The intellectual and ideological separation of Christ from his Church is one of the first realities we must deal with as we propose a New Evangelization of culture and people today. Already in his encyclical letter God is Love (Deus caritas est) our Holy Father reminded us that “the Church is God's family in the world”

This current situation is rooted in the upheavals of the 1970s and 80s, decades in which there was manifest poor catechesis or miscatechesis at so many levels of education. We faced the hermeneutic of discontinuity that permeated so much of the milieu of centers of higher education and was also reflected in aberrational liturgical practice. Entire generations have become disassociated from the support systems that facilitated the transmission of faith. It is as if a tsunami of secular influence has swept across the cultural landscape, taking with it such societal markers as marriage, family, the concept of the common good and objective right and wrong. Tragically, the sins of a few have encouraged a distrust in some of the very structures of the Church herself.

Today special mention should also be made of the family itself as the Model – Place of the New Evangelization and related life issues. While contemporary society downplays, and at times even ridicules traditional family life, it remains a natural reality and the first building block of community. The family presents the natural and ordinary context for the transmission of both faith and values, and the reality we so often turn to for support throughout our lives. (cf Instrumentum laboris nn. 110-113).

The missionaries in the first evangelization covered immense geographic distances to spread the Good News. We, the missionaries of the New Evangelization, must surmount ideological distances just as immense, oftentimes before we ever journey beyond our own neighborhood or family.