A couple of days ago the clergy of the Diocese of Pittsburgh gathered for their twice-yearly convocation, on, of course, the theme of the New Evangelization. The featured speaker was Father Howard Bleichner. Father Bleichner is a native Pittsburgher, from St. Basil Parish, Carrick, but has served his entire priesthood as a member of the Society of St. Sulpice, in the service of the education and formation of candidates for the priesthood. He has been a professor of dogmatic theology, author, seminary rector, and advisor to the U.S. bishops. Howie is semi-retired now, but soon to return to Pittsburgh as an assistant and spiritual director at St. Paul Seminary in Crafton.
His talk on the New Evangelization brought a great deal of light to what could be just a cliche or a throw-away Catholic insider line. He addressed the topic from the metaphor of a gun: the shooter (priests and deacons), the target (the audience of NE) and the shell (the content of NE).
To us priests and deacons gathered, Father Bleichner expressed sympathy about the workload we shoulder today. He made comparisons with the priests who were serving his parish in the 1950s as he grew up: the pastor, a canon lawyer who was also the best-read man in the community, and the assistant pastor, who on the side pursued a master's degree in Russian at the University of Pittsburgh. They had the time to read, reflect, think. Today it is different. Yet in the midst of our hours and hours of ministry, what the New Evangelization calls forth from us clergy is authenticity. We must preach the person and message of Jesus Christ from deep within us. We clergy have to be personally renewed ourselves, if we are to ask our congregants and the world around us to embrace Christ. A primary way is to tell stories about our own faith journey, so as to get others to see themselves in a faith journey also.
The audience is vastly different today. Father Bleichner mentioned some of the seminarians he encountered at St. Patrick Seminary, in Menlo Park, California, and at Theological College, in Washington, D.C. they are Christians in a digital age. And any proclamation of the Word of God and Kingdom of God has to be in language they understand. He said we have to be familiar with email--texting--tumbler--flicker--skype--facebook, and all the instruments of the internet. Yet in that digital universe, he said, these young folks are lonely. They desire community. And what can the church give (and knows a great deal about)? Community. We catechists have to know our audience, and then respond using their languages.
The content of the New Evangelization is a timeless message--the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What is new is not the content, but how we deliver it. And he remarked upon the need to touch people through their experience, and then, and only then, lead them to the deeper levels of faith, liturgy, and doctrine.
Father Bleichner concluded by asking us bishops, priests and deacons to "be specific, be particular be practical" in how we proclaim the Good News of Christ where we are, in how we make real in our parishes and communities the New Evangelization.
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