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Raniero
Cantalamessa and the Call for a New
Evangelization
Part
1 –
Proclaiming
the Kerygma in the Power of the Holy
Spirit
By
Sue Cummins
Note: The
following article is adapted from the
thesis, Raniero
Cantalamessa and the New
Evangelization: Proclaiming
the Kerygma in the Power of the Holy
Spirit, which was submitted to the
School of Theology of Sacred Heart Major
Seminary, Detroit, Michigan USA,
December 2014. Sue
Cummins works full time for the
Archdiocese of Detroit’s Department of
Evangelization and Catechesis as Regional
Catechetical Coordinator.
Introduction
A
simple Franciscan friar made a decision over
thirty years ago to leave his academic post
and dedicate his life to preaching. Since that
time he has impacted the lives of thousands of
men and women all over the world with his
preaching, teaching and writing. Father
Raniero Cantalamessa’s writings, sermons, and
the example of his life offer wisdom,
inspiration, and practical guidance for those
seeking to respond effectively to the call for
a new evangelization.
According to Cantalamessa, the
fundamental rule of evangelization is to
proclaim the gospel message (the kerygma) in
the power of the Holy Spirit.[i] He asserts that the kerygma
should be the essential content of preaching
and that “preaching in the power of the Holy
Spirit” should be the method of
proclamation.[ii]
This paper will explore the
importance of Cantalamessa’s message for the
new evangelization and consider the advice
that he gives to those who are called to
teach and preach the word of God.
Cantalamessa’s emphasis on the importance of
preaching the kerygma in the power of the
Holy Spirit, while being firmly rooted in
the Tradition of the Church, is a prophetic
word for our times. Cantalamessa’s plentiful
references to Sacred Scripture and to the
writings of the Church Fathers provide an
entry point to the rich traditions of the
Church. His message is indispensable to the
success of those who hope to make a
significant contribution to the new
evangelization.
The Call for a New
Evangelization
Evangelization has been at the
heart of the Christian mission since the
time of Jesus and the first Apostles. Jesus’
last words before ascending to heaven
consisted of a mandate to evangelize: “Go
therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt
28:19).[iii]
Throughout his career as a
preacher Cantalamessa has consistently
spoken of the need for a new evangelization.
At the opening address of the 2005
International Alpha Conference Cantalamessa
spoke about a “presence-absence of Jesus in
our time.” He pointed out that in secular
society many books, television shows, and
movies exploit Jesus for the purpose of
lucrative gain, while people of faith do not
always recognize his importance. Cantalamessa said that
Christ is present in our culture, but he is
often absent or even excluded from the lives
of many who call themselves Christians.[iv] Many people believe in some
kind of a Supreme Being who created the
world and that there is some kind of life
beyond death, but they do not have Christ as
the object of their faith: “Sociological
surveys point to this fact even in countries
and regions of ancient Christian tradition,
like the one where I was born in central
Italy. Jesus is practically absent in this
kind of religiosity.”[v]
Cantalamessa often makes
reference to sociological surveys; there are
many statistics available that back up and
illustrate his thesis. Sherry Weddell makes
some very compelling observations about
research that has been done on religious
belief in the United States.[vi]
Based on an analysis of data available
through the Pew Forum on Religious and
Public Life (2008) she points out that
religious identity in the United States is
very fluid: “53 percent of American adults
have left the faith of their childhood at
some point; 9 percent have left and
returned.”[vii]
The data shows that those who identify
themselves as unaffiliated are the
“fastest-growing religious demographic” in
the United States – one in every six
Americans.[viii] Of
self-identified Catholics only 48 percent
are sure that it is possible to have a
personal relationship with God.[ix]
Through her work with Catherine of Siena
Institute[x]
Weddell has had an opportunity to meet with
and interview thousands of Catholics from
across the United States, many of them
serving as parish and diocesan leaders. She
and her colleagues have asked many of them
to describe their “lived relationship with
God.” Weddell points out that many of the
Catholics who are asked to describe their
relationship with God are unable to do so:
The majority of
Catholics in the United States are
sacramentalized but not evangelized. They do
not know that an explicit personal
attachment to Christ – personal discipleship – is normative Catholicism as taught
by the apostles and reiterated time and time
again by the popes, councils, and saints of
the Church.[xi]
Weddell’s
experience of working with Catholics across
the United States has led her to the
conclusion that “few Catholics have ever
heard of the kerygma . . . and even fewer
know what the kerygma contains or have heard
it preached clearly.”[xii]
The statistics
relating to youth and religious belief are
even more sobering. The National Study of
Youth and Religion (NSYR)
that was
conducted between the years 2003 and 2005
examined the spirituality of adolescents
in the United States. The findings of this
study were reported by Christian Smith in
a book he co-authored with Melinda Lundquist Denton.[xiii] Smith
observes that most of the adolescents
interviewed in the study said that they
believed in God and they identified their
faith as being the faith of their parents.[xiv] Further questioning revealed that
many who identified themselves as
religious, when asked about specific
beliefs, said that they did not have any. Of
those who said they held specific beliefs,
very few were able to describe them. [xv]
Most teens interviewed did not believe in a
Triune God; they did not embrace the gospel
of the incarnate Jesus, Son of God,
crucified and raised from the dead. Thomas
V. Sanabria used the data from NSYR to
compare the religious beliefs held by
Catholic youth to those held by Protestant
youth. His analysis indicates that Catholic
youth were less grounded in the basic tenets
of Christianity than their Protestant
counterparts.[xvi]
Smith contends that “the
de-facto dominant religion among
contemporary U.S. teenagers is what might be
called ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
(MTD).’”[xvii]
Smith describes the basic tenets of this MTD
“religion” as a creed that consists of the
following tenets of faith:
1.
A God exists who created and
watches over life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good,
nice, and fair to each other.
3. The central goal of life is
to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God
is not particularly involved in one’s life
except when needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven
when they die.[xviii]
Further analysis of the data
from the National Study of Youth and
Religion as it relates to Hispanic youth,
along with the results of further study and
supplementary interviews, shows that
Hispanic teens are not immune to MTD.
Fourteen out of the sixteen Hispanic youth
who were interviewed in supplemental
interviews held to the tenets of MTD,
confirming the findings of the National
Study. [xix]
Kenda Creasy Dean revisited the
results of the National Study of Youth and
Religion.[xx] She writes that the evidence of
the NSYR indicates that not only teenagers,
but also many congregations of adults that
call themselves Christian are “almost
Christian”:
After two and a
half centuries of shacking up with “the
American dream,” churches have perfected a
dicey codependence between consumer-driven
therapeutic individualism and religious
pragmatism. These theological proxies gnaw,
termite-like, at our identity as the Body of
Christ, eroding our ability to recognize
that Jesus’ life of self-giving love
directly challenges the American gospel of
self-fulfillment and self-actualization.[xxi]
Dean
recognizes the need for “nurturing a
bilingual faith” that includes an ability to
communicate with those who are converted and
well-versed in Christianity, and an aptitude
for speaking with those who are not well
versed in the Christian faith. She is
concerned that many churchgoers have not
heard the Gospel presented to them in a way
that they can make it fully their own. She
sees a need for youth leaders and other
church members to learn how to communicate
in the language of global postmodern secular
society in order to translate and
effectively pass on the truths of our
Christian faith.[xxii]
While
most of the statistics cited thus far are
related to religion in the United States, it
is worth noting that Europe is even further
down the path of secularization. In his
essay “Evangelization of Europe?
Observations on a Church in Peril,” Peter
Hunermann cites some sobering statistics
that illustrate the decline of numbers of
those involved in the Church in Europe, and
the shrinking numbers of men and women who
identify themselves as Christian.[xxiii] He
points out that behind the decline in
numbers there is an even more important
shift in the worldview held by the greater
part of the population. Hunermann
presents the thesis that the crisis of the
Church in Europe is related to the
“discontinuity” that exists between the
tenets of modernity and the Church.[xxiv] He
makes a valid point that one of the reasons
for the crisis in the Church is the drastic
change that has come about in the attitudes
and the practices of modern society.
Cultural Trends and
Challenges to Evangelization
Cantalamessa is very aware of
the challenges that modern society presents
to evangelization. In a series of Advent
sermons given to the papal household in
2010,[xxv] he identifies three cultural
trends of our modern age that contribute to
the state of the present-day Church:
scientism, secularism, and rationalism –
all
leading to relativism. In his first Advent sermon he
outlines four main theses of scientism:
1. Science, and in particular
cosmology, physics and biology, are the only
objective and serious ways of knowing
reality.
2. This way of knowing is
incompatible with faith that is based on
assumptions which are neither demonstrable
nor falsifiable.
3. Science has demonstrated the
falsehood, or at least the lack of necessity
of the theory of God.
4. Almost the totality or at least
the great majority of scientists are
atheists.[xxvi]
Cantalamessa points out that,
contrary to the fourth tenet, many
scientists believe in God, often as a result
of their scientific analysis. Still, the
influence of atheistic scientists on modern
thought should not be underestimated.[xxvii] Of particular concern to
Cantalamessa is the denial of the importance
and uniqueness of human beings in the
created world that leads to a trivialization
of their role and of the centrality of Jesus
Christ as God made man. He sees
non-believing scientists, biologists and
cosmologists in particular to be in
competition with one another to see who can
go furthest in “affirming the total
marginality and insignificance of man in the
universe and in the great sea of life
itself.”[xxviii]
The second Advent sermon deals
with the problem of secularism. Cantalamessa
explains that the words secular and
secularization can be used in a variety of
ways and that their connotations are not
always negative:
Secularization is a complex and
ambivalent phenomenon. It can indicate the
autonomy of earthly realities and the
separation between the Kingdom of God and
the kingdom of Caesar and, in this sense,
not only is it not against the Gospel but
finds in it one of its profound roots;
however it can also indicate a whole
ensemble of attitudes contrary to religion
and to faith; hence, the use of the term
secularism is preferred. Secularism is to
secularization what scientism is to
scientific nature and rationalism to
rationality.[xxix]
Secularism
with its focus on the here and now diverts
the attention of men and women away from the
importance of eternal truths. It results in
a life that is oriented around the material
world where spiritual realities are ignored
or denied. There is no reference to a
transcendent God who is creator and
sustainer of all life; there is no fear of a
final judgment or anticipation of eternal
happiness that surpasses any happiness that
could be known in this life. Life revolves
around experiencing pleasure and avoiding
pain.
According
to Cantalamessa, the nineteenth century saw
a decline in the belief in eternal life:
“Little by little, suspicion, forgetfulness
and silence fell on the word eternity.
Materialism and consumerism did the rest in
the opulent society, making it seem
inconvenient to still speak of eternity
among educated persons.”[xxx]
Today even Christians have lost focus on
spiritual realities; those Christians who do
believe in eternal life rarely speak of it.
Many have a very vague or distorted picture
of what Sacred Scripture teaches about the
spiritual world and the life that awaits
them beyond the death of their bodies.
Cantalamessa recognizes the negative effect
that secularism and the lack of concern
about eternal life has on Christian faith:
The fall of the horizon of
eternity, or of eternal life, has the effect
on Christian life of sand thrown on a flame:
it suffocates it, extinguishes it. Faith in
eternal life is one of the conditions of the
possibility of evangelization. “If for this
life only we have hoped in Christ, we are
the most pitiable people of all,” exclaims
St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:19).[xxxi]
There
are different versions of secularism. The
NSYR aptly illustrates the current version
of secularism that is prevalent in the
United States. This version recognizes the
existence of God and looks to some kind of
life after death, but it fails to recognize
the possibility that entering paradise may
require more than being a “nice person.” The
need to repent of sin and to live according
to the gospel is not recognized. There is a
lot of confusion about moral living; most of
life is taken up with concern for fulfilling
temporal needs and desires.[xxxii]
Cantalamessa
ends his Second Advent sermon with the
reminder that there is life after death and,
whether they realize it or not, all men and
women will live forever. He unabashedly
points out that it is important to
understand that the nature of eternal life
will not be the same for all: “the passage
from time to eternity is not straight and
equal for all. There is a judgment to face
and a judgment that can have two very
different results, hell or paradise.”[xxxiii]
Many who call themselves Christians have not
really understood and embraced the truth
about God and what is necessary for
salvation. Many do not even call themselves
Christians. Regardless of religious beliefs
or lack of belief, all will one day stand
before the Lord Jesus Christ awaiting
judgment. All will live forever, but not all
will live forever in the joy of full
communion with their creator.
It is important, therefore, to
realize the high stakes involved in the call
to evangelize. Motivation to evangelize
wanes when there is no proclamation of the biblical
truths regarding heaven and hell. Ralph
Martin points out that the watering down of
these biblical truths led to a decline of
evangelization after Vatican II. He says
that these truths need to be stated clearly
in order to motivate those called to
evangelize:
The reasons
for the command [to evangelize] – namely, that the eternal destinies
of human beings are really at stake and for
most people the preaching of the gospel can
make a life-or-death, heaven-or-hell
difference – need to be unashamedly stated. This
is certainly why Jesus often spoke of the
eternal consequences of not accepting his
teaching – being lost forever, hell – and did not just give the command
to evangelize.[xxxiv]
This does not mean that the
evangelist always confronts secularism with
arguments laced with fire and brimstone. The
love and mercy of God, the saving grace of
Jesus, and the joy of life in the Holy
Spirit are biblical truths that need
emphasis in our day.
The message of the existence of
a loving God who longs for a relationship
with human beings who were created in love
is an attractive and compelling message. Cantalamessa
points out that there is an inner longing
for life beyond this life that is intrinsic
in all human beings. Presenting a positive
view of life after death and living a life
that is permeated with resurrection hope is
an important aspect of evangelization: “As
for scientism, speaking also of secularism,
the most effective answer does not consist
in combating the contrary error, but in
making shine again before men the certainty
of eternal life, appealing to the intrinsic
force that truth possesses when it is
accompanied by the testimony of life.”[xxxv]
Cantalamessa addresses the
obstacle of rationalism in his final Advent
sermon of 2010.[xxxvi]
The problem of rationalism is a distorted
view of reason that makes reason supreme,
higher even than God and spiritual realities
that cannot be contained by reason.
Rationalism insists that actions and beliefs
should be governed by reason alone, and that
reason is the primary source of knowledge
and truth. Cantalamessa is not denying that
reason is important; he recognizes that as
Christians we are called to use our reason
and that reason is not in conflict with
faith. His point is that reason cannot reign
supreme over God and that without
recognition of the power and sovereignty of
God, reason falls short.
Cantalamessa echoes St. John
Paul II, who wrote about the relationship
between faith and reason in his encyclical
letter Faith and Reason, Fides et Ratio, promulgated
in September 1998. In this encyclical St.
John Paul II states that there is “no reason for
competition of any kind between reason and
faith: each contains the other, and each has
its own scope for action” (FR,
17). Reason has its place but reason alone
is not sufficient:
The world and all that happens
within it, including history and the fate of
peoples, are realities to be observed,
analyzed and assessed with all the resources
of reason, but without faith ever being
foreign to the process. Faith intervenes not
to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce
its scope for action, but solely to bring
the human being to understand that in these
events it is the God of Israel who acts.
This is to say that with the light of reason
human beings can know which path to take,
but they can follow that path to its end,
quickly and unhindered, only if with a
rightly tuned spirit they search for it
within the horizon of faith. (FR,
16)
The
artificial attempt to separate faith and
reason takes away from the God-given
capacity of human beings to understand the
truth about the world and its Creator.
Cantalamessa
calls our attention to an address that John
Henry Newman gave at Oxford University in
December of 1831, entitled “The Usurpations
of Reason.”[xxxvii]
Newman pointed out several instances where
reason had been allowed to rule outside of
the appropriate scope of its authority. For Cantalamessa, the
title of Newman’s address, “The Usurpations
of Reason,” illustrates an understanding of
the negative effects of distorted
rationalism:
In a note of
comment on this address, written in the
preface to its third edition in
1871, the author explains what he intends
with such an expression. Understood by
usurpation of reason is “a certain popular
abuse of the faculty, viz., when it occupies
itself upon religion, without a due familiar
acquaintance with its subject-matter, or
without a use of the first principles proper
to it. This so-called Reason is in Scripture
designated 'the wisdom of the world'; that
is, the reasoning about Religion based upon
secular maxims, which are intrinsically
foreign to it. [xxxviii]
In Newman’s scenario reason
takes an “imperialistic” role over religious
beliefs; all actions and beliefs must submit
as subjects to reason. Cantalamessa proposes
an additional political metaphor, that of
isolationism, as an example of an alternate
way in which rationalism distorts the use of
reason:
Newman's analysis has new and
original features; he brings to light the so
to speak imperialist tendency of reason to
subject every aspect of reality to its own
principles. One can, however, consider
rationalism also from another point of view,
closely connected with the preceding one. To
stay with the political metaphor used by
Newman, we can describe it as the attitude
of isolationism, of reason's shutting itself
in on itself. This does not consist so much
of invading the field of another, but of not
recognizing the existence of another field
outside its own. In other words, in the
refusal that some truth might exist outside
that which passes through human reason.[xxxix]
Cantalamessa is referring here
to the widespread tendency to recognize as
real only that which can be proven by the
scientific method; anything beyond the scope
of scientific proof is ignored or denied.
Another aspect of the
usurpation of reason relates to morality.
Newman points out that the moral principles
of human beings are not necessarily tied up
with their intellectual principles. A very
intelligent person who possesses a great
ability to exercise reason might lead a
deplorable moral life.[xl]
Reason can be used as a tool for religious
purposes, and reason may sometimes lead to
religious truths, but religious truths do
not need to be established by rational proof
the way that the laws of physics might be
subjected to the scientific method.[xli]
Religious beliefs are not subordinate to
reason as their imperial ruler. According to
Fides et Ratio, when we are
dealing with God, the truth about God, and
the way of life that God wants for his
people, we are dealing with something that
goes beyond reason:
On the basis of this deeper
form of knowledge, the Chosen People
understood that, if reason were to be fully
true to itself, then it must respect certain
basic rules. The first of these is that
reason must realize that human knowledge is
a journey which allows no rest; the second
stems from the awareness that such a path is
not for the proud who think that everything
is the fruit of personal conquest; a third
rule is grounded in the “fear of God” whose
transcendent sovereignty and provident love
in the governance of the world reason must
recognize. (FR, 18)
Cantalamessa combines the
elements of Newman’s analysis by showing
that the cultural trends of scientism,
secularism, and rationalism lead to another
obstacle to evangelization – relativism. There are different
forms of relativism. Protagorean relativism
holds that what is perceived is true to the
person who perceives it and that truth does
not exist independently of what the
perceiver says is true. There are no
objective standards that can be used to
determine truth; knowledge and sense
perception are relative to the perceiver. A
saying attributed to the Sophist Protagoras
describes the mentality of many modern men
and women: “Man is the measure of all
things; of things that are that they are;
and of things that are not that they are
not.”[xlii]
The lack of conviction among so
many people that there exist objective
standards of truth makes it difficult to
appeal to natural law or to revelation as a
measure of truth. The danger is that
individuals without a conviction that truth
exists will not search for truth; they may
not concern themselves with the existence of
God and God’s will for their lives. In a
Christmas address given to the Roman Curia
in December, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI spoke
about the importance of keeping the search
for God alive: “As the first step of
evangelization we must seek to keep this
quest alive; we must be concerned that human
beings do not set aside the question of God,
but rather see it as an essential question
for their lives. We must make sure that they
are open to this question and to the
yearning concealed within it.”[xliii]
Acutely aware of the difficulty
of the task that the Church faces in
responding to the call to the new
evangelization – within and without –
Cantalamessa,
like Newman, advises his listeners to
maintain hope and joy. He
points out that it is important to be aware
of the challenges but expedient to avoid
negativity or despair and to recognize the
many signs of God’s presence in the world.[xliv] He
points to the many positive things happening
in the Church: the outpouring of charisms;
the increased participation of the laity in
parishes and lay movements; the Catholic
organizations and individuals who are
dedicated to the care of the poor; those who
have been martyred for their faith; the
“holy” and “learned” Popes who have served
the Church for the past century and a half;
the desire for unity and the progress made
in ecumenical relations.[xlv] Cantalamessa
speaks openly about the difficulties in the
world and in the Church, but he also
provides encouragement and his message is
full of hope. He
offers many insights into the content and
the methods that are necessary for the
success of the new evangelization. The next
chapter will explore Cantalamessa’s message
about the content of the Christian message
and the need to proclaim the kerygma, the
good news of salvation in Jesus.
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Sue
Cummins is a member of Word of
Life Community and Bethany
Association. She lives in
Detroit, Michigan USA and
teaches as part-time faculty at
Sacred Heart Major
Seminary. Susan has a
concentration in spirituality
with a focus on the work of St.
Ignatius and St. John of the
Cross. She worked for fifteen
years as part of an
international mission team
giving retreats, training, and
spiritual direction to leaders
of Christian communities in
Central America, Mexico, Spain,
Europe, and the Middle
East. She has over ten
years of experience working with
youth as senior staff with
University Christian Outreach
(UCO) and Youth Works Detroit
and as a high school
teacher. Susan is fluent
in Spanish. She worked as
director of a bi-lingual
Religious Education Program at
St. Gabriel Catholic Church in
Southwest Detroit from 2005 to
2012. Sue has recently
been hired to work full time for
the Archdiocese of Detroit’s
Department of Evangelization and
Catechesis as Regional
Catechetical Coordinator.
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Footnotes
[i] Raniero Cantalamessa, The Mystery of God’s Word, trans.
Alan Neame (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical
Press, 1994), 54. Tanslated from Chi
ha parlato nel Figlio: Il mistero
della parola di Dio (Milan:
Editrice Ancora , 1984).
[iii] All
biblical citations are from the New
Revised Standard Version unless
otherwise indicated.
[iv] Cantalamessa, “Faith Which
Overcomes the World,” Opening Address
for the International Alpha Conference,
June 2005 (London: Alpha International,
2005), 2.
[vi] Sherry Weddell, Forming
Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and
Following Jesus (Our Sunday Visitor:
Huntington, IN, 2012).
[ix] Sherry Weddell, Forming
Intentional Disciple, 44.
[xi] Weddell, Forming
Intentional Disciples, 46.
[xiii] Christian Smith and
Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual
Lives of American Teenagers (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
[xiv] Smith
and Denton, Soul Searching, 122.
[xv] Ibid., 132-33.
[xv] Sherry Weddell, Forming
Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and
Following Jesus (Our Sunday Visitor:
Huntington, IN, 2012).
[xv] Ibid.,
19.
[xv] Ibid.
[xv] Sherry Weddell, Forming
Intentional Disciple, 44.
[xv] Website for Catherine of Siena
Institute, accessed December 3, 2014, http://www.siena.org/.
[xv] Weddell, Forming
Intentional Disciples, 46.
[xv] Ibid., 67.
[xv] Christian Smith and
Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual
Lives of American Teenagers (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
[xv] Smith
and Denton, Soul Searching, 122.
[xv] Ibid., 132-33.
[xvi] Thomas
V. Sanabria, “Personal Religious Beliefs
and Experiences,” in Pathways of Hope and
Faith Among Hispanic Teens: Pastoral
Reflections and Strategies Inspired by
the National Study of Youth and
Religion,
ed. Ken
Johnson-Mondragon (Stockton,
CA: Instituto Fe
y Vida, 2007),
41-79. For
example 43% of Hispanic and 47% of white
Catholics definitely believed in life
after death compared to 53% of Hispanic
Protestants and 58% of white
Protestants. Of Hispanic
Catholic youth 70% believe in a judgment
day; white Catholics score lower at 66%
compared to Hispanic Protestants at 92%
and white Protestants at 82%. When asked
about reincarnation, 15% of the Hispanic
Catholic youth in the study believed in
reincarnation as did 14% of white
Catholics; this compares to 5% of
Hispanic Protestants and 8% of white
Protestant youth.
[xvii] Smith and Lundquist, Soul Searching,166.
[xix] Johnson-Mondragon, Pathways of Hope, 73.
[xx] Kenda Creasy Dean, Almost Christian: What the
Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the
American Church (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010).
[xxii] Creasy
Dean, Almost Christian, 112-30. See also a paper
written by Edwin Hernandez with Rebecca
Burwell and Jeffery Smith, “A Study of
Hispanic Catholics: Why Are They Leaving
the Catholic Church? Implications for
the New Evangelization,” in The
New Evangelization, 109-142.
[xxiii] Peter
Hunermann, “Evangelization of Europe?
Observations on a Church in Peril,” in Robert J. Schreiter,
ed., Mission in the Third
Millennium (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 2001), 57-80.
[xxv] Cantalamessa’s Advent
sermons and other sermons and articles
written by him can be found on his
website, accessed
December 3, 2014, http://www.cantalamessa.org.
[xxix] Cantalamessa,
“2nd Advent Sermon, 2010.”
[xxx] Cantalamessa,
“2nd Advent Sermon, 2010.”
[xxxii] Smith
and Lindquist, Soul
Searching, 163.
[xxxiii] Cantalamessa,
2nd Advent Sermon, 2010.
[xxxiv] Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved? What
Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its
Implications for the New
Evangelization (Grand Rapids: W. B.
Eerdmans Publishing, 2012),
204.
[xxxv] Cantalamessa,
2nd
Advent Sermon, 2010.
[xxxviii]
Cantalamessa, 3rd Advent Sermon, 2010.
Newman’s quote is
from Oxford University Sermons, London, 1900, 54-74.
[xxxix] Cantalamessa,
3rd Advent Sermon, 2010.
Newman’s quote is
from Oxford University Sermons, London, 1900, 54-74.
[xl] Newman,
“The Usurpations of
Reason.
[xli] See Fides et
Ratio 42: “Reason in fact is not
asked to pass judgment on the contents
of faith, something of which it would be
incapable, since this is not its
function. Its function is rather to find
meaning, to discover explanations which
might allow everyone to come to a
certain understanding of the contents of
faith.”
[xlii] Peter
A. Angeles, The Harper
Collins Dictionary of Philosophy
(Harper Collins: NY, 1992), 261.
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