Perspectief 2014-26

Perspectief 40 Prof. dr. Peter De Mey published by Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist founder of the Italian journal La Repubblica , have rendered the pope’s words in a reliable way I limit myself to referring to the joint interview with Pope Francis published by a few leading Jesuit opinion journals at the end of September, 2013 . - Our final source is the pope’s apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium , released on the solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe, November 24, 2013. This reflection by the Pope is meant to harvest the fruits of the 13 th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, which took place under his predecessor in October 2012 and dealt with ‘The New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith’. I will focus on the pope’s broader ecclesiological reflections in chapter 1 and in the beginning of chapter 3, thereby ignoring, for the sake of this presentation, chapter 2 dealing with the challenges of the context, the long reflection on the homily in chapter 3, chapter 4 focusing on ‘the social dimension of evangelization’ with particular attention to ‘the inclusion of the poor in society’ and to ‘peace and social dialogue’ and chapter 5 on “the spirit of the new evangelization” (§ 260). Catholicity I: the missionary outreach to the peripheries of the diverse people of God In his short intervention during the general congregations preceding the last conclave, Cardinal Bergoglio is reported to have said the following: Evangelizing pre-supposes a desire in the Church to come out of herself. The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery. When the Church does not come out of herself to evangelize, she becomes self-referential and then gets sick. 3 At the end of his intervention he expressed the hope that the next pope would “help the Church to go out to the existential peripheries.” In fact the leitmotif in the four texts of 3 Cf. http://www.catholic.com/blog/jimmy-akin/the-4-minute-speech-that-got-pope-francis-elected

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