In July, Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester (MN) criticized Cardinal-designate Américo Alves Aguiar’s statement that “we don’t want to convert the young people to Christ” at World Youth Day.
Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh— appointed by Pope Francis as an expert at the upcoming Synod— responded that “What Barron has trouble understanding is that the bid to convert others to the Catholic Church—proselytism—contradicts evangelization, which is firstly about facilitating the encounter with Christ.” Responding to Ivereigh, Bishop Barron writes that “one scarcely knows where to begin responding to the confusions on display here.”
Ivereigh’s understanding of proselytism as an objectionable “bid to convert others to the Catholic Church” differs markedly from the discussion of proselytism in a 2007 doctrinal note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. There, the Congregation stated that “the term proselytism was often used as a synonym for missionary activity. More recently, however, the term has taken on a negative connotation, to mean the promotion of a religion by using means, and for motives, contrary to the spirit of the Gospel; that is, which do not safeguard the freedom and dignity of the human person.”