Full Interview Transcript with Cardinal Wuerl

The following is a transcript of a conversation between Cardinal Donald Wuerl (’67) and one of his seminarians after the occasion of the XIII Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, which Cardinal Wuerl led at the request of Pope Benedict XVI this past October.  Look for a full article regarding this interview and on the topic of the New Evangelization in the first issue of “Roman Echoes,” the official magazine of the Pontifical North American College.

We, seminarians, appreciate Cardinal Wuerl giving his time to this interview and thank him for his generous and ever-present support of the College.

(Seminarian): Cardinal Wuerl, you’ve described the New Evangelization as a “re-proposal” of the Gospel.  What does this mean and why is such a “re-proposal” needed?

(Cardinal Wuerl): The term ‘re-propose’ was actually used by Pope Benedict XVI on the vigil of the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul when he announced that he was establishing an office of the New Evangelization and spoke to the necessity of ‘re-proposing’ the Gospel so that all might hear. Now, what does that mean?  I see the term as a norm for what the New Evangelization is all about.
We have to recognize that unlike the early Church, when the disciples went out and preached the Gospel to those who had never heard of Jesus, today the Church is faced with a culture, a whole generation that thinks it knows Jesus and his Gospel and thinks that it has no meaning.  We are living in a highly secularized world.  When Pope Benedict came to visit the United States four years ago, he spoke to the American bishops in the Crypt Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and said that in proclaiming – in ‘re-proposing’ – the Gospel today, we will have to address three cultural barriers: secularism, materialism and individualism, all of which are rampant in our culture.  In fact, in my opening talk to the Synod, I used the image of a tsunami to describe the secularism that has washed across much of our western culture and has taken with it:  the previously accepted societal understanding of marriage, the family, an objective right-and-wrong and a common good. We, then, who believe in Jesus Christ –  his disciples today – have to be able to ‘re-propose’ him to people who think that they have already heard him.  

(Seminarian): You’ve mentioned how the New Evangelization involves “re-proposing” the Gospels so that people can hear it “as if for the first time.”  What are some practices in the life of the Church that perhaps we, Catholics, need to learn again “as if for the first time” that could make us better instruments of this New Evangelization?

(Cardinal Wuerl):  Every February, I visit each deanery in the Archdiocese of Washington and meet with the priests and deacons.  Two years ago, I asked them what they are doing that is reawakening the faith in their parishioners and helping bring back people to the Church.  I believe that it is probably in those things that the New Evangelization consists, even if we’re not always calling them by that name.  In every one of the deaneries, pastor after pastor, priest after priest, talked about the reawakening of the faith through various pastoral efforts to renew the personal faith of our people.  One very successful initiative, now in its 5th year with us and recently adopted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to make available nationwide, is “The Light is On for You” Lenten penance program.  In this effort a priest in each parish Church offers to be available for confession every Wednesday evening from 6:30-8:00 p.m.  Any Catholic, especially those who have been away from the Sacraments, can go to confession anywhere in the archdiocese.  This initiative is well advertised on TV, radio, billboards and bus and metro ads.  It has been an extraordinarily successful maxim.

   But true renewal begins with each one of us.  There’s the old proverb:  nemo dat quod non habet, you can’t share what you don’t have.  Each Catholic is called to renew his or her own faith as deeply as they can, to learn about the Church, the Creed, and to re-appreciate what it all means.  A second aspect of this New Evangelization is confidence in the Truth of the faith.  We have to remind ourselves that we stand in the Truth.  Our faith is not just an opinion.  While we are respectful of everyone’s opinion, we know that we stand in the Truth – Jesus Christ is Risen, Jesus Christ is Lord!  His words are the words of everlasting life.  A third aspect of this New Evangelization is simply to share the faith. This happens in all kinds of situations:  a conversation with someone in the office or on a coffee break, while waiting to pick up kids after a soccer game or in a thousand such personal encounters.  Just being active in letting people know that we love our faith, that there’s nothing to be ashamed of in being a believer, and having the courage to stand up for what we believe is all the New Evangelization.  One doesn’t have to be offensive; one just has to be confident.

(Seminarian): In that light, the General Directory for Catechesis describes two aspects of evangelization.  First, the initial proclamation of the Gospel, and then second, and more generally, bringing the influence of Christ to bear on every aspect of human life and culture. What you said reminded me of this second point, that there’s no part of one’s day or life that Christ isn’t influencing.  So in light of that second aspect, how might a New Evangelization bring that influence of Christ to bear once again on every aspect of human life and culture today?

(Cardinal Wuerl):  It all begins with the individual’s ‘faith commitment.’ Things change only when people embrace Christ. This is very important:  if we are going to see a re-conversion, a New Evangelization, we have to get beyond that disjunctive of earlier decades that separate Christ from his Church.  The Jesus Christ who lives in 2012, lives with us in this world and is manifested in his Church.  The Church is his new Body, and is present in all of the baptized.  Jesus is present in the Eucharist.  He is present in his Word, but that is all found in his Church.
A recognition of the place of the Church is the starting point, I believe, for a fruitful re-kindling of an appreciation for Jesus Christ.  When we say, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,” we cannot make that proclamation apart from his Church, because there is no way of knowing Jesus apart from his Church.  If we think that we know Christ without knowing his Word as it is proclaimed in the Church, or encountering him in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, that are experienced in the Church, we run the risk of mentally creating for ourselves a Christ with whom we can be comfortable.

(Seminarian): It seems that there really is, then, a connection between the New Evangelization and a ‘re-appreciation’ or a ‘re-proclamation’ of the doctrine of the Church, of ecclesiology.

(Cardinal Wuerl):  I just completed a pastoral letter on the Church, because one cannot talk about the Year of Faith, or speak of remembering our faith or strengthening our faith or proclaiming our faith, we cannot talk about a New Evangelization, and we cannot have a Synod of the New Evangelization or celebrate 50 years of the Second Vatican Council or 20 years of the Catechism of the Catholic Church apart from the Church.  The only way that any of that makes sense is to realize that when Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church,” he was establishing that frame of reference that is his Body, his Mystical Body, his Spiritual Body, that is present in the world.  In Verbum Domini, the Pope talks about the Church being the “home of the Word.”  In Deus Caritas Est, the Pope speaks about the Church being “God’s family.”  We say in the Creed that “I believe in God the Father, I believe in the Son, I believe in the Holy Spirit, I believe in the Church.”  But how can we believe in the Church, unless we recognize that it is the Body of Christ?
Part of the resurgence today among so many young people is a real appreciation of the Church.  But here we must be very careful; for we are not talking about ‘re-creating’ the Church of another era.  We are not saying, let’s try to ‘re-create’ some image, idea, or nostalgia for the Church of another era.  What we are talking about is the Church, established by Christ, being lived today, in this age, taking the faith, ever ancient, ever new, and sharing it today in the language that people understand, and so encountering the issues that challenge them to accept Christ.

(Seminarian): It seems noteworthy that the Holy Father picked you, an American bishop, as the General Moderator for the Synod.  What did your particular experience of proclaiming the Gospel in a country like the United States bring to a worldwide Synod on an issue of such universal concern like the New Evangelization?

(Cardinal Wuerl):  Well, one of the particular gifts of the Church in the United States is that, just as it has experienced a diminishment in the vitality of the faith, there are also many signs of renewal.  Already a decade ago we saw the beginnings of a renewal of catechetics and catechesis.  We have already begun to see a renewal of the positive experience of the Church in the lives of many of our young people.  We have a generation that refers to itself as the Saint John Paul II generation.  Pope Benedict XVI is having the same impact on the young people today.  In the United States, we are already seeing the signs of the New Evangelization taking hold.
A small example from our own archdiocese:  not long ago we opened a college-level seminary, simply because we had so many young men discerning God’s call and looking for some experience in formation. It is now filled, and we just had the ground breaking for a new wing.  Throughout the Church, we are sensing the movement of the Spirit and the various manifestations of grace in the lives of young people are bearing fruit.  I think that the Holy Father, seeing these signs within the Church in the United States, perhaps is hoping that they will begin to be replicated elsewhere.  The Church in the United States, for all of the difficulties it has faced and is facing, is still a strong Church.  I take great joy as archbishop in traveling around the archdiocese visiting parishes, installing pastors, confirming young people, celebrating anniversaries, visiting campus ministry programs, and seeing in all of these places so much lively faith.  I wonder if it isn’t that experience of the renewal of the faith that the Holy Father is hoping to see also take hold here in Europe.

(Seminarian): It’s almost as if we, as American Catholics, have been continuously aware of our Church’s position in relation to our culture, since it, at times, has been positively antagonistic to our faith; and so this gift is something that we’ve had, even for years now — really taking initiative and ownership in proclaiming the faith and evangelizing.

(Cardinal Wuerl): Well remember, in the past, the Catholic Church was never a part of the dominant culture in the United States.  When there was a ‘Christian’ culture in the United States, it was predominantly a Protestant culture and our Catholic faith was, to some degree, suspect.  So we have always had to ‘fend for ourselves,’ and embrace the faith in a positive manner.  Perhaps an aspect of the problem in other parts of the world is that the Church has been accepted as a part of the culture for generations and generations and the positive effects on the culture have been taken for granted.  We must remember that every generation has to embrace the faith all over again.
We speak of the “children of God,” not the “grandchildren of God.”  With every generation, in every person, the Church, in a sense, starts its mission all over again.  Every time a baby is born, the work of the Church starts afresh.  That baby has to be baptized into the faith, into the Church and then nurtured in the faith.  That baby becomes a youngster, an adolescent, a young adult, and then an adult, and at some point along the way he or she has to say, “I believe in Jesus Christ.  I have encountered him, experienced him in the Church, in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and believe in him.  I place my faith in him and in his Church.”

(Seminarian): Is this an insight that the Second Vatican Council grabbed onto: that the faith, that the life of the Church, isn’t just something that happened a long time ago, but something that happens in every age, in every generation — that the world continuously needs to encounter Christ “as if for the first time”?

(Cardinal Wuerl):  I think that insight has been recognized within the life of the Church over and over again.  The Church is constantly being renewed, and the saints are instruments that the Lord uses to re-energize the Church.  That is why we have canonizations, to remind us of the impact that this person had on the Church, so that we might emulate that person in our own lives.  The Church is constantly being renewed.
You’re right, the Second Vatican Council was called by Blessed John XXIII because he wanted the ancient faith to be exactly preserved and yet proclaimed in a way in which it could be heard and embraced in our age and circumstances.  But this has probably been the message all along. Wasn’t that what Francis of Assisi was trying to do?  His effort was to proclaim the Gospel in a way that would excite people to embrace it in his time.  I think that is the case with every saint – in every age.

(Seminarian): What then, do you think, are some of the particular challenges for the Church in the United States with respect to the New Evangelization?

(Cardinal Wuerl): There are a couple. The first is a relatively new one, given the dynamic of the significant cultural shift.  The dominant culture in the United States is no longer religious, it is now secular.  This doesn’t mean that there are more people that are secular than are religious in their orientation, but that the dominant culture – the information industry, the entertainment industry – the ‘opinion making mechanisms,’ – is dominantly secular.  Because of this, we are seeing a marginalizing of the Church in her ability to function.  In effect, we’re seeing a diminishing of the Church’s freedom.  Right now, we are experiencing one most blatant challenge in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate, with its definition of religious ministry.  The reason that there are so many lawsuits in federal court on behalf of dioceses, universities, Catholic charities and hospitals across the country is because that mandate and the definition embedded within it, basically reduces the ministry of the Catholic Church to what it does inside the four walls of a church building.  In effect, the government claims that it now can define what constitutes our religious ministries and those activities that we know are intrinsic to our mission.

    But another challenge is the view among some in the Catholic Church that there are really, in effect, two Churches:  there is the Church that is shepherded by the bishops (the institutional Church, as they call it), and then there is another Church that has its own understandings of the Creed, morality, how people are able to accommodate their faith to the currents of secular life today.  One of the reasons why I wrote a letter to all of our seminarians about the importance of their academic formation is precisely because there is a current of thought out there that says that there are two teachings in the Church: that of the bishops and the Pope, and then that of some theologians.  This idea is presented in this way: “The Pope and the bishops don’t really understand theology.  We do.”

   We live in a world where there are many claimants to be the voice of Christ in our society.  We must recognize this and remind young people who are searching for the Truth that the authentic touchstone of the faith is Peter.

(Seminarian):  One last question.  Since the Second Vatican Council, there has been a renewed appreciation of the role of the laity in the life of the Church, particularly in respect to its missionary character.  In light of their vocation to live in the world, how are the laity called to ‘re-propose’ the Gospel in a way particular to that vocation?  And then, how should we as priests and future priests work to help the laity fulfill their particular and unique missionary vocation?

(Cardinal Wuerl): The laity are those, as the Council said, who are charged with the sanctification and the transformation of the temporal order.  It falls to those who are ordained to preach the Gospel, but it is the laity, the 99% of the Church, who are to take the Gospel message and apply it to every area of the temporal order: whether it’s medicine, business, law, science, education, politics.  Lay people are the ones who are supposed to take the teaching of the Church, the proclamation of the Gospel, and make it the instrument by which the transformation of the world takes place.  In the book, Seek First the Kingdom, I try to spell this out a little more at length.
There’s a tendency among some, I think, even priests, to be a little impatient with this process. They look to the clergy to make pronouncements in the political order, in the economic order, as to what should be done and how it should be done.  But the Council said, and the Church has always said, that it is the task of the clergy faithfully to announce the Gospel, and that lay people then have the responsibility of embracing that message, appropriating it and applying it into the world in which they live.  If that actually would happen, we would have a wonderfully transformed Christ-like society.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, when the Apostles lamented that Christ was being arrested, Jesus in effect said to them, Put your sword away.  Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and that he would not provide me with more than twelve legions of angels? But that’s not why I am here.  That’s not why I came.  I came to convince all of you that there is another way. Priests should follow in Christ’s footsteps, for our task is to teach, and teach, and teach.  And for a great model of this, you need only to look at Pope Benedict XVI.  He teaches, and teaches, and teaches, just as Jesus did. That, I think, is part of being a patient proclaimer of the Word.  We have only the Grace of God and the Word to bring people to Jesus.  We can’t force people.
The Church recognizes, when Jesus established the Church, that he knew that all its members were not going to be perfect.  He told Peter, upon you, upon this Rock I am going to build my Church, even though he knew that Peter was going to betray him.  Jesus knew he was working with human beings, and so that’s why he said after his Resurrection, receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive are forgiven.

   We are called to the highest standard, and Jesus knows that we are going at times to fail, and so he gives us the grace to be able to start over again.  The beauty of the Catholic Church is that it recognizes fully human nature.  It is a fallen human nature that has been graced and it is a fallen human nature that strives to be the best it can be, knowing that it is not going to be able to do that without the forgiveness, the mercy, and the love of God.
Today, it seems to me, that seminarians and future priests need to walk in the great living tradition of the Church.  We have to know that tradition, and then be prepared patiently to proclaim it.  From the pulpit we must proclaim the unvarnished truth, and then we must come out of the pulpit and meet people where they are in life, and help them on their journey to Jesus.

   Jesus said to those who were having trouble with his teaching, “Do you, too, want to leave?”  Peter said, “Where would we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”  That is true still today. The Church has the words of everlasting life, but we have to be patient with one another and keep proclaiming that truth.  There’s a great humility that’s required to be a follower of Christ: a humility in truth.  The New Evangelization is going to grow out of witnessing that truth and having it seen in our love, care, compassion, kindness and understanding.  Others are going to see that Truth in the followers of Jesus, just like those in the time of the early Church did.

(Seminarian): Thank you, Your Eminence.

(Cardinal Wuerl): You’re welcome.

The seminarian conducting the interview was Mr. Matthew Fish of the Archdiocese of Washington, in his II-Year at the Pontifical North American College.