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U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 2
 February 1993 
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Into my hands has come an eight-page brochure announcing a conference on evangelization. Thirty workshops and several plenary sessions are listed, and the topics are wideranging: how to evangelize in the workplace, how to evangelize through the media, how to evangelize inactive Catholics, even how to evangelize through photography.
Most of the talks will be on ways to encourage Catholics to be more active in their parishes and to be friendly toward others--good things indeed, but is that all there is to evangelization?
Perhaps, as an apologist, I am oversensitive to the absence of talks on apologetics and talks on doctrines at conferences such as this one. That absence means missing a chance to grapple with questions that really are on people's minds.
The impression I get from the brochure (I hope it's a mistaken impression) is that participants won't learn why the truths of the Catholic faith are important, they won't be told what those truths are, and they won't be shown how to explain and defend them.
Yes, they will learn ways to get a message across, but apparently the message will be only half of what it could be because it will be almost exclusively affective. Christianity has two components, the affective and the intellective. We err if we drop either one out of the equation.
I'm pleased to see that another evangelization conference will take place. I just wish its promo would promote the doctrinal side too.
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