 |
|
|
Archbishop Dolan: Evangelization starts in one’s heart
By Julie Filby
|
RELATED STORY: Record crowd attends 2011 Living the Catholic Faith Conference
PURCHASE CD RECORDINGS: CD recordings of Archbishop Dolan's keynote presentation and all other keynote and workshop presentations delivered during the March 11-12, 2011 Living the Catholic Faith Conference, are available for purchase from National Conference Recording Services. Individual presentations are priced at $8 each. Click here to review purchase options. Questions? Contact National Conference Recording Services at 303-807-1404 or ncrs4@comcast.net. |
In an exclusive interview with the Denver Catholic Register preceding his keynote address, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, commented on the importance of this year’s Living the Catholic Faith Conference and its theme: “Go and bear fruit” (Jn 15:16).
“If we’re going to bear fruit, we have to make sure the soil of our own soul is fertile, so we start here,” he said, pointing to his heart. “Evangelization always starts here.”
He said Christians need to start with themselves in a selfless, not selfish way.
“I’m never going to be able to be of evangelical service to the Church unless I’ve got my own interior house in order,” he said.
He stressed the importance of taking prayer and religious literacy seriously.
“I’ve got to know and deepen my faith; we’ve got a real crisis of religious illiteracy,” he said. “We’ve got one of the greatest traditions of wisdom, knowledge and insight in the world—in our Catholic faith—and our people don’t know it.”
He said conferences, such as the Living the Catholic Faith Conference, offer an opportunity for the education and renewal people are looking for.
“At a conference like this you can see the hunger in the people,” he said. “They realize ‘I shouldn’t have to go to New Age,’ or ‘I shouldn’t have to go to the spiritual self-help shelves at Barnes & Noble’—we’ve got it in the Church.”
“Discovering those rich minds in the Church is so evident in a day like this,” he said.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||