{"id":737,"date":"2013-01-30T11:18:53","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T15:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=737"},"modified":"2013-01-30T11:25:36","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T15:25:36","slug":"var-_gaq-_gaq-_gaq-push_setaccount-ua-25646250-2-_gaq-push_trackpageview-function-var-ga-document-createelementscript-ga-type-textjavascript-ga-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=737","title":{"rendered":"<script type=\"text\/javascript\">  var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-25646250-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);  (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text\/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:\/\/ssl' : 'http:\/\/www') + '.google-analytics.com\/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();  <\/script>  <\/heat> Gun Control Issue and the Call to New Evangelization &#8211; Held on Sunday, January 27, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Personal Note on Posting Timeline<\/b><\/p>\n<p>For those of you who come to this site I had hoped to post on the Tuesday, then the Wednesday following the Sunday that we had our gathering.\u00a0 Obviously I haven\u2019t been faithful to that time line.\u00a0 If you come to this site by Friday at noon, I will have either posted or informed you of the status of the post.<\/p>\n<p><b>Preview \u2013 The Challenge of the Church\u2019s Call to a New Evangelization.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>I began this session focusing particularly on the comment that Faryl had made with the goal of setting it in the context of the call for a new Evangelization [I didn\u2019t succeed very well].\u00a0 Faryl had spoken of the \u201cclosed minded politically correct\u201d dimension of our culture.\u00a0 It is obvious that she understands \u201cpolitically correct\u201d in a negative sense.\u00a0 Her comments reflect the cultural conflicts that mark our society at the present.\u00a0 For me the question is how do we respond to the Call to a New Evangelization in such a context.<\/p>\n<p>Below is the thought of Fr. Lonergan on the task of training people for their pastoral ministry.\u00a0 It is different words but the concept is the same, how do we evangelize in our changing culture.\u00a0 Here is how Fr. Lonergan put it back in 1973.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut the fundamental issue is that every class in every culture has different powers of assimilation.\u00a0 Preaching the Gospel is a matter of adapting in each case to the relevant differences.\u00a0 Preaching the Gospel is not a matter of imposing your culture on other people.\u00a0 Christians have been trying to do that for a very long time.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a matter of putting a patch on somebody else\u2019s culture.\u00a0 And the patch tears the whole garment.\u00a0 It\u2019s a matter of finding in the other culture the virtualities, the potentialities for expressing the Christian message.\u00a0 And the differences may be individual or specific or generic.\u00a0 And so pastoral theology is a matter of organizing the training of preachers and the assignment of tasks so that individual differences will be met on the individual level, specific differences on the group level, generic differences on the regional level.<\/p>\n<p>Pastoral theology can be just as complicated as the high command and make just as many mistakes.\u00a0 It\u2019s not a matter of listening on the suicide phone or nothing like that.\u00a0 In the training of preachers there are many goals that have to be kept in mind.\u00a0 But the most important is to secure a thorough understanding of the message to be communicated in all its dimensions and possibilities.\u00a0 And the key element is understanding.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t understand you can repeat formula.\u00a0 And the other people can repeat formula.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to get away from.\u00a0 If you do understand you can say the same thing in a thousand different ways.\u00a0 You can watch people\u2019s faces and when they\u2019re not catching on you can change your pitch and keep changing it until they start smiling.\u00a0 When they do they got it.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the fundamental element in pastoral theology.\u00a0 Help people to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By \u201cclass\u201d Fr. Lonergan is referencing the different social classes in a society; by \u201cpowers of assimilation\u201d he means the capacity of individuals in those different classes to understand.\u00a0 It\u2019s one thing to talk with someone who has a high school education, another who has obtained a PhD.\u00a0 His focus is an invitation to identify the concrete and real differences between oneself as a believer and the concrete other who is not a believer.\u00a0 He reminds us that those differences can be individual, specific, or generic but he doesn\u2019t tell us what those differences are; that is the task of the believer who is called to evangelize.\u00a0 He tells us further to identify the virtualities and potentialities in the other\u2019s culture for expressing the Christian message. \u00a0Again he doesn\u2019t tell what those virtualities and potentialities are; he leaves that to those called to evangelize.\u00a0 The heart of the matter though is not a matter of reciting formulas but of understanding the Christian message.<\/p>\n<p>There are two things he tells evangelization is not. \u00a0It &#8220;is not a matter of imposing your culture on other people.&#8221; \u00a0He reminds us that &#8220;If you don\u2019t understand you can repeat formula.\u00a0 And the other people can repeat formula.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to get away from.&#8221; \u00a0So it&#8217;s not a matter of repeating formula.<\/p>\n<p>After a brief conversation on this notion, Annette raised the issue of \u201cGun Controls\u201d and for the next half hour there occurred a lively conversation with strongly held positions for and against.\u00a0 It took me about four times to bring the conversation to an end.\u00a0 The conversation further highlighted the cultural divide.<\/p>\n<p>I would really be interested in anyone who would take the time to read the two paragraphs above and attempt to apply it to the gun control issue or really any issue that reveals our different cultural values.\u00a0 What I\u2019m not interested in is your expressing your already firmly held position on gun control. To move forward is the challenge.<\/p>\n<p><b>I will share our discussion on the Wooing of Rebekah, Gen. 24: 01 \u2013 67 in my next post.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Your comments, observations, questions are welcomed.\u00a0 See \u201ccomment\u201d link below<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Personal Note on Posting Timeline For those of you who come to this site I had hoped to post on the Tuesday, then the Wednesday following the Sunday that we had our gathering.\u00a0 Obviously I haven\u2019t been faithful to that &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/?p=737\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,21],"tags":[23],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-new-evangelization","tag-gun-control"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":739,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rjr.richardross.annaerossi.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}