The Catholic Leader - 12 November - Issue 5477

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The Catholic Leader, November 12, 2017
News
Week 11
Pope
Francis
Called to
evangelise
Evangelsation
can not be
presumptuous,
the integrity of
truth can not be
rigid. The truth
has become
flesh, has
become
tenderness, has
become a child,
has become
man. What people say about Mass
In this world I cannot
see the Most High Son
of God with my own
eyes, except for His Most
Holy Body and Blood.
- St Francis of Assisi
Where can you go?
To find your
closest
Catholic
parish go to
or download
the
archdiocese’s
mobile app
Catholics need ‘profound
renewal’ of catechesis St Monica, I need your
prayers.
You know exactly how I’m
feeling because you once felt
it yourself.
I’m hurting, hopeless, and in
despair.
I desperately want my
child to return to Christ in his
Church but I can’t do it alone. I
need God’s help.
Please join me in begging
the Lord’s powerful grace to
flow into my child’s life.
Ask the Lord Jesus to soften
his heart, prepare a path for
his conversion, and activate
the Holy Spirit in his life.
Amen.
Prayer for Catholics
to return to the
sacraments
Jesus Christ is the most influ-
ential man who ever lived.
But do you really know
Him?
Many will answer “yes” to
this question, yet, given the
various conflicting opinions
today about Jesus and His
teachings, it is clear that many
people have incomplete or
false perceptions about Him.
It is the premise of Come
and See that the Catholic
Church holds the key to dis-
covering the truth about Him.
Come and See by Louis
Bosco shows the Christ-
centeredness of the Church’s
teachings and how those teach-
ing bring you closer to Jesus.
When the disciples ask
where the Lord is staying, He
replies simple, “ Come and
See” (John 1:39).
This book extends the same
invitation to all who wish to
draw closer to Him and feel
called to seriously investigate
the teachings, this book will
help the reader go beyond
merely knowing what the
Church teaches to understand-
ing why she teaches it, and
how her doctrines really do
bring us closer to Jesus.
This book reviews doctrines
of the faith – Trinity, the sacra-
ments, faith and works, the
papacy, purgatory, the saints,
Mary, and moral teachings.
Showing the Christ-centeredness of the Church’s teachings
THE head of the Pontifical Council
for Promoting the New Evangelisa-
tion said Catholics “need a profound
renewal of our catechesis.”
Archbishop Rino Fisichella said there was
wrong thinking among the faithful that once
they received the sacraments, they no longer
had to learn their catechism.
“By its nature, catechesis is to support believ-
ers to understand every day more the mystery
of faith,” he said.
Archbishop Fisichella said Catholics could
learn this with the help of catechists who were
“witnesses” and said that “witness is the sign of
a genuine work of evangelisation.”
Referring to Pope Paul VI’s 1975 apos-
tolic exhortation on evangelisation, Evangelii
Nuntiandi, he emphasised what he called a
“very important” section of the document that
said people nowadays were more apt to listen
to someone who lived out the faith and spoke
of it than to teachers of it and that if they do
listen to teachers, it’s because the teachers were
themselves witnesses of the faith.
“The world of today needs witnesses,” he
said.
“And we have got to be there.
“But don’t misunderstand the word ‘witness.’
It is true that witness, it makes, first of all, our
life. But to be a witness, it means also to be a
preacher of the word of the Lord.”
Archbishop Fisichella said being a witness
meant using one’s mouth to tell others about
one’s encounter with Jesus Christ and share
what Jesus told them.
However, he said the challenge of doing this
in a secular age when people were constantly on their mobile devices and, he said, becoming
more isolated from one another.
“Everybody in the profound (depths) of his
heart feels the desire for God,” he said.
“And for this reason, the mission of the
church is the new evangelisation. New evan-
gelisation doesn’t mean a new way to oblige
people to believe in God, absolutely not. ... It
means only a new step in the world of today, to
announce Jesus Christ in the world of today.
“(It) means to be aware of the changes that
we have, the new culture that we have, for
instance the digital culture.
“The internet is creating a new language, a
new way of thinking. It has created new behav-
iours and, paradoxically speaking, is creating
new pathologies. And so we need to understand
all of that and the new culture how to support
believers and how to announce and to challenge
people without God to think about him.”
Archbishop Fisichella said one of the prob-
lems of “our big crisis of faith of today” was
that people do not have an answer when they
are asked why they are believers.”
“We cannot be afraid in our catechesis to say
the choice of faith makes you free because it al-
lows you to enter in the deepest (parts) of your
life,” he said.
“Open your mind. Open your heart and
you become able to love. You become able to
understand your life and future, where you are
going.” CNS
Changes: “(It) means to be aware of the changes that we have, the new culture that we have, for
instance the digital culture. The internet is creating a new language, a new way of thinking. It has
created new behaviours and, paradoxically speaking, is creating new pathologies.”
We cannot be
afraid in our
catechesis to say
the choice of faith makes
you free because it allows
you to enter in the deepest
(parts) of your life