The October 2012 Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization failed to answer a critical question for the future of Catholic social teaching, Ryan told a lecture hall filled with high school kids, graduate students and grandmothers at Toronto’s Regis College March 20.
“We’re not likely to have an authoritative document on the new evangelization from Pope Benedict in the near future,” lamented Ryan.
Benedict’s thinking on the essential link between evangelization and social justice is clear, highly developed and up-front in his last papal encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. However, the bishops shied away from the topic in four documents produced for last fall’s synod, Ryan said. While the former pope proposed a “theological and pastoral effort to engage what it means to be fully human in a globalizing world,” the synod fathers made very few and ambiguous statements about “works of charity.”
Overall, the synod’s engagement with the social teaching of the Church was “weak,” he said.
Before Benedict’s Feb. 11 announcement of retirement Ryan was waiting to see how the Pope might fill in the gaps regarding social teaching and new evangelization.
“I would be very happy if the new Pope picks up where Benedict left off,” Ryan said.
He is confident that Pope Francis shares Benedict’’s understanding that the social teaching and mission of the Church is what the new evangelization needs to communicate — and to communicate it more often by works than words.
“For Benedict it’s the fullness of love, planted in our human hearts by divine love,” Ryan said. “In our culture, charity is limited to a direct response to the poor and needy. This same ambiguity arises in the use of the phrase ‘works of charity’ in the working documents of the then-upcoming synod.”
A new evangelization without the Church’s tradition of social teaching won’t make sense, he said.
“Social teaching teaches us the right relations we must develop between God and all humans, between humans themselves and between humans and nature,” said Ryan. “It’s a framework of the global common good and social justice for all.”
There’s no debate on the purpose of the new evangelization.
“A new evangelization, a phrase first used by Pope Paul VI, is not new in its content,” he said. “The content is always the same. It’s the Gospel.”
But if the content doesn’t change, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing new in it.
“(It means) new methods and means of transmitting the good news to the people in our changed and troubled world, with new enthusiasm and joy and hope.”
If bishops fear that talking about social justice is divisive then it will be, said Ryan. By keeping the focus on the Gospel the bishops will find Church social teaching connects with ordinary people. Ryan suspects that ability to bridge the gap between Church documents and the lives of ordinary people will define Pope Francis’ approach.
“I’m sure Vatican officials are tearing their hair out because they don’t know what he will do next.”