Evangelization of Culture and the Amazon Synod

Evangelization occurs most effectively when the Church engages the culture of those she evangelizes. (Saint John Paul II)

We don’t need to tame the Amazon but to ask ourselves how to safeguard it. We need to give voice to these threatened peoples and pay attention to the poor and to those forgotten by politics.

1. “Synod’s most debated figure is back at Saturday’s ‘Way of the Cross’” by Ines San Martin, from Crux
2. “Saint John Henry Newman and the statuettes thrown into the Tiber River” by Andrea Tornielli, editorial editor for the Dicastery for Communication. The article appeared in Vatican News as well as in L’Osservatore Romano, Italian edition, October 23, 2019. The quotation of Newman on the pagan origin of many Catholic objects and practices, even in the Liturgy, is the point of the article.

According to what I know, the figure represents Mother Nature, who generates life. This life is born of the earth, of Nature, who nourishes the human person. She is mother, because a mother gives life and protects her children. The image is Peruvian and is pictured with an indigenous face, because it was crafted by an indigenous artist and not by a European. The most important point is that, through this image, the indigenous craftsman wants to portray all of us – nature, flora and fauna – as born from, and protected by, the maternal womb. (Sr. Gervis Monteiro, FSP)

The figurine is (or was) neither a pagan idol, nor a representation of the Virgin Mary. Judging from what I’ve read on social media, it seems important, also, that both we and the people we serve do not equate Catholicism with Europe – and especially Rome – or paganism with the Amazon. It may well be that a pastoral opportunity was missed by the Synod organizers, since no context was offered for the use of the figurine.

The most startling innovation in communications technology is, without doubt, the Internet. Like any other new technology, the Internet involves risks which have become tragically clear in cases where it has been used for evil purposes, and this calls for constant vigilance and reliable information. It is not simply a question of moral use of the Internet, but also of the radically new consequences it brings: a loss of the intrinsic value of items of information, an undifferentiated uniformity in messages which are reduced to pure information, a lack of responsible feedback, and a certain discouragement of interpersonal relationships. But, without doubt, the Internet's immense potential can be enormously helpful in spreading the Good News. This has already been proved by various promising initiatives the Church has taken, calling for a responsible creative development on this "new frontier of the Church's mission” (cf. Christifideles Laici, 44). A great deal is at stake. How can we not be present and use information networks, whose screens are at the heart of people's homes, to implant the values of the Gospel there?

The effectiveness of fake news is primarily due to its ability to mimic real news, to seem plausible. Secondly, this false but believable news is ‘captious,’ inasmuch as it grasps people’s attention by appealing to stereotypes and common social prejudices, and by exploiting instantaneous emotions like anxiety, contempt, anger and frustration.

The Second Vatican Council laid the groundwork for precisely what he is asking for in its Decree on the Media of Social Communications, Inter Mirifica: ‘All the children of the Church should join, without delay and with the greatest effort, in a common work to make effective use of the media of social communication …’ (13).

In (Blessed Alberione’s) his own words: ‘All the new means must be the new pulpit, capable of making the voice of Christ the Master heard in every environment!’ At his beatification, Pope Saint John Paul II called him ‘The First Apostle of the New Evangelization.’ What we loved the most about Father Alberione’s story, however, was that he rooted all his media evangelization efforts in a profound interior life nourished by Scripture and the Eucharist. At its core, the Alberione Project is about helping people to become holy.  We are called to love God and put Him first, and that should spill out into everything we do — including the media, which is here, and it’s here to stay.

I am convinced that there is a great need for the whole Church to rediscover the joy of evangelization, to become a community inspired with missionary zeal to make Jesus better known and loved. Naturally, such evangelization must be accompanied by a commitment to sincere and authentic dialogue between cultures and between religions, marked by respect, reciprocity, openness and charity.” He called the Church to enter into dialogue with modern culture and confront the cultural crisis brought on by secularization.  He reminds us that the New Evangelization is not a single formula meant for all circumstances; first and foremost, it is a personal “profound experience of God. Inculturation is the adaptation of the way Church teachings are presented to other, mostly non-Christian, cultures and, in turn, the influence of those cultures on the evolution of these teachings." The inculturation of faith and the evangelization of culture go together as an inseparable pair. Culture is, at its most basic, the collection of goods a society holds in common such as beliefs, language, rituals, and art. Culture gives a group its identity. Culture is shaped by individuals over time as a result of how they live out their lives. Gaudium et Spes says culture is a component of the common good as “the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfillment. Our efforts to evangelize culture require a significant amount of pastoral care. As we learn in “Culture is so natural to man that human nature can only be revealed through culture. In a pastoral approach to culture, what is at stake is for human beings to be restored in fullness to having been created ‘in the image and likeness of God.’ The kingdom which the Gospel proclaims is lived by men who are profoundly linked to a culture, and the building up of the kingdom cannot avoid borrowing the elements of human culture or cultures. Though independent of cultures, the Gospel and evangelization are not necessarily incompatible with them; rather they are capable of permeating them all without becoming subject to any one of them…It is necessary to proclaim the Gospel in the language and culture of men. This Good News addresses human persons in their complex wholeness, spiritual and moral, economic and political, cultural and social. The Church therefore does not hesitate to speak of the evangelization of cultures, that is to say mentalities, customs and behavior. “The new evangelization requires a lucid, serious and ordered effort for the evangelization of culture.” (Ecclesia in America, 70, Toward a Pastoral Approach to Culture)