MOSAIC, Fall 2008
Sacred Heart Major Seminary established the Institute for Research on the New Evangelization (IRNE) in 2006 to conduct social scientific research on the
New Evangelization in Metropolitan Detroit and beyond. A primary purpose of the IRNE is to describe what various people and parishes are doing at "the ground level" in relation to the New Evangelization. What do people say the New Evangelization is? How does the New Evangelization take specific shape in parish life?
his research includes participating in and observing parish activities, interviewing parishioners and conducting surveys. As data becomes available, IRNE writes about its findings for the leadership of the Catholic Church of Detroit, the national and international Catholic community and the social scientific community, especially in the United States.
Specifically, the Institute has begun studying how the New Evangelization is working itself out at the parish level in the Archdiocese of Detroit. To gain a better understanding of this, the Institute initiated a number of activities.
- First, the Institute conducted a preliminary review of relevant books and articles on Catholics and evangelization (a literature review) and found that much work is needed in the area of social scientific studies of evangelization.
- Second, the Institute called by phone every parish in the Archdiocese of Detroit, to ask whether or not they have
an evangelization committee. A database of their replies was assembled (an archdiocesan-wide evangelization
committee SPSS database) and it was found that, while a majority does not, a significant number of parishes do have evangelization committees.
- Third, IRNE participated in, and observed, a suburban parish's eight-week evangelization workshop conducted by the archdiocesan Evangelization Team and similar programs in an urban parish and around the archdiocese (participant-observation fieldwork). In the parishes and around the archdiocese, we found—and continue to find—an extraordinary range of diverse evangelization-related practices.
The Institute also participated in, and observed, one of the Licentiate for Sacred Theology graduate courses at Sacred Heart, entitled "Models of Evangelization." Here and elsewhere, one finds a "new fervor" is often related to the New Evangelization that touches upon the affective side of people's faith. Devotional practices and outreach efforts, among other things, are other notable activities related to the New Evangelization thus far.
The work of the Institute for Research on the New Evangelization has just begun to scratch the surface of what may be discovered. IRNE's work may be the first in-depth social scientific study ever conducted on the implementation of the New Evangelization within parishes in the United States. We will discuss more of our findings in future issues of the Mosaic.
