Our People

Evangelii Nuntiandi - Thirty Years On

Address to the "Witnes to the Gospel in Modern Australia" Conference at Lidcombe

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
1 October 2005

It is most appropriate that a Conference mark the 30th Anniversary of the promulgation of the Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi. I believe that it is one of the most significant of the post conciliar documents, and has had a great impact on the Church.

Evangelii Nuntiandi presents a bold, clear and challenging call to the Church, made in the midst of the volatile and confusing times that followed the Council. It eloquently sought to re-orient the Church’s energy towards its essential purpose – “the Church exists in order to evangelise”(EN #14).

This theme was further developed in the pontificate of our late and beloved, John Paul II, as he constantly spoke of the need for a “New Evangelisation”.

It is important that Catholic Mission – with its focus on the mission of the Church - and the ACLRI – representing those who have consecrated themselves to the Lord for the sake of the Gospel - sponsor this conference.

Evangelisation is the great challenge before the Church in the beginning of the third millennium as we witness the ravages of secularism, consumerism and hedonism in first world countries and see it spilling over into developing nations. We are seeing generations of people who live, as Pope John Paul said in Redemptoris Missio, “as though God did not exist”. We are witnessing the destruction of so many lives in the great scourges of our day – drugs, AIDS, suicide, breakdown in families, and sexual confusion.

The light, truth and hope that Jesus Christ offers to each person needs to be proclaimed unambiguously. The path to life and salvation is found only in Jesus Christ.

As we reflect on Evangelii Nuntiandi, we need to ask: how have we, thirty years on, heeded its call to the Church. Are we as a Church committing all our energies to the proclamation that, as Pope Paul VI says “in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, who died and rose from the dead, salvation is offered to all men, as a gift of God's grace and mercy” (EN #27)

The document ends with a sober thought,

It would be useful if every Christian and every evangelizer were to pray about the following thought: men can gain salvation also in other ways, by God's mercy, even though we do not preach the Gospel to them; but as for us, can we gain salvation if through negligence or fear or shame- what St. Paul called "blushing for the Gospel"[134] - or as a result of false ideas we fail to preach it? For that would be to betray the call of God, who wishes the seed to bear fruit through the voice of the ministers of the Gospel; and it will depend on us whether this grows into trees and produces its full fruit. (EN #80)

May this conference day inflame our hearts with a burning zeal to proclaim Jesus Christ to the world.