Vatican official calls for special effort to reach inactive Catholics

Published: 2004-06-02

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The time has come for the U.S. Catholic Church "to launch a special effort of evangelization through media, including and perhaps especially through Internet," the top Vatican communications official said during a visit to Washington. U.S. Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and former editor of the Philadelphia archdiocesan newspaper, said the moment was signaled by the end of two years of "virtual siege conditions" because of the clergy sex abuse scandal and the "tremendous response" to Mel Gibson's film, "The Passion of the Christ." The movie "has reawakened interest in our redemption through the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ," the archbishop said in a May 26 talk to members of the U.S. bishops' communications committee, meeting in Washington. He suggested the U.S. church "reach out to inactive Catholics, especially those who might have used recent scandals as a type of justification for their own inactivity or alienation." With approximately 20 million inactive Catholics in the United States, they are the nation's second largest "religious group" after the 65 million active Catholics, he said.

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