Diocesan leaders explore future of evangelization

Representatives from the Albany Diocese attended "Evangelizing God's People In A Culture of Diversity," a recent conference tackling the issues, methods and challenges surrounding evangelization.

The conference, held in Cincinnati, was sponsored by the North American Institute for Evangelization.

In attendance were Jeanne Schrempf, director of the Albany diocesan Office of Evangelization and Catechesis (OEC); Joseph Piccolino, coordinator of the OEC's outreach program to young adults; Rev. Robert Longobucco, then campus minister at The University at Albany; Jeanne Pitkin, pastoral associate for pastoral care at St. Pius X Church in Loudonville; and David Amico, an OEC associate director who specializes in working with people with disabilities.

Mission of all

Participants agreed that evangelization "is the mission of the entire Church, and is not confined to one office, person or committee," Mr. Amico said.

Mrs. Schrempf noted that many speakers put an emphasis on bringing the Gospel to more cultures and being open to being evangelized, in turn, by those cultures.

Participants also engaged in small-group discussion about culture, which she defined as "race, politics, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and more. It's very expansive."

Diversity

The speakers "gave a very moving testimony of the culture, their core values, the challenges and the realities," explained Mrs. Schrempf. "It made me feel that we, as a Diocese and an evangelizing community, need to expand and include more diverse people. The Catholic Church really can't concentrate on how people fit in with us, but on how we have to be open to others."

Mr. Amico was pleased that persons with disabilities were represented because "the notion of the disabilities community as a culture is a concept that is beginning to come into its own. Persons with disabilities have a particular experience to offer others and to enrich the fabric of the human family."

Among his responsibilities, Mr. Amico oversees regular retreats for adults with disabilities. While the retreats are a way for Catholics to evangelize participants, he said, they are also opportunities for retreatants to be "agents of evangelization" themselves.

Hispanic challenge

Ms. Schrempf was impressed by statistics predicting a shift in American Catholic culture. "In the reasonably near future, we are going to become a Hispanic Church," she said.

She sees that as a challenge to the Albany Diocese to look into further services to and evangelization efforts among the Hispanic population.

Ms. Pitkin brought back from the conference a "basic message" that "it's not just want we want the Church to be, but ultimately what God wants the Church to be. To me, that was really powerful. We are all going to have a struggle with personalities, but if we unite in Christ all of these things will fall away. We each have something about our cultural way of living out the faith that we need to share. Ultimately, we all have the Good News and have to listen to the Good News from each other. That's what makes us family."

Young adults

Dr. Piccolino was "curious" as to how to evangelize young adults in their cultural context.

The "biggest thing" he heard were comments by participants about a failure of the Catholic Church to engage the "last two generations of 18-29-year-olds."

"We have lost them," he said. "This is a wake-up call. If we don't do something to turn that around, we're not going to have much of a Church left. Now is the time to start doing something."

Hope for future

"The Holy Spirit is present in the Church," said Mrs. Schrempf. "My grandparents came from Ireland to a strange country and culture. But look at the incredible Church that we've become. There is no reason to believe that the Church will not be as vibrant in the future."

She hopes to invite representatives from the Diocese's different apostolates and cultures to bring their own thoughts and ideas to the diocesan Evangelization Committee.

"They have so much to bring to our experience," she said. "We can't be the Church of Albany if only some of us are at the table. We need to find a way to serve and be open to their ways of expressing their faith."

(The conference's speakers included Bishop Joseph Estabrook of the Archdiocese of Military Services, who is a native of the Albany Diocese. He talked about the challenges of evangelizing young people within the military culture.)

(9/14/06) [[In-content Ad]]