The Four Ways Forward: Becoming an Apostolic Parish in a Post-Christian World by Susan Windley-Daoust

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Four Ways Forward: Becoming an Apostolic Parish in a Post-Christian World by Susan Windley-Daoust Frank P. DeSiano, C.S.P. The Four Ways Forward: Becoming an Apostolic Parish in a Post-Christian World. By Susan Windley-Daoust. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2022. 208 pages. Paperback. $19.95. ISBN 9781681927152. The subtitle to this book defines its goal very clearly: to help parishes develop a more apostolic direction in todays' world. Windley-Daoust, who serves as director of missionary discipleship for the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, was chair of theology at St. Mary's University in Minnesota. As a result, she was well exposed to the transformation of attitudes of young people over the past twenty years. She describes the progressive difficulty that young people have in identifying with the institutional church. In this way, she joins many other contemporary authors who have detailed the distance of younger generations from religious experience in all its forms, from ambivalence to outright disaffiliation. [End Page 223] The approach of Windley-Daoust concentrates on the parish. She is looking for a direction which goes far beyond any solution that better catechesis, or better youth ministry, might provide. She points to a woundedness that is widely-shared among younger generations: "I am sad, wounded, and Jesus is not an option on the table for me." This sentence captures the sentiment that the author finds among younger generations. There is something basic about the Gospel and the message of the Church which younger people, and probably many others, cannot hear. She reviews a variety of post-modern "idols" that grasp the attention of younger people today (interest groups, consumerism, self-will, indifference) which contribute to the general state of loneliness and isolation of young people today. She sees the problems younger generations have and wonders why Jesus is not an answer to these problems. The emphases of parishes today, along with the lack of emphasis on what is needed, become the focal point of the author's attention. After reviewing, in several pages, the development of ideas around evangelization from the Second Vatican Council to Pope Francis, she begins to point out the various models of parish renewal which have emerged in recent decades. These models respond to the various steps of evangelization that she identifies: pre-evangelization, evangelization, catechesis/discipleship, and sending on mission. These steps in evangelization derive from her reading of the Directory for Catechesis in the 1997 and the 2020 editions. These steps parallel in a general way the catechumenal process which begins with inquiry, proceeds to catechesis, develops into election, and matures in mystagogy. One notes that the term "pre-evangelization" has re-emerged in recent conversation, even though Pope Paul VI discouraged its use in "On Evangelization in the Modern World" in section 51. In his mind, pre-evangelization is, in fact, evangelization. This raises a central assumption in the book's analysis: Catholics, themselves, are not evangelized. She declares that "practicing Catholics cannot grasp the language of having a personal relationship with Jesus." Operating on the oft-described pull of evangelical Christianity in terms of more main-line churches, she laments people who leave the church for evangelical practice even as she would like to stave off such departures. She points to a basic language about relationship with Jesus Christ that Catholics did not find in their formation or faith practice. With this articulation, Windley-Daoust joins in with a host of modern observers who believe that Catholics need to be evangelized into the central core of Christian belief and practice. This point deserves attention because, while Pope Paul VI had no problem affirming that the "Church needs to be evangelized," and that [End Page 224] the Gospel had to be deepened in the lives of every believer, I suspect he would have been quite surprised to learn that many have concluded that the Church is, in fact, a community of the unevangelized. The thought that the Gospel had always more to give to believers because it cannot be exhausted has been transformed, in recent years, into the conclusion that the Gospel has not even been grasped by most believers. In "On Evangelization...