Missionary Pope Inaugurates Courtyard of the Gentiles for Dialogue with Non-Believers

Another Benedict is here to lead a new missionary age.

The God Whom believers learn to know invites you to discover Him and to live in Him. Do not be afraid! On your journey together towards a new world, seek the Absolute, seek God, even those of you for whom He is an unknown God. May He Who loves each and every one of you bless and protect you. He relies on you to show concern for others and for the future, and you can always rely on Him!"

P>CHESAPEAKE, VA.  (Catholic Online) - This past February Pope Benedict XVI ordained five priests to the office of Bishop. He called them to an "ecclesial existence" proclaiming "The harvest is great but the laborers are few! Pray then to the Lord of the harvest to send laborers for his harvest!" (Luke 10:2). The Lord sends you, Dear Friends, to his harvest. Precisely in this hour working in God's fields is especially urgent and precisely in this hour the truth of Jesus' words -- "The laborers are few" -- weighs painfully upon us. Set out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. You are called to cast the net into the troubled sea of our time to bring men to follow Christ; to draw them out, so to speak, of the salty waters of death and darkness into which the light of heaven does not penetrate. You must bring them to the shore of life, into communion with Jesus Christ."

Missionary zeal has characterized this Pontificate. When Benedict XVI succeeded John Paul II few expected it. I was numbered among those who did. His choice of the name Benedict, the Monk whose movement reclaimed Europe for the Church in the last millennium, signaled a prophetic papacy. I recalled a passage from Alisdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue" wherein he opined on the decline of the West: 

"It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another; and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the Epoch in which the Roman Empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless, certain parallels there are. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another-- doubtless very different-- St. Benedict."

What I suggested was that another Benedict was here to lead the recovery and reform of the Church and summon her into this new missionary age. I reaffirm that assertion today. The Church is Christ's plan for the entire world. The early Fathers called her the "world reconciled", a term embraced by the Catechism of the Catholic Church which, citing St Augustine, declares "To reunite all his children, scattered and led astray by sin, the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church. The Church is the place where humanity must rediscover its unity and salvation. The Church is "the world reconciled." She is that bark which "in the full sail of the Lord's cross, by the breath of the Holy Spirit, navigates safely in this world." According to another image dear to the Church Fathers, she is prefigured by Noah's ark, which alone saves from the flood." (CCC #845)

The contemporary culture has thrown off almost every remnant of Christian influence and embraced a new paganism. What Pope Benedict calls the "Dictatorship of Relativism" is the bad fruit of a rejection of the very existence of truth. Given the current state of moral decline we need to see the West as ripe for the New Evangelization. We are all called to be "fishers of men in the ocean of our time."  We are living in "the time of mission." Another Benedict is here, leading us into a new missionary age of the Church. 

In his very first homily he referred to Christian unity as his impelling duty and he has acted upon it with extraordinary conviction and bold initiatives. His are the modern missionary journeys of the Vicar of Christ. They are chosen strategically, led by the Holy Spirit and have a prophetic purpose as part of a missionary plan. His "Encyclical" (circulating) letters contain wisdom from heaven which can help to heal and rebuild the Church - and through her the world. His work to restore the Catholic unity of the Church - including the bold overture toward Anglican Christians which birthed the Anglican Ordinariate, his pastoral efforts with the SSPX, and his humble rapprochement with our Orthodox brethren shows his dedication to healing the divisions within the Church. His continual encouragement to the ecclesial movements are part of a blueprint to resuscitate the Church as one New Man, breathing with both lungs, East and West, in a new Christian missionary age.

His erection of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization charged with evangelizing countries where the Gospel was announced centuries ago but where its presence in peoples' daily life seems to be all but lost shows his missionary intention to re-evangelize Europe and the West. His continual exhortations to the faithful to live at the heart of the Church for the sake of the world reveal a missionary plan and methodology. Playing off of the title of Dr. Thomas Woods's book, "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization", I believe the Catholic Church will rebuild Western Civilization as she comes back together again in the fullness of Christian communion under the leadership of this Pope.

This missionary Pope now continues this momentum, by reaching out now to non-believers. He has instituted a "Courtyard of the Gentiles" through the Pontifical Council for Culture. Two days of meetings occurred in Paris, France, on March 24th and 25th as the beginning of this initiative. The Vatican released the complete text of the Holy Father's video message to participants in the "Courtyard of the Gentiles" which closed in Paris at the forefront of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame where the Pope's message was broadcast on giant screens.

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Pope Benedict XVI on Enlightenment, Religion, and Shared Reason

"Dear young people, dear friends!

I know that - at the invitation of Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, archbishop of Paris, and of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture - you have gathered in large numbers on the forecourt of Notre-Dame de Paris. I greet you all, not forgetting our brothers and friends of the Taize Community. I am grateful to the pontifical council for having taken up and extended my invitation to open a 'Courtyard of the Gentiles' in the Church. The image of the courtyard evokes that vast open space near the Temple of Jerusalem where everyone who did not share the faith of Israel could approach the Temple and pose questions about that religion.

There they could meet the scribes, discuss the faith and even pray to the God they did not know. And if, at that time, the Courtyard was also a place of exclusion because Gentiles did not have the right to enter the consecrated area, Jesus Christ came to 'break down the dividing wall' between Jews and Gentiles, so as to 'reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace...' as St. Paul tells us.

At the heart of the 'City of Light', in front of that magnificent masterpiece of French religious culture which is Notre-Dame, a great space has been opened to give fresh impetus to respectful and friendly encounter among people of differing convictions. You young people, believers and non-believers, have chosen to come together, this evening as in your everyday lives, to meet and to discuss the great questions of human existence. Many people today affirm that they do not belong to any religion, but wish for a new and freer world, more just and more united, more peaceful and happier.

As I address you today, I consider everything you have to say to one another. You non-believers call on believers, in particular, to offer the witness of a life coherent with the faith they profess, and you reject any deviation from religion which renders it inhuman. You believers wish to tell your friends that the treasure that is within you merits sharing, it needs to be announced and it requires reflection. The question of God is not a danger to society; it does not imperil human life! The question of God must not be absent from the great questions of our time.

Dear friends, you must build bridges between one another. You must seize the opportunity that has been given you to seek, in the depths of your consciences and through solid and well-reasoned reflection, the ways to a profound dialogue. You have so much to say to one another. Do not close your consciences before the challenges and problems facing you. I deeply believe that the encounter between faith and reason enables man to discover himself. But all too often reason is warped by the pressure of interests and the lure of profit, which it is forced to recognize as the ultimate criterion. The search for truth is not easy. And if each of us is called to make a courageous decision in favor of truth, this is because there are no shortcuts to the happiness and beauty of a perfect life. Jesus says as much in the Gospel: 'The truth will make you free'.

Dear young people, it is up to you to ensure that in your own countries and in Europe as a whole, believers and non-believers rediscover the path of dialogue. Religions cannot be afraid of a just secularism, a secularism that is open and allows individuals to live according to what they believe in their own consciences. If we are to build a world of freedom, equality and fraternity, believers and non-believers should feel themselves to be free, with equal rights to live their individual and community lives in accordance with their own convictions; and they must be brothers to one another.

One of the reasons behind this Courtyard of the Gentiles is to foster such feelings of fraternity, over and above individual beliefs but without denying differences and, even more profoundly, recognizing that only God, in Christ, gives us inner freedom and the possibility of truly coming together as brothers. Our primary attitude, the first action we must undertake together, is that of respecting, assisting and loving all human beings, because they are creatures of God and, in a certain way, embody the path that leads to Him.

By continuing the experience you are having this evening you will help to break down the barriers of fear of the other, of foreigners, of those who are not like you; a fear that often arises from mutual ignorance, from skepticism or from indifference. Be sure to strengthen your bonds with all young people without distinction, not forgetting those who live in poverty and solitude, those who suffer through unemployment or sickness, or who feel they are on the margins of society.

Dear young people, you can share not only your life experience but also your approach to prayer. You believers and non-believers, present here in this Courtyard of the Unknown, are also invited to enter the consecrated area, to pass the magnificent portal of Notre-Dame and enter the cathedral for a moment of prayer. For some of you this will be a prayer to a God you know through the faith, but for others it may be a prayer to an unknown God.

Dear young non-believers, joining those who are praying inside Notre-Dame on this day of the Annunciation of the Lord, open your hearts to the Sacred Scriptures, allow yourselves to be drawn by the beauty of the music and, if you truly desire it, allow the feelings closed within you to rise towards the unknown God.

I am happy to have had the chance to address you this evening for the inauguration of the Courtyard of the Gentiles. And I hope you will be able to respond to other invitations I have made, especially that of this summer's World Youth Day in Madrid. The God Whom believers learn to know invites you to discover Him and to live in Him. Do not be afraid! On your journey together towards a new world, seek the Absolute, seek God, even those of you for whom He is an unknown God. May He Who loves each and every one of you bless and protect you. He relies on you to show concern for others and for the future, and you can always rely on Him!"

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Another Benedict is here to lead the recovery and reform of the Catholic Church and summon her into a new missionary age.

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