New York City, N.Y., Jul 17, 2012 / 15:41 pm
The U.S. and other Western nations are "mission territory" for the Catholic Church in modern times, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York stressed in a July 17 online posting.
"I was raised – as were most of you – to think of the missions as 'way far away' – and, to be sure, we can never forget our sacred duty to the foreign missions," the New York archbishop wrote on his "Gospel in the Digital Age" blog.
"But, we are a mission territory, too. Every diocese is. And every committed Catholic is a missionary. This is at the heart of what Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI call the New Evangelization."
Cardinal Dolan voiced his agreement with Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, who observed in a June 2012 speech to the Catholic Press Association that his own archdiocese was "now really mission territory … for the second time."