The Politics of the “New Evangelization” in the Post-Conciliar Catholic Church

[Figure: see text] Following rhetorical theorist Michael McGee, Benjamin Bennett-Carpenter and Michael J. McCallion contend that the term “new evangelization” may be understood as an “ideograph,” a symbolic reference point that galvanizes Catholics with different ideological sensibilities. This paper explores the “political” struggle to fix the meaning of this ideograph after the Second Vatican Council by distinguishing between two broad trends. The roots of the new evangelization as a nodal point in the post-conciliar era lie in the Latin American church's appropriation of Vatican II, beginning with the Conference of Latin American Bishops’ meeting at Medellin in 1968. This first strand of interpretation views justice as a constitutive dimension of the church's mission and tends to view evangelization in light of “liberation.” As articulated by Pope John Paul II, a second more mainstream or official strand views evangelization in principally spiritual terms and focuses on developing “new methods” for communicating doctrine and on fostering personal conversion to Christ within the secularized West. This approach tends to emphasize humankind's vertical relationship to God—as well as the uniqueness of Christ—and to view the poor as recipients of charitable work rather than as agents of transformation. Although Pope Francis’ program of ecclesial reform seeks to retrieve elements of the first strand, some proponents of the second strand have responded by rejecting Francis outright or by sanitizing his vision for their own purposes.