FYI - According to the Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study, Catholics are more likely to “avoid discussing religion” than members of other faiths or even atheists.
Following are pertinent excerpts from Pope Francis’ The Joy of the Gospel:
It would be wrong to see [evangelization] as a heroic individual undertaking, for it is first and foremost the Lord’s work, surpassing anything which we can see and understand. We “cannot passively and calmly wait in our church buildings”; we need to move from a pastoral ministry of mere conservation to a decidedly missionary pastoral ministry.
[Yet evangelizers] must never look like someone who has just come back from a funeral... who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervor, who have first received the joy of Christ.
Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but “by attraction.”
The goal is not to make enemies but to see God’s word accepted and its capacity for liberation and renewal revealed... Let us try a little harder to take the first step and to become involved… If this invitation does not radiate forcefully and attractively, the edifice of the Church’s moral teaching risks becoming a house of cards…
Next Time, more of the Cultural Context of Christianity. In Christ…
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