Counter Reformation 2.0

evangelization (n.)

1650s, action of preaching the Gospel, noun of action from evangelize. From 1827 as act of bringing under the influence of the Gospel.

evangelize (v.)

late 14c., from Old French evangeliser "to spread or preach the Gospel," and directly from Church Latin evangelizare, from Greek euangelizesthai.

Catholic apologists—young and old, lay and ordained—are rising to support the renewed mission to make known the Gospel. They take seriously the Church's call to evangelize, and they are faithful, well-mannered, and well-read. They are converts and cradle Catholics. Their methods are diverse, but they share in common a love of God and love of the Church. Their creative approaches are wed to Tradition. Their lives are a celebration of God's mercy. They are literate in the wisdom of God and the theology of the Church. They are steeped in history, and they bring enthusiasm to their respective callings under the umbrella of the mission to share the Gospel for the salvation of souls.

IOANNES PAULUS PP. II / REDEMPTORIS MISSIO
On the permanent validity of the Church's missionary mandate 

CHAPTER IV / THE VAST HORIZONS OF THE MISSION AD GENTES

31. The Lord Jesus sent his apostles to every person, people and place on earth. In the apostles, the Church received a universal mission—one that knows no boundaries—which involves the communication of salvation in its integrity according to that fullness of life that Christ came to bring (cf. Jn 10:10). The Church was "sent by Christ to reveal and communicate the love of God to all people and nations." 49

This mission is one and undivided, having one origin and one final purpose; but within it, there are different tasks and kinds of activity. First, there is the missionary activity which we call mission ad gentes, in reference to the opening words of the Council's decree on this subject. This is one of the Church's fundamental activities: it is essential and never-ending. The Church, in fact, "cannot withdraw from her permanent mission of bringing the Gospel to the multitudes the millions and millions of men and women-who as yet do not know Christ the Redeemer of humanity. In a specific way this is the missionary work which Jesus entrusted and still entrusts each day to his Church."

58. The Church forms consciences by revealing to peoples the God whom they seek and do not yet know, the grandeur of man created in God's image and loved by him, the equality of all men and women as God's sons and daughters, the mastery of man over nature created by God and placed at man's service, and the obligation to work for the development of the whole person and of all mankind.

Mankind does not need blandness nor mediocrity from us. The people of all nations need encouragement and to be called to the knowledge of "the grandeur of man created in God's image and loved by him," and that the Church is present to all peoples to bring them to encounter the living God in and through Christ Jesus.

55. "Although the Church gladly acknowledges whatever is true and holy in the religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam as a reflection of that truth which enlightens all people, this does not lessen her duty and resolve to proclaim without fail Jesus Christ who is 'the way, and the truth and the life.'... Indeed Christ himself "while expressly insisting on the need for faith and baptism, at the same time confirmed the need for the Church, into which people enter through Baptism as through a door." Dialogue should be conducted and implemented with the conviction that the Church is the ordinary means of salvation and that she alone possesses the fullness of the means of salvation.

The Church is blessed with men and women who are dedicated to sharing the Gospel and, importantly, to bringing separated brethren to the fullness of the Apostolic and Catholic Faith.

Here are a few, but effective, voices that are bringing the truth, goodness, beauty, and fullness of the Catholic Faith to others in order to bring them into harmony with the Church that Jesus Christ founded. They are listed in no particular order.

1. Joe Heschmeyer: https://www.facebook.com/joe.heschmeyer/
2. Bishop Robert Barron, et al: https://www.wordonfire.org/
3. Sachin Jose Ettiyil: https://x.com/Sachinettiyil
4. Brian Holdsworth: https://www.brianholdsworth.ca/
5. Bree Solstad (Miss B Converted): https://x.com/breesolstad?lang=en
6. Dr. Edward Feser: https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/
7. Fr. Mike Schmitz: https://bulldogcatholic.org/about-us/about-father-mike-schmitz/
8. Monsignor Charles Pope: https://msgrpope.com/
9. Dr. Gavin Ashenden at Catholic Unscripted: https://www.facebook.com/CatholicUnscripted/ | https://x.com/Catholic_Un
10. Dr. Holly Ordway: https://hollyordway.com/
11. Tim Staples: https://timstaples.com/
12. Fr. Raymond J. de Souza: https://fatherdesouza.com/
13. Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone: https://x.com/archcordileone?lang=en
14. Jimmy Akin: https://www.catholic.com/audio/tjap
15. Matt Fradd: https://www.youtube.com/@pintswithaquinas
16. Dr. Scott Hahn: https://www.scotthahn.com/
17. Trent Horn: https://www.trenthorn.com/
18. Joshua Charles, et al: https://eternalchristendom.com/
19. Benedict XVI Institute: https://benedictinstitute.org/
20. Floriani Sacred Music: https://www.floriani.org/
21. Magnificat Institute (Renewal of Sacred Music): https://magnificatinstitute.org/

The internet is a very large field with many hidden treasures. Online explorations can be a first step toward gaining actual in-person experience for those searching for meaning. In the non-digital spheres of daily life, young people are discovering vocations to religious life, the priesthood, and marriage.

Young people are agile at accessing information using various technologies. They do their homework and, because they are sincere in their desire for authenticity, they seek parishes where they can find the Catholic Faith in its most theologically and liturgically engaging form.

Pope Leo XIV has weighed in.

Catholic Herald | (Pope Leo) said: “we should not be trying to create spectacle … theatre, just to make people feel interested in something which in the end is very superficial and not profound.”

Instead, he contended, “liturgy should be about” the experience of “coming in contact with [the] mystery” of the “God who is love, God who dwells within us, God who is indeed present in humanity and who’s revealed himself through Jesus Christ”.

“The way to discover God is not really through spectacle,” he continued. “And I think many times people have been maybe misled, people have gone looking for God in ways that in the end have been proven to be sidetracked and not really essential in terms of discovering the mystery”.

Vocations are cultivated in the rich soil of a parish home that is marked by a true, good, and beautiful liturgy (so that the Lord Jesus can be clearly heard and seen!) and accessibility to conversations with a reverent priest who is literate in theology and spirituality.

Identity

Catholic identity is solidarity in Christ, communion in and with Christ. We find Jesus in His word and sacraments, in a most sublime way in the Holy Eucharist, the Mass. Therein, in the sacred liturgy, Jesus makes Himself known in and through sacred scripture. Jesus speaks to us in the Liturgy of the Word. Jesus offers us mercy and forgiveness in the Penitential Rite of the Mass that points us to the Sacrament of Penance. Jesus offers Himself—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Our identity, then, is a Eucharistic identity formed by the Holy Spirit. We are fashioned as disciples of Jesus, participating in his ministry, embodying the Gospel to be shared for the salvation of souls.

We acknowledge that Jesus is Present in his Body, the Church.

St Matthew 18:20 | For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

In the sacred Liturgy, the People of God in communion with their Lord and Savior are formed for mission.

Mission

We cooperate with the Holy Spirit to draw others toward Christ. We, those "called out" from society, desiring to accomplish God's will, must savour God's word, receive the Holy Eucharist, and participate in the oasis of the parish in the fellowship of believers, among whom is nurtured acceptance of the divine life offered by Jesus.

Art

The Ordinariate’s approach to worship and prayer has had a gradual but deep effect on my approach to evangelization. Although there’s no Ordinariate parish near where I live now, in Wisconsin, when I visit England, as I do for two or three months out of the year, I attend Holy Rood in Oxford, which is the Ordinariate parish there, and I attend Our Lady of Walsingham when I visit Houston. I also use Ordinariate devotional books for regular daily prayer (such as the new St Gregory’s Prayer Book). Beauty in worship can be conveyed in lots of ways: through the liturgy, vestments, sacred art, music, architecture, and through the literary quality of our prayer-books and devotional texts. All these elements help make worship and prayer more integrated and incarnational: involving the physical senses and the imagination as well as the intellect. My own experiences with this have, over the past few years, helped me see a bigger picture for the role of the arts in evangelization. Beauty can help Catholics to grow in their faith, and create opportunities for nonbelievers to experience a glimpse of wonder and transcendence, which in turn creates an opportunity for evangelizing—or at least plants the seeds for it! It’s not “all or nothing”; small things can have a big effect. | Dr. Holly Ordway [Link]

People are ritualistic by nature. We embrace existing behavioral norms or we discard conventions and invent new ones.

ritual (adj.) 

1560s, "pertaining to or consisting of a rite or rites," from French ritual or directly from Latin ritualis "relating to (religious) rites," from ritus "religious observance or ceremony, custom, usage". By 1630s as "done as or in the manner of a rite" (as in ritual murder, attested by 1896).

If not provided structure within a family or society, people manufacture their own arrangements, configurations, organizations, systems, or frameworks by which they attempt to navigate human business and personal relationships.

Many of the beneficial social customs that were based on Christian virtue and which brought a man and woman together are making a comeback among twenty- and thirty-somethings who are eager to embrace paths that will allow them to find a lifelong partner. These customs have been selectively abandoned by those adhering to a hedonistic social utility propped up by influential personalities in film and television beginning in the mid-20th century. As relationships have become subject to ideologies that produce instability and chaos, the disintegration of societies has accelerated.

When distinctions between men and women were accosted and tossed aside, so too went the artful rituals that fostered connections. Left with lust after the tirade of the 1960s sexual revolution, men and women (to this day) have had to contend with debilitating artificial constructs pretending to be substitutes for authentic human pair bonding. Interpersonal communication has suffered, and so also have human relationships. People now struggle with pronouns, a symptom of the dissociative state, because communication is so very clouded by the dissolution of the complementary sexual identities of male and female.

Human beings need cognitive structures to assist the comparison of ideas in order to accurately discern between that which is healthy and good and that which is unhealthy and destructive.

• Cognitive structures are mental frameworks that individuals use to organize and process information. They represent how we understand the world, including concepts, schemas, and relationships between ideas. These structures influence how we perceive, learn, and remember information.
• Rituals and cognitive structures are intertwined, influencing how we understand and experience the world. Rituals, defined as repetitive, symbolic actions, often serve to regulate emotions, performance, and social connections, drawing on cognitive processes to achieve these goals. Cultural and individual rituals are shaped by cognitive structures, including scripts, models, and schemas, which guide our interpretations and responses to various social situations.

The rituals to which we are exposed invite an investment for good or for evil depending on the nature and goal of the ritual.

• There are day-to-day rituals: prayer rituals, work-related rituals, evening rituals, eating rituals, and recreational rituals.
• People can also tempted into diabolical rituals: premeditated murder, for one; physical disfigurement, for another.
• Absent the grace of God, human beings are capable of every kind of depraved act. Instead of pursuing the true, the good, and the beautiful, the person adrift may crash on the reef of deceit, deception, and debauchery.
• The descent into madness can and usually does begin with the self-deception that one is a "good person" incapable of cruelty. And yet cruelties great and small are frequently practiced by the (woke) righteous.

Mustard Seed

St Mark 4: 31-32 | It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.

The rituals of the Mass cultivate life in the soul and connection. Jesus shares his life with the soul open to his word and his life in the Eucharist. The Church has centuries of magnificent art - music, paintings and icons, mosaics, stained glass windows, statuary, architecture - through which eternal truths are communicated. Except for the last few decades of iconoclasm in many regions of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, the Church has continuously celebrated great works of art that raise up the heart and mind toward God. There are still great works of art being produced. Those of architect Duncan G. Stroik and composer Sir James MacMillan come to mind.

Thanks to the Anglicanae Traditiones Commission, a liturgical work of art appeared that affirms the timely action of the Holy Ghost, who is rekindling the artistic and ritual instincts and commitments of Catholics of the Latin Rite.

Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter | Divine Worship: The Missal was developed under the guidance of the interdicasterial Anglicanae Traditiones Commission, whose task has been to identify Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony and to incorporate it into Catholic worship for the Ordinariates.

The Personal Ordinariates are blessed with a glorious liturgy—Divine Worship—known for its ritual beauty and unmistakable orientation to God. The language of Divine Worship is at once deeply reverent and intimate, ideally suited to the loving exchange between the soul and God.

ALMIGHTY and everliving God, we most heartily thank Thee for that Thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of Thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of Thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of Thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of Thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of the most precious death and Passion of Thy dear Son. And we humbly beseech Thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with Thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as Thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to Whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen. | Divine Worship: the Missal

Rituals that are beautiful and true, that are celebrated in a way true to the norms of the missal promulgated by the Church and true to the unchanging nature of the Sacred Liturgy established by Jesus, provide souls with direction to dispose themselves to God's grace. Ritual actions that lack reverence and that obscure a clear orientation to God are more a distraction, a hindrance to hearing and being present to God.

Counter Reformation Two-Point-0 (CR-2.0) | The New Evangelization

The New Evangelization calls each of us to deepen our faith, believe in the Gospel message and go forth to proclaim the Gospel. The focus of the New Evangelization calls all Catholics to be evangelized and then go forth to evangelize. In a special way, the New Evangelization is focused on 're-proposing' the Gospel to those who have experienced a crisis of faith. 

Pope Benedict XVI called for the re-proposing of the Gospel "to those regions awaiting the first evangelization and to those regions where the roots of Christianity are deep but who have experienced a serious crisis of faith due to secularization." The New Evangelization invites each Catholic to renew their relationship with Jesus Christ and his Church. | USCCB

Pride has produced protest that has swollen into two brands of schism:

1. the ethnocentric or national (non-Catholic) churches that possess valid orders but are 1) divided from the visible universal communion established by Christ and in many cases are 2) divided from each other. The national churches do not speak in a unified way on contemporary moral issues such as contraception, and divorce and remarriage.
2. individual activists that produce(d) individualistic personality driven groups that are non-apostolic and divided from the visible universal communion willed by Christ. These bodies have normalized sectarianism and in many cases are closely aligned with worldly agendas.

Unlike the Counter Reformation enacted in response to the excesses and distortions of the Reformation, CR-2.0 must deal with the added fallout of a dictatorship of relativism and subsequent divisions spawned by 16th century and later ideologies that have fueled incomplete and selective readings of Church history and scripture.

The Catholic Church, dedicated to the salvation of souls, continues to reach out to all in the hope of facilitating dialogue and a return to communion.