"Business as usual is not enough. We must be a team of missionaries, moving from a maintenance mode to a missionary one."
Cardinal O'Malley said Americans must recognize that they live "in a culture of unbelief" which is profoundly hard to evangelize because "it does not even know it does not believe," since the society "still lives on the residue of Christian civilization."
Seeing this, he said, will guard against the "self-referential Church turned in on itself," of which Pope Francis warns us.
Pope Francis "tells us to open the doors, to invite others in so that we can go out and invite."
He spoke of the need for communities in which those who "walk the walk" of faith are engaging with other Catholics. He also addressed the importance of love as the motivation behind the Church's "concern about unborn children."
Noting that some think Pope Francis "should talk more about abortion," the cardinal said that the Holy Father "speaks of love and mercy" so as to "give the context for the Church's teaching on abortion."
"We oppose abortion, not because we are mean or old fashioned, but because we love people. And that is what we must show the world."
"We must be better people; we must love all people, even those who advocate abortion," because "only love and mercy will open hearts that have been hardened by the individualism of our age."
The cardinal warned against the "globalization of indifference" spoken about by Pope Francis at Lampedusa, saying, "we must overcome this indifference in our own lives and help people to see that the Church's teaching is about loving and caring for everyone."
Again quoting Pope Francis, O'Malley stated, "We need a Church capable of rediscovering the maternal womb of mercy."
He said mercy and truth must accompany one another, and gave the post-abortion apostolate Project Rachel as an example of "just that kind of a combination of mercy and truth that the Church's pro-life efforts need to be about."
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"Our capacity to love" is what our efforts to heal society depends on, Cardinal O'Malley insisted.
"The Holy Father is showing us very clearly that our struggle is not just a political battle or a legal problem, but that we must evangelize and humanize the culture; then the world will be safe for the unborn, the elderly and the unproductive," he concluded.
"The Gospel of Life is a Gospel of mercy. If we are going to get a hearing in today's world, it will be because people recognize the authenticity of our lives and our dedication to building a civilization of love."
Elise Harris was senior Rome correspondent for CNA from 2012 to 2018.