Seeking converts is solemn nonsense? The Council implicitly taught so.

Our Lord emphatically used the active verb “preach;”  he did not call for some kind of passive evangelization, yet this is what our recent Popes have embraced.

Pope Francis:

"Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us."

Pope Benedict XVI:

"The Church does not engage in proselytism. Instead, she grows by “attraction”:

Also:

“On the other hand, this unity [of all Christians] does not mean what could be called ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one's own faith history. Absolutely not!”

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Vatican II scrupulously avoided language such as “a return to Peter's fold.”

As explained by Cardinal Avery Dulles, “the Council implicitly taught that the united church of the future” will not result from the submission of other churches to Roman Catholicism. 

“Vatican II . . . distanced itself in two important aspects from the type of Catholic ecumenism now described [that is, the effort to bring other churches and communities to the obedience of Rome]. First, it linked the concept of union to that of reform. Scrupulously avoiding language such as a 'return to Peter's fold,' the Council recognized that in its present form, Catholicism suffers deficiencies in behavior, ecclesiastical discipline and even the formulation of doctrine, and that, therefore, the Catholic Church, as a human and earthly institution, needs a continual reformation.

“Second, Vatican II recognized that the life and truth of Christ are acting in other communities and that, consequently, these should not consider abandoning anything that the grace of the Holy Spirit has wrought in their hearts. On the basis of these two principles, one may sustain that the Council implicitly taught that the united church of the future will not emerge from the submission of the other churches and their absorption by Roman Catholicism.

“The longed for Una Sancta can be a joint creation that simultaneously completes and transforms all the churches that rejoin it. The Catholic Church, without dissolving herself in any way, would modify herself by entering this more encompassing unity.”

American Cardinal Avery Dulles (1918-2008), “Ecumenismo: problemi e possibilita per il futuro,” quoted on page 303, in Will He Find Faith? (Inveniet Fidem?), by Atila Sinke Guimarães.

Posted 04/27/2015 by Frank Rega, www.frankrega.com