NEW EVANGELIZATION: THE MEANS CANNOT TAKE THE PLACE OF THE END

VATICAN CITY, MAY 22, 2001 (VIS) - Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, spoke last evening during the second session of the extraordinary consistory of the College of Cardinals on the theme chosen for this gathering: "Pastoral Perspectives of the Church in the Third Millennium." He focussed his talk on the means the Church should use to achieve the objectives set out for the Church by Pope John Paul in "Novo millennio ineunte."

The cardinal began by asking in what perspective the cardinals should reflect on the questions facing them. Of primary importance, he answered, is "identifying the subject of action. It is the Church considered not from a human point of view as one of the institutions of the social body of mankind, but with the eyes of faith as the spouse of Christ."

Noting that "Christ (is) the only 'program' of the Church," he asked: "According to what method should we plan pastoral programs? ... We must reflect deeply on the relationship between the end and the means. The means must be coherent with the end."

"We have entered," Cardinal Lustiger continued, "a new era which calls for a new evangelization on our part. In this regard one could say that proclaiming the Gospel is still at its beginning stages and today uses a power of salvation, justice and peace that men could not imagine in the limits of the ancient world."

In programming the Church's ministries in the Third Millennium, said the archbishop of Paris, "we must have our eyes of faith ever more fixed on Christ. ... There exists in fact a perfect coherence between the works of Christ and the humble means that we are called to use to accomplish the salvific will of the Father and the mission of reconciliation entrusted to us by the Son."

"Are all means neutral?" he asked. "Are they all suitable to the service of the Gospel, unless of course they bear some element which is contrary to the moral good?" He also asked whether or not the Church can or should use "technical solutions" or "know-how marked by human and social sciences and the multiple methods of management (which have been) developed today."

Cardinal Lustiger suggested that human means are not always suitable for the Church "because in human life, the means chosen often take on the aspect of an end: they are reduced to serving unavowed goals: the will for power, the desire for pleasure, profit, glory or vanity. In brief, we make idols of the means. Our idols remain hidden."

The cardinal stated that "means cannot take the place of the end. That is true in political action, as in economic life as in all human enterprise which must have as its goal serving the common good of mankind. A fortiori, human means cannot be substituted for the divine end of the Church, for her mission of sanctification of the Name (of Jesus)."
He observed that "in limiting ourselves to technical choices in our evangelizing work, we misunderstand the subject of the action which is the Church herself. This would be to ignore the original nature of the mission Christ entrusted to her."

"Reorganization," stated Cardinal Lustiger, "always has a human cost, victims, and it is often diverted from its ends. The revolutionary period which Eastern Europe knew over the last century is an illustration of this."

"Charity and love," he said in concluding remarks, "must be the source and strength of every renewal. Change can be received and desired as the expression of a greater mercy and a greater fidelity: greater mercy for the least, the poor, those who don't understand, those who don't know what they are doing; and greater fidelity to Christ Himself and to His Spirit."

"Proceeding in this humility and this poverty, the new ideas that we will propose, far from being a cause of breaches or divisions, will excite new conversions and a greater love of the One Lord."

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