The new evangelization in Latin American perspective

John Paul's worldview defies the simplistic categorizations of postmodernist, modernist, or anti-modernist. His approach is best characterized as a conservative redeployment of modernity as it was internalized in Vatican II. In this context, the new evangelization does not represent simply an attempt to return to preconciliar Catholicism.(34) In fact, it shows continuities with Vatican II in its recognition of the church's need to be in touch with the laity's secular life and in its continuing concern for social issues. However, like the pope's approach to modernity, new pastoral methods represent a conservative reappropriation of Vatican II and its further elaborations in Medellin. The new evangelization reformulates notions and methods such as the faith-life link, the see-judge-act pedagogy, and conscientizacion in ways that restore the clerical power lost through progressive pastoral reforms. In this sense, applying the term "conservative Catholic restoration" is accurate.

Progressive Catholicism must contend with the power of institution and tradition, and today it must operate within the context of resurgent conservatism. In this context, the new evangelization represents a "romanization" of post-Vatican II innovations, an attempt to absorb some reformist elements in ways that do not challenge the power structure within the church, while disqualifying others as too ideological or reductive. This romanization befits the church's new vision of its role vis-a-vis the secular world: in a postmodern world of chaos and decay, where all human ideologies appear to have run their course, the Catholic Church can refashion itself as the source of universal and unchangeable values.

Notes

1. See David J. Molineaux, "Gustavo Gutierrez: Historical Origins," The Ecumenist 25, no. 5 (1987): 65-69.

2. Juan Luis Segundo, The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1976), 8.

3. For the best-known statement of Freire's method, see his Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, 1970).

4. Pope John Paul II, "Building a New Latin America," Origins 14, no. 20 (November 1, 1984): 308.

5. Alfred Hennelly, ed., Santo Domingo and Beyond: Documents and Commentaries from the Historic Meeting of the Latin American Bishops' Conference (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), 81, 82, 100.

6. Joseph Ratzinger with Vincent Messori, The Ratzinger Report (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 37-38. See also Ralph Della Cava, "Vatican Policy 1978-1990: An Updated Overview," Social Research 59, no. 1 (1992): 171-99; and Cecilia Mariz and Lemuel Dourado Guerra Sobrinho, "Algumas reflexoes sobre a reacaao conservadora na Igreja Catolica," Comunicacoes do ISER 9, no. 30 (1990): 73-78.

7. John Paul II, "Visit to a Shantytown: Misery and the Call for Justice," Origins 21, no. 21 (October 31, 1991): 342.

8. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation (Origins 15, no. 44 [April 17, 1986]), 723.

9. John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (1987), no. 47.