“Is evangelization inevitably elitist?” asks Fr. Francis DeDiano, CSP, president of the Paulist Evangelization Ministries.
Good question. In the light of our Catholic faith, I think the answer is a clear no. In fact, the call to evangelize helps us cleanse ourselves of any creeping, sinful elitism in our lives.
If elitism is considering a person (or group of people) superior to others, then our desire to follow Jesus’ command to evangelize demands that we abandon any elitist attitudes. The true evangelist believes that the Good News is, as the Venerable Pope Paul VI wrote in 1975, “meant for all people of all times” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, §13).
If we are to be true evangelists, this forces us into uncomfortable and new places. It means that we must seek to spread the Gospel to all people—the rich and the poor, the passionate and the indifferent, our friends and our “enemies,” those of status and those whom society would deem worthless. And (this is where it gets even tougher!) we must cultivate “an ever-increasing love” for those who are being evangelized (EN, §75). To be an evangelist is see every person as God does—quite the opposite of an elitist viewpoint of others.
The work of evangelization also cuts against any “self-elitism” or spiritual arrogance. It’s all too easy, even for the committed evangelist, to sometimes slip towards the temptation of thinking, “I know the arguments to answer the skeptic. My presentation of the Gospel is spot-on. My tireless work for the poor makes people stop and think. I’m a disciple because I learned nearly everything there is to know about the Bible and Catechism.” In doing this, we might share the Gospel lovingly with all; yet still implicitly place ourselves on a pedestal as the evangelist.
As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI proclaimed in his Eucharistic homily concluding the XIII Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the New Evangelization, “new evangelizers” are like the blind beggar Bartimaeus, “people who have had the experience of being healed by God, through Jesus Christ”—and I would add, remember that it was God who acted first. Jesus the Lord who first saved and healed them—not their own intellect, actions, or human accomplishments.
As D. T. Niles, a Sri Lankan Methodist minister, famously said, evangelism is “one beggar telling another beggar where to get food.” The authentic evangelist’s work is rooted in this grace and lived out with profound humility and gratitude—an antidote to ever imagining oneself as “the elite” or superior in spiritual accomplishment, grace, or knowledge.
This is why evangelization in the Catholic tradition is not only not inevitably elitist, but works against elitism. Fr. DeDiano’s question is indeed a good one, a starting point for an examination of conscience that can help each of us, at every stage in our journey as disciples, purify our motives, assumptions, and attitudes that we bring to our evangelizing mission.
Copyright © 2014, Colleen Vermeulen
photo credit: Lawrence OP via photopin cc
Colleen Vermeulen
Colleen Reiss Vermeulen, M.Div., M.N.A., blogs, ministers in parish life and lay/deacon formation, and serves as a U.S. Army Reserve officer. She and her husband, Luke, have been married since 2011 and live in Ypsilanti, MI with their two young sons.
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