By Patrick Schmadeke
Evangelization in the World Today
In February I facilitated a formation session for the deacon candidates in our diocese on the role of a deacon in the midst of polarization. The session had two parts. First, we considered various quotes from recent popes. Here’s a sampling:
Gaudium et Spes #76: “The Church, by reason of her role and competence, is not identified in any way with the political community nor bound to any political system. She is at once a sign and a safeguard of the transcendent character of the human person.” (Second Vatican Council)
Pope Benedict XVI: “This temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power … the fusion of faith and political power always comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria.” (“Jesus of Nazareth,” 2007)
Pope Francis: “The best way to dominate and gain control over people is to spread despair and discouragement, even under the guise of defending certain values … Political life no longer has to do with healthy debates about long-term plans to improve people’s lives and to advance the common good, but only with slick marketing techniques primarily aimed at discrediting others.” (Fratelli Tutti #15)
Pope Leo XIV: “Be careful not to use political categories to speak about faith. The Church does not belong to any political party. Rather, she helps form your conscience so you can think and act with wisdom and love.” (video conference address at NCYC; Nov. 21, 2025)
We also discussed the ideas of social progress, social decline, and the social function of religion as articled by theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984). Social progress is a cumulative flow of individuals and communities acting, for lack of a better word, like adults. Social decline is the opposite — it is adults acting like they’re in junior high. The social role of religion, then, is to aid people in becoming like Christ. In doing so we participate in Christ’s redemption. Lonergan writes: “Love can undo the mischief of decline and restore the cumulative process of progress.” Notice that it is love, not rationality, that undoes irrationality’s handiwork. We’ve all tried to appeal to the sense of reason of someone being irrational, and we’ve all kicked ourselves for doing so. Only love can reverse decline.
In the second part of the session, the deacon candidates identified a polarizing idea, topic, or event that they had changed their minds about. They focused on two questions: 1. what lead to the change? 2. how can a deacon nurture such change in others?
The deacon candidates arrived at some insights on the first question. They concluded that several factors can lead to a change of mind such as conversations with people you love and walking with people who are different, understanding that the Church evolves through time and learning more about Catholic Social Teaching, being in the right “head space” and learning that I had nothing to fear about this, getting out of the echo chamber and getting to know a community I didn’t really know, having multiple sources of information, losing trust in an untrustworthy system. The deacon candidates recognized that head knowledge isn’t everything. Humility was also named as essential.
Here are some of the insights that came from the conversation about the second question: deacons can inspire change by finding ways for people to get to know each other and to see the “other side” of an issue, helping people act on what they learn and recognize when fear is driving their viewpoint. They also learned to walk with people in a slow walk instead of a more “head on” approach, finding common ground, starting with small group or one-on-one conversations. They also walk with people through the fires that life brings, and live out the example of Christ and being prepared to explain why they are doing it.
They also said that ministry is like waking up in the morning and walking into a China shop where there are already bulls. This makes ministry, and Christianity in general, a complicated task. They noted that there is a danger people will walk away from the Church when we preach the gospel in the midst of polarization. We can be neither foolhardy nor cowardly in the way we share God’s love. We must be courageous. This courageousness will take on a different style of relationship than the patterns typically provided to us by our polarized culture.
(Patrick Schmadeke is director of evangelization for the Diocese of Davenport.)
