Vatican drafting document on transmitting the faith

DDF Prefect Cardinal Víctor Fernández said the forthcoming text is being prepared “in dialogue with the Dicastery for Evangelisation”. The cardinal did not specify a date for the text’s publication.

Cardinal Fernández said the document’s origins date back in part to Pope Francis’ 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

The late Pontiff “highly valued popular piety and the family as means of transmitting the faith”, the cardinal said, but had stated in Evangelii Gaudium – although not in these exact words – “that this transmission had been broken”.

Cardinal Fernández said work on the document gathered momentum after bishops from around the world, while on ad limina visits to the Vatican, had “expressed this concern and proposed a study on the problem and possible ways of resolving it”.

The DDF decided to “conduct a very broad consultation with all episcopal conferences, various specialists and research centres”.

“The response has been enormous,” Cardinal Fernández said, adding that “many conferences have already sent their opinions and useful resources.” He noted that the dicastery has been “surprised both by the quantity and the length of the responses received” and predicted it will “take a great deal of time to read and make use of all this material”.

The cardinal stressed that the breadth of the consultation ensures “a universal perspective, encompassing a wide variety of viewpoints”, and pointed to significant regional differences in how the challenge of transmitting the faith is experienced.

Cardinal Fernández added that “preparing a text on the transmission of the faith today clearly requires moving beyond a European or Italian framework and drawing on the breadth, variety and richness of the universal Church”.

This being the case, he said the document “cannot be a text that offers unique recipes or one-size-fits-all solutions, but it must acknowledge the full scope of the issue and propose some paths that might inspire everyone in some way”.

FULL STORY

Vatican Is Preparing Document on the ‘Transmission of the Faith’ (By Edward Pentin/National Catholic Register)