John Paul II gave a new energy to the Conciliar
concept of ‘missionary activity’ in its specific sense,
and he did this in various ways. As the Council
did in Ad Gentes 6, the Pope affirmed that the
Church has one evangelizing mission, and that the
exercise of this is differentiated due to the different
situations in which human groups find themselves.
It was in this context that he called for a “new
evangelization” and gave it a rather clear meaning.
He reiterated the distinction between mission and
pastoral activity. Basic to John Paul II’s missiology is
his emphasis on the importance of distinguishing
missionary activity, oriented towards those who
are beyond the visible limits of the Church, from
ordinary pastoral attention to those who already
find themselves in the Church. To this mission
activity in its proper sense he gives the name
“mission ad gentes.”
First, there is the situation which the Church’s
missionary activity addresses: peoples, groups,
and socio-cultural contexts in which Christ and
his Gospel are not known, or which lack Christian
communities sufficiently mature to be able to
incarnate the faith in their own environment and
proclaim it to other groups. This is mission ad
gentes in the proper sense of the term. Secondly,
there are Christian communities with adequate and
solid ecclesial structures. They are fervent in their
faith and in Christian living. They bear witness to
the Gospel in their surroundings and have a sense
of commitment to the universal mission. In these
communities the Church carries out her pastoral
activity and pastoral care (RM 33).
In the years prior to Redemptoris Missio, only
certain missionary groups and missiologists
underscored this distinction between mission and
pastoral activity. We can do pastoral activity with
missionary zeal, but the former is not implicit in
the latter, for the focus group is already an ecclesial
community.
SUBTLE COMPARTMENTALIZATION
OF THE EVANGELIZING ACTIVITIES
IS IMPOSSIBLE AND THE EASIEST
WAY TO SET THE FOCUS
ACCORDING TO OUR PURPOSE
(C.2) IS TO DETERMINE THE FOCAL
GROUP OF OUR APOSTOLATEMEMBERS IN THE VISIBLE CHURCH,
NON-BELIEVERS AND NO LONGER
BELIEVERS.
When John Paul II issued Redemptoris Missio in
1990, twenty five years after had elapsed since
the Decree Ad Gentes. In that quarter century, the
socio-cultural and religious conditions affecting
the world’s peoples kept on changing, as did the
Church’s awareness of how these affected her
evangelizing mission. The distinction between the
communities that needed missionary activity and
those that needed ordinary pastoral attention was
valid but no longer sufficient. It is true that there
still were entire peoples which did not yet know
Christ, whose ancestral cultures were not affected
by the Gospel, and that there were other groups
that were evangelized and constituted as Christian
communities. But there were also considerable
groups that were no longer Christians, for whom
Jesus Christ, his Gospel and his Church were of no
importance. It was to these groups that )