As our website indicates, since our inception at the turn of the century the National Catholic Community Foundation continues to grow. On behalf of our community of donors we have so far distributed $44 million to organizations in the United States and around. These organizations are engaged in the full spectrum of the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. The majority fall under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church. A fair number, though, are independent. In all cases the support they attract is prompted by our donors’ love for God and their commitment to and promotion of human dignity as called for by Scripture and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
The motto of NCCF is ‘philanthropy is ministry’. This is more than a slogan. It is a claim of evangelism as defined as the demonstration of the love of and for God through service to others. Among some Christians evangelism connotes an emphasis on the conversion of others, which taken to the extreme borders on proselytizing. Proselytizing is defined as aggressive conversion through coercion and manipulation with the aim of building an institution or organization. In this regard, Catholics are guided by Church teaching the message of which is that evangelization is essentially giving witness to God’s love. Pope Benedict wrote that the Church grows by attraction. It is this witness to God’s love that draws others voluntarily to the Good News of the Gospel.
The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration “Dignitatis Humanae” states that evangelization must respect human dignity and religious freedom and that: “The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it makes its entrance into the mind at once quietly and with power.” (DH 1)
In his Apostolic Exhortation ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ Pope Francis explains that: “Christians have the duty to proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone. Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but “by attraction”.[13]
It’s no secret that in recent years in the United States Catholicism has been subject to growing secular attacks. Once broadly respected, in some circles it is now derided and lampooned as an archaic and irrelevant body of deluded believers. An understandable response would be a retreat to the modern equivalent of the catacombs. But, a better strategy would be the military one:
the best defense is a good offense.
Tertullian, the third century theologian, memorialized the phrase ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church’. The word ‘martyr’ comes the Greek word for ‘witness’. Today’s martyrs are those who give witness to God’s love through service to others – a witness eminently exemplified in philanthropy. With such a witness the faith will, invincibly, flourish and the Church will grow by attraction as the Kingdom advances.
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