Father Adolfo Nicolás , the head of the Jesuits,
believes that while the Synod of bishops on the new evangelization did
much good work, it missed the opportunity to address some important
questions that he believes are highly relevant for the future work of
evangelization.
In particular, he said, the synod did not reflect on the history of evangelization, both ‘the good things’ that were done in past centuries and ‘the serious mistakes’ that were made.
Furthermore, it did not focus on such sensitive “frontier issues” as the dialogue with other religions and cultures. Consequently, it did not draw lessons that could have contributed positively to future evangelization.
The Spanish-born Jesuit who spent most of his life in Asia before his election as head of his order made his comments in a briefing for English-speaking journalists at the Vatican, October 25.
In his speech to the Synod assembly, October 8, he spoke about the Jesuit missionary effort over the past four centuries. He noted how Jesuits were trained “to find God in all things” and “to be positive” in their encounter with “other cultures and traditions” but, he admitted, their optic had been mainly European, they had seen “mostly Western, European signs of Faith and Sanctity” and “had not entered with sufficient depth into the cultures where the Gospel was proclaimed” so as to see the signs of God “already there, rooted and active in the hearts and relationships of people.”
“By not paying sufficient attention to how God was present and had been working in the peoples we encountered, we missed important clues, insights and discoveries”, he stated.
He implied the same was true for the general missionary effort of the Church over those centuries too.
He suggested that “it is now time, to learn from this history, from what was missing in the First Evangelization, before we move ahead in the New”
True, he said, “Many good things have happened that we want to keep, develop and celebrate“.
At the same time, he added, “We know that many mistakes have also taken place, particularly in terms of not listening to the people, in judging with great superficiality the merits of old and rich cultures and traditions, in imposing forms of worship that did not, in the least, express the relationship and sensibility of the people in their turning to God in prayer and praise.”
He concluded by listing seven lessons that can be learned from the past which can help evangelization in the future.
At the synod, many bishops, experts and observers reacted “very positively” to his speech, the Jesuit leader said, but the fact of the matter is that the issue was not addressed by the assembly.
From the three-week deliberations, Father Nicolás concluded that there was “a very low awareness of the history of evangelization” at the synod. He attributed this to the fact that “psychologically the whole project was to look ahead, to see the current changes that show that we are in a new historical set up and therefore humanity changes and so evangelization has to change too. The concern has been looking ahead, what do we do?”
He had expected that the synod could “draw new wisdom from our mistakes”, but he said the synod was moving in another direction, “the awareness was more on what we want to do, and what we want to underline or stress, or affirm of the new evangelization” while “the attention to the past has been very little.”
As for the dialogue with other religions, Father Nicolás said that topic too “has not been very central” to this synod which “spent a lot of energy and time reflecting on the foundations of the new evangelization, or on evangelization in general”. In actual fact, he said, “This is ‘a frontier issue’, so frontier that you have to walk very carefully not to venture into territory that has no clear boundaries.”
On the other hand, he acknowledged that there was “a higher awareness” of Islam at the synod and “there has been a great effort not to condemn, not to think negatively and, in terms of openness to dialogue, to protect human rights of the Muslims themselves.”
Bishops had “underlined the desire of more and more Muslims to live in peace and to respect others, and noted how they resent the image of Islam that very radical groups are projecting on the world and said they are harming Islam itself and the majority of Muslims who don’t share this kind of attitude”.
Father Nicolás concluded that the real challenge is to find ways for greater cooperation and open dialogue with them.