By David G Bonagura, Jr., The Catholic Thing, May 15, 2022
David G. Bonagura Jr. teaches at St. Joseph’s Seminary, New York. He is the author of Steadfast in Faith: Catholicism and the Challenges of Secularism and Staying with the Catholic Church: Trusting God’s Plan of Salvation.
The future of the Church in America hinges on the success of the New Evangelization, Pope St. John Paul’s call to preach the Gospel anew in lands that have forgotten or forsaken it. Many wonderful initiatives in the Church over recent decades – The Catholic Thing among them – have been established to meet the saintly pontiff’s challenge. But with the number of “Nones,” Americans who do not subscribe to traditional religions, growing yearly – their ranks chock-full of fallen-away Catholics – the task of the New Evangelization is as pressing today as it ever has been.
In my work with high school students and with families in my parish, I am finding that a colossal obstacle to the New Evangelization’s success is that so many lack a general cultural, intellectual, and religious framework in which they can receive the Gospel and comprehend its import. …