Mission to Give Witness
Tom McGuire, USCCA Board member
We will soon gather at the USCCA 29th International Conference from Friday to Sunday, 2-4 August 2024, to reflect on insights leading to friendship and dialogue between people living in secular societies in China and the U.S.
The theme of our gathering is Our Hope is in Christ, a choice Christians make while living in secular societies. As missionary disciples, we are sent out to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ to all.
A goal for our reflections is to listen deeply to one another on how to be present in the secular societies of the U.S. and China so that how we live and speak will witness the joy of finding meaning in life through Christ.
We have much to learn from each other in how to be missionary disciples in China and the U.S.
In his book Faith and Religion in a Secular Society, Cardinal Jozef De Keel explores the history of secular society in the West and how religious faith gives meaning to life. He cites the Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus describing how Christians lived in the second or third century. This ancient pastoral description of the life of a Christian provides a perspective for our reflections.
“Christians are distinguished from other people neither by their place of residence nor by language nor by customs. After all, nowhere do they live in their own cities, nor do they speak a separate dialect or lead a special life….They live in the cities of the Greeks and other peoples, as fate has it for each, and they follow the customs of their land in clothing and food and in their further necessities of life.
They live their lives in a way that arouses admiration and, according to general judgment, appears as something incredible. They live in their own homeland, but as if they were foreigners established there. They have everything in common with the others as citizens and have to endure all sorts of things as strangers. Every foreign country is their homeland and every homeland is their foreign land. Like everyone else, they marry and produce “children. But they do not kill unborn life. Their table is common, but not their bed. They are in the flesh but do not live according to the flesh.”
An essential goal of the U.S.-China Catholic Association's mission is to share the diverse voices that give witness to the faithful ways of living as Catholics in China with
Catholics in the U.S.
This past weekend, I gave talks in two Catholic Churches, St Anthony of Padua and Our Lady Queen of Peace in the Archdiocese of St Louis. I am most grateful to the pastor,
Fr Tom Miller, Father John Reiker, Associate Pastor, and the parishioners who welcomed learning about Catholics in China.
In a gathering after one of the Masses, a group of parishioners asked good questions to clarify their understanding of life for Christians in China today. There is a hunger for an understanding and appreciation of the oneness of Catholic sisters and brothers in China and the U.S.
How can we deepen the witness of living as faithful Christians in our diverse secular societies?
I hope to come away from our conversations and dialogues with a new way to build bridges of friendship and dialogue with Catholics in China as a witness to the oneness we share in Christ, who is our hope.
I invite us, in prayer, as friends of the Chinese people, to stand in solidarity under the Cross of Christ while living in our secular societies.
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Our MISSION
Inspired by the Gospel, the mission of the US-China Catholic Association is to build bridges of friendship and dialogue between the people of China and the United States by offering educational, service, and cultural programs in support of the Church and the larger society.
Our VISION
The US-China Catholic Association was founded in 1989 by concerned U.S. bishops Maryknoll, the Jesuits, and representatives of other religious orders to promote mutual support and fraternal ties between the Church in China and the U.S. Church.
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About Faith & Religion in a Secular Society
"What I so greatly appreciate in Cardinal De Kesel’s most recent book, Faith and Religion in a Secular Society, is his deep commitment to Christian belief rooted in contemporary culture. He is clearly a realist about the situation of the Church today... He understands that the Church must listen to what contemporary people are saying and asking. And he knows that the Church can indeed creatively respond. Cardinal De Kesel’s book is refreshingly optimistic."—from the foreword.
Faith and Religion in a Secular Society makes the same bet as Pope Francis that, in the face of the phenomena of secularization, religious indifference, and institutional weakening, it is not by preaching about or idealizing a bygone past that Christianity can expect to regain in Europe because it risks isolating and separating even more than it is from a culture that no longer waits. The salvation of the Church and the safeguarding of her universal mission depends rather on its ability to facilitate a culture of encounter with all those who want to humanize the modern, pluralist, and secular society while also asserting its freedom of expression. It is this pastoral option that Joseph De Kesel is already experimenting with in deeply secularized Belgium, which, like France, was once a land of Christianity.
Cardinal Josef De Kesel is the Archbishop of Mechelen Brussels and Primate of Belgium since 2015. He was elevated to cardinal by Pope Francis in 2016. He is a member of the Roman Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life.
source, Paulist Press