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March 5, 2010
Commitment to living faith will be key to new evangelization
 Andy Telli, Tennessee Register
To successfully carry out the new evangelization called for by the late Pope John Paul II, Christians must demonstrate to the modern world that they can make an authentic commitment to live their faith, said Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus.
“When sufficient numbers of the laity can demonstrate in their marriages, in their families, in their day to day life … it’s possible to live this way,” the new evangelization will succeed, Anderson said during a speech at Vanderbilt University on Feb. 25.
Making a commitment to live their faith and to loving their neighbor is how the early Christians evangelized and converted the Roman Empire, added Anderson, whose talk was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Catholic Community.
Anderson, who also was in Nashville visiting his daughter who is a Vanderbilt student, leads the largest fraternal organization in the world with more than 1.6 million members. Each year, the order donates $150 million a year to charity and contributes 68 million man hours of volunteer service.
The Knights of Columbus must live the new evangelization through a deeper commitment to the order’s founding principles of unity, fraternity and charity, Anderson said.
“The fundamental question for society comes from the first chapter of Genesis,” Anderson said. “Am I my brother’s keeper? If we answer yes, that changes everything.”
Living in a free and just human society requires people see each other as brothers and themselves as their brother’s keeper, Anderson said. And the Knights’ principles of unity, fraternity and charity are rooted in the idea people must be their brother’s keeper, he said.
During the 18th Century Age of Enlightenment, philosophers argued that the Catholic Church and Christianity were oppressive and threats to human freedom. Instead of seeking the answer to man’s purpose in God, they turned to man himself, Anderson said.
Today, there is a vacuum in philosophy in which people have lost hope in the future, Anderson said. “Into that vacuum the Christian principles of what it truly means to be a human being have found new relevance. That’s the heart of the new evangelization.”
The Church answered the question of whether Christianity was still relevant at the Second Vatican Council in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern Word (“Guadium et Spes”), Anderson said.
The document states: “Above all the Church knows that her message is in harmony with the most secret desires of the human heart when she champions the dignity of the human vocation, restoring hope to those who have already despaired of anything higher than their present lot. Far from diminishing man, her message brings to his development light, life and freedom.”
The Church teaches that love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being, Anderson said. Christianity calls us to understand humanity through love, he added.
St. Paul defined love in his first letter to the Corinthians, Anderson said. “Where do we see this love? … Christ on the cross,” Anderson said.
The key to the new evangelization is building strong Catholic communities, Anderson said. The foundations of those communities must be the Eucharist and the model of Christian living shown to us by Mary, he said. That’s one of the reasons the Knights of Columbus, during his tenure as Supreme Knight, have sponsored Marian and Eucharistic congresses, Anderson said.
He also wants the Knights to help build Catholic communities on the campuses of America’s leading universities, Anderson said. A Knights of Columbus council has been established at Vanderbilt and efforts are underway to start one at Harvard University, Anderson noted.
“We’re looking to create a space on college campuses where men can gather and be confident about their faith and the practice of their faith,” Anderson said.
Photo by Andy Telli: Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson speaks at Benton Chapel on the campus of Vanderbilt University.
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