Decree “Ad Gentes”on the Missionary Activity of the

Church27 November 2012

Our first task in approaching another people, another culture, another faith,

is to take off our shoes, for the place where we are standing is holy.Else we may forget that before we came,

God was already present.Motto of the Volunteer Missionary Movement (founded 1969)

The World of Vatican II

“What is effectively the centre of gravity of Christianity in the West has shifted more and more, and 1970 reached a critical point: by then 51% of all Catholics were living in the southern continents…By the year 2000 a good 70% of all Catholics will be living in the southern hemisphere…The church there has the opportunity of becoming the church of the poor and for the poor, not merely on paper but in deed and truth.”

Walbert Buhlmann, OFM, The Church of the Future, 1986

The Coming of the Third Church

“since Peter went to Rome, no Pope had ever left Europe. But Paul [VI] visited all six continents as a sign that now the church has really become a church of the six continents…We now know that the one universal Church with its strong centralized power (Vatican I) exists concretely in countless local churches all of which have the right and duty not to be any longer ‘only’ missions, carbon copies of the European church, but to stand on their own feet and be allowed to contribute their full say within the framework of the whole church.”

Decree Ad Gentes on the Mission Activity of the Church

• Principles • Mission Work• Particular Churches• Missionaries• Planning Missionary Activity• Cooperation

Preface

“.. this sacred synod, … desires to sketch the principles of missionary activity and to rally the forces of all the faithful in order that the people of God, marching along the narrow way of the Cross, may spread everywhere the reign of Christ, Lord and overseer..”

Principles of Mission

“The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mission of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father.”

“Since this mission goes on and in the course of history unfolds the mission of Christ Himself, who was sent to preach the Gospel to the poor, the Church, prompted by the Holy Spirit, must walk in the same path on which Christ walked: a path of poverty and obedience, of service and self - sacrifice to the death, from which death He came forth a victor by His Resurrection.”

“.. division among Christians damages the most holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature and blocks the way to faith for many. Hence, by the very necessity of mission, all the baptised are called together into one flock, and thus they will be able to bear unanimous witness before the nations to Christ their Lord.”

“.. circumstances are sometimes such that, for the time being, there is no possibility of expounding the Gospel directly and forthwith. Then, of course, missionaries can and must at least bear witness to Christ by charity and by works of mercy, with all patience, prudence and great confidence. Thus they will prepare the way for the Lord and make Him somehow present.”

Mission Work

Christian Witnessrespect, charity, education, uplifting human dignityPreaching the Gospel and Gathering together the People of Godban on force or enticement, involving ‘entire community of the faithful’ in the catechumenateForming a Christian Communitynurture ecumenical spirit, special attention to the role of laity and catechists, fostering religious life

Particular Churches

“Let the young church keep up an intimate communion with the whole Church.”

“The church has not been really founded, and is not yet fully alive, nor is it a perfect sign of Christ, unless there is a laity worthy of the name working along with the hierarchy… Therefore, even at the very founding of a Church, great attention is to be paid to establishing a mature, Christian laity.”

Missionaries

“Vatican II taught me the narrowness of my previous assumption that my task as a missionary was mainly to get new converts for the Church. I now see my call as one of sharing in the mission of Jesus to proclaim and promote the mission of God – which mean working to bring about a world of justice, respect for human rights, reconciliation, community-building, all animated by generous and realistic love.”

Donal Dorr, St Patrick’s Missionary

“As you sit watching the sinking sun you wonder if there were still time for missionaries somewhere, somehow to be able just once to carry out the missionary work as it should be carried out:To approach each culture with the respect due to it To approach the people of any culture or nation, not as individuals, but as community.To plan to stay not one day longer than is necessary in any one place.To give the people nothing, literally nothing, but the unchanging, supracultural, uninterpreted gospel before baptism.To insist that they themselves be their own future missionaries.To link them with the outside church in unity, and the outside world in charity and justice.And then the final step.The final missionary step as regards the people of any nation or culture, and the most important lesson we will ever teach them – is to leave them.”

Vincent J. Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered

Cooperation

“As members of the living Christ, incorporated into Him and made like unto Him through baptism and through confirmation and the Eucharist, all the faithful are duty-bound to cooperate in the expansion and spreading out of His Body, to bring it to fullness as soon as may be.”

“The grace of renewal cannot grow in communities unless each of these extends the range of its charity to the ends of the earth, and devotes the same care to those afar off as it does to those who are its own members.”

T Howland Shanks SJ, (1992),

“Salt, leaven and light. These images all suggest not opposition to the world, but permeation, pervasion, insertion. The mission of the followers of Jesus is to be active in the world, not to withdraw from it or to control it. Nor do these images suggest that the mission is to make all the world Christian. Salt does not turn all the food into salt, and leaven does not change all the dough into yeast.

Salt, Leaven & Light, The community called church,

with reference to Matt. 5:13-16 and Luke 13:20-21:

“Further, if salt, leaven and light are effective, they no longer stand out from that which they permeate or blend in with it. They transform from within. These images do not focus on Christian uniqueness or distinctiveness, but on the contribution Christians can make in the transformation of the whole”

“This time is dark only for those who do not believe the Lord is present in it.”

Gustavo Gutierrez

Which aspects of the new evangelization proclamation

dialoguework for social justice

use of mediarespecting the freedom of individuals

involving the laitydo you see as the most important? Why? What else needs to be done?