Making Disciples: Pope Francis’ Paradigm for Mission

This article examines Chapter Three of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, specifically his explanation of the meaning of the mission of God to proclaim the gospel throughout the world of which the church is custodian. Chapter Three addresses the issue of evangelizing in the context of the contemporary world. In a subtle but clear way, it paints a contrast between previous approaches to evangelization with their shortcomings and the call for fresh ones, or a “new evangelization.” In the physical centre of the document, Chapter Three of Evangelii Gaudium ties together the discussion on the contemporary challenges facing mission in the first two chapters, and the practical needs of the undertaking in the last two. It emphasizes the necessity of comprehensive “inculturation” with reference to everything pertaining to evangelization. Finally, it offers guidelines about preaching an effective homily, an important dimension of ongoing catechesis and church transformation.     

Pope Francis: a pastor according to the heart of Christ

Catholic Canon Law stipulates that the Pope is ‘the pastor of the universal Church on earth’. Pope Francis took up the challenge which this statement poses to those exercising the Petrine ministry by asking for prayers that he might be ‘a pastor according to the heart of Christ’. How is a Pope ‘a pastor according to the heart of Christ’? What particular opportunities does the Petrine ministry offer for this? What are the pastoral aspects of the papacy? What does it seem we can expect from Pope Francis in this regard? As this article shows, the task of ‘a pastor according to the heart of Christ’ has an impact on several aspects of the implementation of the Petrine ministry, such as using the Pope’s power in the service of unity, encouraging collegiality in communion as the visible centre of the entire Christian Church in dialogue with other religions, that the world may believe.     

Reforming Theology,Reframing Science

Abstract : What is the role of science in theology? What internal dynamics compel theology to take science seriously? Those are the questions—posed in a characteristically cautious academic fashion. There is a back‐story that needs to be told, however, if we are to get at these questions with the vigor they require: Without radical reformation of theology, there is little chance that we can even begin to work on the agenda that science poses to Christian faith and life. Faith is a journey in which we seek to make sense of the world and our lives in it in the light of the gospel we have received. The gospel is about God, God's presence and redemptive work in Jesus Christ and God's continuing presence in the Holy Spirit. But since it is God's presence and work in the world and for us, the gospel is also about the world and about human being—and that is where science comes in, provoking its reformation. Science is now an irreplaceable source of knowledge about the world and ourselves, and in some respects its knowledge is normative. Scientific knowledge has reshaped our view of the world and ourselves in ways that are so commonly known that it is unnecessary to elaborate. To relate our gospel to our actual lives in the empirical world—that is theology's motivation for taking science seriously. But theology must be reformed and reshaped if it is to be capable of taking science seriously. In this essay we focus on this reforming of theology.     

Laudato Si’: Integral Ecology and Preferential Option for the Poor

This essay examines Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si’ from a Latin American perspective and its reception in this part of the world, especially in Brazil. It focuses on two aspects of Laudato si’: its dialogical approach, and the connection it makes between ecological issues and poverty. These two aspects allow us to understand Francis’s proposal of integral ecology and how the preferential option for the poor becomes central to his perspective. In addition, this essay explains how Latin American theology and pastoral experience are present in Pope Francis’s thought.     

EYES WIDE SHUT: A RESPONSE TO JEAN-LUC MARION's ACCOUNT OF THE JOURNEY TO EMMAUS

In “ ‘They Recognised Him; and He Became Invisible to Them’ ” (Modern Theology, Vol. 18 no. 2 April 2002, pp. 145–152), Marion uses the gospel account of the journey to Emmaus to argue that faith provides a conceptual interpretation of revelation after it has occurred. This response to Marion argues that what he describes is only a derivative sense of faith. In its primary sense, faith is hermeneutic; faith is an existential commitment that makes it possible for revelation to be made manifest. Contra Marion, revelation does not simply impose itself on us; rather, it must be actively received and recognised in the meaning‐filled world of a recipient's faith.     

Chapter Four of Evangelii Gaudium: The Social Dimension of Evangelization

This contribution summarizes the four major sections of Chapter Four of Evangelii Gaudium, and offers reflections about the papal text. It concludes with Pope Francis’ proclamation that the kerygma is at the heart of evangelization, but that the gospel message has necessary social implications. Chief among those implications are treating the poor with justice and building cultures of peace through social dialogue. Francis is not the first to say these things, but he brings a genuine modesty to expectations about the role of the Petrine ministry within the process of evangelization. He also brings a direct and urgent style to articulate the centrality of the social dimension of evangelization.     

The Church in the Contemporary Ecumenical‐Missional Moment: Together towards Life in Dialogue with The Cape Town Commitment and Evangelii Gaudium

The doctrine of the church has always been important to developments in mission and ecumenism – a fact that has been true since the birth of the modern ecumenical movement and is no less so today. This article compares three recent documents – the WCC's Together towards Life (2013), the Lausanne Movement's Cape Town Commitment (2011), and Pope Francis' exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2014) – in light of the rise of a prominent new way of expressing the role of the church in the mission of Christ (missio Dei). This theological development has significantly impacted mission and ecumenical thinking and practice in recent decades, requiring us to consider the church's relationship to mission in a new and important way. The article reveals various aspects of missio Dei theology at work in all three of these documents, and finally looks at the visionary leadership of Pope Francis in calling the Catholic Church to a joyful expression of the gospel of Christ through both words and deeds. EG does not so much address the doctrine of the church as it assumes it. Its concern is far more pastoral: “How do we more effectively and powerfully communicate the gospel in our time?”     

Racism,Xenophobia, and Migration in Italy,a Post-Catholic Country

This paper looks at the present situation of xenophobia and racism in Italy through the lenses of land and displacement. It examines the relationship between the homeland and the phenomenon of migration – internal and international – from the beginning of the unitary unified state of Italy (1861) and the Catholic identity of Italian society. Colonialism opened the door to disdain for Black people, while fascism decreed racial laws against Jews without opposition from the Catholic hierarchy. After the Second World War, the Italian Republic banned any form of racism; but more recently the fear of the stranger has led to intolerance of migrants arriving in Italy because of war, violence, hunger, and poverty in their homelands. While Pope Francis, Italian bishops, and many Catholic associations and individuals have called for an attitude toward migrants based on the gospel, sentiments of racism and hate against foreigners are widely present among the population of a formerly Catholic country.     

The Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today's World

Pope Francis's Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium has much to teach both Catholics and other Christians about the way the gospel needs to be proclaimed in today's world. This article first outlines five implications of the document for gospel preaching: the embodiment of the gospel in the church, a message of joy, a message of mercy and tenderness, a contextualized message, and a message in solidarity with the poor. It then sketches four prospects of these implications in terms of the church. The message calls for a church of “missionary disciples,” a church that is “poor and for the poor,” a de‐clericalized church, and a church of dialogue.     

A Missionary Church: Introduction and Chapter One of Evangelii Gaudium

The article provides a summary and synthesis of the Introduction and Chapter One of Evangelii Gaudium (EG 1–18 and 19–49), where Pope Francis outlines his vision of the church and the program of his pontificate. He envisions the church as fundamentally a missionary church and sees the role of his pontificate as bringing about the transformation of the church into a missionary church. The article concludes by showing that Pope Francis’ vision of the church in EG echoes Vatican II's decree Ad Gentes and is shaped by his experience of the church in Latin America. Thus, it ends with two observations: first, that with EG, Ad Gentes’ statement that “the Church is missionary by her very nature” ceases to be merely a theological declaration and now becomes a concrete pastoral program of action; and second, that EG, where the concerns of the third world are allowed to shape the vision of the universal church, is an eloquent manifestation of the church becoming a World Church.     

The ecumenical vision of Pope Francis: journeying together as fellow pilgrims − ‘the mystery of unity has already begun’

After reviewing some of the unique ecumenical steps taken by Pope Francis, this article examines briefly the three ecumenical paragraphs in Evangelii Gaudium. It presents them in the wider context of this post-synodal exhortation, of the ecumenical gestures and testimonies of Pope Francis, the ecumenical orientation of the Catholic Church and the ecumenical movement as such. It concludes with an outlook on a newly emerging ecumenical paradigm.     

Ecological Themes in Evangelii Gaudium,Together towards Life,and The Cape Town Commitment for Fraternity with God's Creation

The main purpose of this study is to explore the Christian response to the current ecological crisis by examining three statements using a method of theological reflection: Evangelii Gaudium (EG), Together towards Life (TTL), and The Cape Town Commitment (CTC). The three statements request Christians’ care for creation, which is now threatened. In contemplating the ecological crisis, the three statements call attention to the widespread abuse and destruction of the Earth due to an economic system that accelerates consumerism and human greed. To overcome this ecological crisis, Pope Francis recalls the joy of the gospel overflowing from the Trinity; TTL and CTC echo this, drawing their faith tradition from the Trinity with widening understanding of God who is creator, redeemer, and sustainer. The three statements also identify the rest of creation as the new poor in order to recall that the suffering of the poor and the suffering of the earth are one, inseparable from the suffering of Jesus. Finally, this study examines the three statements in relation to the spirituality of ecological themes. In particular, EG and TTL discern a false spirituality that is a form of individualism and a theology of prosperity, but suggest a spirituality that is referred to as either transformative spirituality or mystical fraternity. The study concludes that it is time to turn to the cosmological dimension of spirituality and theology for fraternity with God's creation and the future of the earth community.     

A “Manual” for Escaping Our Vicious Cycles: The Political Relevance of Enemy-Love

In his 2017 World Day of Peace message, Pope Francis made a subtle yet stunning move when he called the Sermon on the Mount the Church’s “manual” for peacemaking at every level. Continuing the “fresh reappraisal” of war that the Second Vatican Council launched, Francis's choice of a term associated with the “Manualist” tradition of natural-law casuistry signaled the Catholic magisterium’s growing commitment both to rooting its teaching on peace and war in biblical sources instead, and to active nonviolence in pursuit of just peace. Given centuries of dismissal of Jesus’s teaching as irrelevant to real-world politics by both Catholics and Protestants, reception of Francis’s signal will benefit both from fresh biblical exegesis and new insights into natural law. Informing the biblical side is the groundbreaking work by Glen Stassen on the triadic structure of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew 5-7, and its practical implications for just peacemaking. Informing the natural-law side are recent findings from social psychology and neuroanthropology on the role of mimesis in human formation. The two fields join in underscoring the creative power of what Stassen called transforming initiatives for breaking cycles of violence.     

世界和谐:全球治理中国际组织的伦理诉求

世界和平与发展需要和谐的国际社会环境,世界和谐是构建性的。以世界和谐为伦理诉求的国际组织在全球治理中发挥着重要的作用,并遵循公正与共生的伦理原则。同时,在实践中正确处理有关主权、人权、国际责任、人道主义等方面的问题,才能真正实现世界和谐。     

In Communion with God’s Sparrow: Incorporating Animal Agency into the Environmental Vision of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laudato Sí</Emphasis>

Although a conventional environmentalism focuses on the health of ecological systems, Pope Francis’s 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Sí invokes St. Francis of Assisi to emphasize God’s love for the individual organism, no matter how small. Decrying the tendency to regard other creatures as mere objects to be controlled and used, Pope Francis urges our enactment of a ‘universal communion’ governed by love. I suggest, however, that Laudato Sí’s animal ethic, as focused on ordering human and animal need, is inadequate to its overarching vision of cross-species communion. This vision requires the sort of cross-species relational bridge implicit in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s view of agency as an irreducibly ‘animate’ expression of choice and afforded further definition in Kenneth J. Shapiro’s conception of a ‘kinesthetic empathy.’ As the phenomenological epistemology underlying both discourses makes possible a rough correspondence, I put these in conversation to demonstrate that a Merleau-Pontyan and reciprocal agency is a constitutive aspect of the fullest sort of cross-species relation, such that recognition of this agency can both deepen our understanding of ‘universal communion’ and foster engagement in its practice.     

‘The Only Creature God Willed For Its Own Sake’: Anthropocentrism in Laudato Si’ and Gaudium et Spes

The Second Vatican Council’s constitution Gaudium et Spes stated that man is ‘the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake’. Post-conciliar Catholic teaching on the environment largely reproduced this anthropocentric theology. Pope Francis’ encyclical letter Laudato Si’, however, appears directly to contradict this well-established tradition with its repeated assertions of the intrinsic value of nonhuman life and its critical approach to the term ‘anthropocentrism’. Questioning this putative discontinuity, this article challenges the perception that Laudato Si’ has definitively rejected anthropocentrism. It suggests that the claim for the intrinsic value of nonhuman life, and the traditional assertion that man is the only creature willed for its own sake, can be seen to converge in light of the traditional theological anthropology of the human being as microcosm. On this view, the centrality of the human person in the order of creation is constituted by its gathering up of the sakes of creatures. The distinctive place of the human does not come at the expense of the rest of creation, but rather is the means of creation’s movement towards the unity and harmony to which God calls it. Laudato Si’ is distinguished not by its rejection of anthropocentrism, but by its refusal to set human and nonhuman over against one another. In contrast, the language of ‘intrinsic value’ is criticised for conceiving created value as a zero-sum game, as though human and nonhuman value are in competition with one another; the language of ‘stewardship’ is criticised for its extrinsicist conception of the human being in the natural order.     

Is the Catholic Church in America Experiencing Internal Secularization? Priests’ Assessments of Pope Francis and the Condition of the Church

This study addressed internal secularization in the Catholic Church by testing the role of several factors in priests’ assessments of the state of the Church in the United States, priests’ views of whether the Church's situation is getting better or worse, and their attitudes toward Pope Francis. Comparisons with identical questions fielded in 2002 revealed a striking pessimistic turn among priests over the last two decades. In addition, regression analyses using the 2021 Survey of American Catholic Priests revealed that “in-house” factors—namely, attitudes toward Pope Francis and perceptions of how well bishops have restored confidence in the Catholic Church following the sexual abuse crisis—most powerfully predicted priests’ current pessimism. On top of this, politically conservative priests and priests ordained more recently tended to be most critical of how Francis is handling his duties, signaling a pronounced tension inside the Catholic Church over religious authority, a defining feature of internal secularization.     

Missionary Discipleship as the Innovation of the Church in Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium

Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium talks about discipleship in a framework of mission and evangelization. Rather than concentrating on the discipleship as such, it uses as a lens the spiritual commitment of conversion to missionary discipleship, challenging all Christians and the whole Church, including institutional structures, to this conversion. In common with the World Council of Churches’ document Together towards Life, Evangelii Gaudium emphasizes a need for Christians to focus on the heart of the Gospel, the love of the trinitarian God, in order to find trustful, dynamic, and transformative mission for the “changing landscapes” of today's global and local phenomena. This article deals with the concept of missionary discipleship in Evangelii Gaudium. To this end it discusses discipleship and its underlying structure of continual conversion as it is represented in both Evangelii Gaudium and the WCC's mission document Together towards Life.     

Mercy as the essence of the Gospel: key themes in Walter Kasper and in the ministry of Pope Francis

This article explores two books by Walter, Cardinal Kasper, who brings to the task wisdom and experience drawn from his ministries as Professor of Theology, Bishop and President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. His major study explores mercy as the essence of the divine, engaging with biblical studies, philosophy, and systematic theology as he lays the foundation for this radical focus. In the second volume, Cardinal Kasper offers a perceptive account of the theological and pastoral perspectives of the ministry of Pope Francis. He characterises the theological approach as kerygmatic, an identification which applies also to his own approach to theology. There is a coincidence of themes and concerns evident in the two studies. Pope Francis has designated 2016 as a Year of Mercy. This article emphasises the importance of this focus on mercy for ecumenical discussion, explores the ecclesiology which results from it and examines the ecumenical implications and opportunities afforded by the Year of Mercy and the 2017 celebration of Martin Luther’s 95 theses with their focus on the question, ‘How may we find a merciful God?’     

Chapter Five of Evangelii Gaudium: Spirit‐Filled Evangelizers

This contribution examines the opening section of Chapter Five of Evangelii Gaudium, arguing that in it Francis sheds light on the mystagogy of discipleship in contemporary times. After providing a brief synopsis of these reasons for a renewed missionary impulse using the idea of the “why, who, and how” of mission as a framework, the author argues that the contribution of the section to the church's mission is its eloquent articulation of a deep spirituality of mission arising from the human condition, both at the personal and communal level. Positing that three features of this spirituality of mission – holistic, anthropological, and Christological – constitute some of the most important points of this section, the article concludes that Evangelii Gaudium is a passionate exhortation toward imbibing a keen sensibility of the humanum to deepen and open Christian faith in proclaiming a gospel of joy and hope and, in the process, bring wholeness to people and the world. It is about missio homini that is rooted in missio Christi and, therefore, leads to missio Dei.