pontifical council to promote “a renewed evangelization” to people “living through a progressive secularization of society and a kind of eclipse of the sense of God.”
Two months later, Cardinal Wuerl took up Pope Benedict’s call and issued a pastoral letter, “Disciples of the Lord: Sharing the Vision,” in which he outlined his vision for a new evangelization. In that pastoral, the cardinal urged the faithful to “invite others to hear once again, maybe all over again for the first time, the exciting invitation of Jesus — ‘Come, follow me.'” In his address to the Knights of Columbus, Cardinal Wuerl said “the new evangelization is not a program, and I have to say this over and over again. It is a mode of thinking, seeing and experiencing.”
WASHINGTON (CNS)