The clear Ad Gentes orientation of
Vatican II has been taken up and confirmed by the post-conciliar
Magisterium of the Church to this day. Those who think or say that the world has changed so much over the past half century, that the "missio ad gentes" no longer has any meaning, have been completely repudiated by three recent popes from 1965 to present.
The Council brought great and providential novelties to the Church, such as dialogue within the Church and then with non-Christian religions; "collegiality" in the management of ecclesiastical institutions; openness towards the wider world and secular values; the " medicine of mercy ", as Pope John termed it, to prevail over condemnation, protest, complaint; inculturation of the liturgy in the realities of the various peoples, languages and cultures, etc..
The enthusiasm that marked the period of the Council came from these novelties and others.
But it was followed only a few years later by the "dispute" born of the 1968 revolts.
Certainties collapsed, we were divided along political lines as mentioned above, but above all on the very concept of mission ad gentes, while many missionaries were in crisis and missionary vocations decreased. We no longer knew what mission was, opinions and hypotheses multiplied, while the flight forward (or backward?) of a certain theology unhinged the system of truth upon which the faith is founded.
All of this can hardly be attributed to the Council, which had given the Church a very strong missionary impulse. Even in the first document approved on the Liturgy ("Sacrosanctum Concilium") it is stated that the Council "... to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church " (Preface), and that the Church is "a sign lifted up among the nations under which the scattered children of God may be gathered together, until there is one sheepfold and one shepherd "(n. 2). The Constitution on the Church calls Christ " Light of nations " (Lumen gentium, 1) and the Church "the universal sacrament of salvation" (LG, 48) definition used in Ad Gentes (n. 1). The missionary inspiration of the Council is loud and clear.
Mission ad gentes growing cold
But since the Council the sensitivity for the "missio ad gentes" in local churches (some in Italian) has greatly decreased, despite the solemn statements of Paul VI in "Evangelii Nuntiandi": "This is why the Church keeps her missionary spirit alive, and even wishes to intensify it in the moment of history in which we are living. She feels responsible before entire peoples. She has no rest so long as she has not done her best to proclaim the Good News of Jesus the Savior. She is always preparing new generations of apostles. Let us state this fact with joy at a time when there are not lacking those who think and even say that ardor and the apostolic spirit are exhausted, and that the time of the missions is now past. The Synod has replied that the missionary proclamation never ceases and that the Church will always be striving for the fulfillment of this proclamation "(n. 53).
Paul VI's "Evangelii Nuntiandi" of (8 December 1975) and John Paul II "Redemptoris Missio" (7 December 1990) are considered the most significant pastoral encyclicals of two Popes, in continuation to the "Ad Gentes" decree. Written 15 years apart, they have different settings and horizons, but are united in declaring that the mission of the Church is to proclaim, announce, bear witness to humanity's salvation in Christ, a work of a religious nature, that leads men to meet the Son of God made man for our salvation. "We wish to confirm once more that the task of evangelizing all people constitutes the essential mission of the Church" (EN, 14).
EN is the result of a debate at the Synod of Bishops on evangelization (Rome, October 1974), during which two trends emerged: one which identified evangelization with the liberation of the poor and oppressed people, the other for which the Gospel converts people to the model of Christ, who directs man to God and love of neighbour, which in turn is our greatest contribution to eliminating injustice. The Synod failed to publish a joint text and everything was placed before Pope Paul VI.
EN affirms a specifically religious finality of evangelization: to free us from sin, reconcile us with God: " The Church links human liberation and salvation in Jesus Christ, but she never identifies them, because she knows through revelation, historical experience and the reflection of faith that not every notion of liberation is necessarily consistent and compatible with an evangelical vision of man, of things and of events; she knows too that in order that God's kingdom should come it is not enough to establish liberation and to create well-being and development"(EN, 35). Paul VI added (EN, 36): "The Church considers it to be undoubtedly important to build up structures which are more human, more just...but she is conscious that the best structures and the most idealized systems soon become inhuman if the inhuman inclinations of the human heart are not made wholesome, if those who live in these structures or who rule them do not undergo a conversion of heart and of outlook".
Behind the battles for liberation
In the seventies the idealization of the regimes and movements for the "liberation of the poor", born from a '"scientific" and often openly communist analysis of Marxism, was strong even in the Catholic and missionary world. Some Catholic and missionary press went through a period of ideological inebriated fixation with Fidel Castro's Cuba, Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam, Mao's China, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the "guerrillas of liberation" in the Portuguese colonies in Africa, the Nicaragua "Sandinistas', etc.. I was there as a journalist at a meeting of the Latin American bishops of CELAM in Puebla, Mexico (January-February 1979) and every day I attended the press conferences of bishops and, nearby, that of the "liberation theologians".
That very January, Russia had invaded and occupied Afghanistan. A reporter asked if they also condemned that colonialism. Representatives of the association said instead that it was the liberation of the Afghan people and a step forward for socialism in its conquest to conquer the world.
In the "Evangelii Nuntiandi" Paul VI stated the characteristics that "the liberation of the Gospel" must have very well (n. 33): it must be based on "an evangelical vision of man" (No. 35), it demands "a necessary conversion of the heart "(No. 36),"it excludes violence "(n. 37), the Church must be able to give "her specific contribution "(No. 38), and requires that fundamental human rights be respected, including religious liberty which occupies a place of primary importance. "(n. 39). None of these features of the "Gospel of liberation" was present in the regimes and movements which had aroused so many hopes and undue warm support even from Catholics: but Paul VI went unheeded. History went on to judge those movements and regimes and refute the applauded "prophets", who had chosen a "liberation" soon proved to be a new and worse form of oppression.
Proclaiming Jesus Christ
In the difficult decades of the seventies and eighties, EN was the most important document of the Church after Vatican II. It presents the essential mission of the Church to proclaim Christ to the people, who must be the object of all efforts. Evangelization is the "vocation and mission of the Church, her deepest identity" (n. 14). Everything else, liturgy, sacraments, prayer, testimony, structures, law, theology, culture, assistance to the poor and every other reality in the Church receive their justification and sense to the extent that they are oriented to evangelization. " the whole Church is missionary," says Paul VI (n. 59). This fundamental truth is easy to repeat as a statement of principle, but too often disregarded in the life of Christian communities! EN states that the Church must always address non-Christians: " To reveal Jesus Christ and His Gospel to those who do not know them has been, ever since the morning of Pentecost, the fundamental program which the Church has taken on as received from her Founder (EN, 51).
The document of Paul VI represents a radical turning pointing the action of the Church: evangelization as the first imperative, everything else comes after. Was this change implemented? Certainly in church leadership, in the "pastoral planning" of the Italian Episcopal Conference CEI, which has guided the Italian Church's pastoral action in a missionary sense from "Evangelization and Human Promotion" (1976) to "Evangelism and testimony of charity" (1990), passing through "Communion and missionary community" (1986).
But at the Church base there is still a strong tendency to reduce the religious obligation of evangelization to social work: the important thing is to love your neighbour, do good, to bear witness of service. The Church often gives an incomplete picture of herself, as if it were simple a relief agency and emergency service to remedy the injustices and ills of society. Indro Montanelli expressed a widespread opinion: "The missionaries are admirable and useful when they go to heal the lepers and bring progress among backward peoples, but if they go to impose our religion, which today even we practice less, what use is their generosity? ".
Paul VI, speaking of the duty to bear witness in life, and therefore love of neighbour, affirms "even the finest witness will prove ineffective in the long run if it is not explained, justified - what Peter called always having "your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have"(1 Pt 3: 15) - and made explicit by a clear and unequivocal proclamation of the Lord Jesus. The Good News proclaimed by the witness of life sooner or later has to be proclaimed by the word of life. There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are not proclaimed. ... " (EN, 22). The proclamation of the Gospel is the most important element, at least as a purpose, if not chronologically, of every missionary activity, which gives coherence to all the other elements (human development, inter-religious dialogue, inculturation, charitable actions, etc..). "Evangelization will also always contain - as the foundation, center, and at the same time, summit of its dynamism - a clear proclamation that, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all men, as a gift of God's grace and mercy"(EN, 27).