Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington has issued a pastoral letter, dated Pentecost Sunday, on “why it is so crucial that we reassert and strengthen our Catholic identity, and that our freedom to do so be respected in society and in law.”

“When I was a young priest in the 1960s and 1970s, there was much experimentation and confusion in the Church,” he recalled. “Teachers and clergy were encouraged by some to communicate an experience of God’s love, but to do it without reference to the Creed, the sacraments, or Church tradition. It did not work very well. Catholics grew up with the impression that their heritage was little more than warm, vaguely positive feelings about God.”

“Those years of experimentation left many Catholics weak, spiritually and intellectually, and unable to withstand the tsunami of secularism that came in recent decades,” he continued. “We lost many people because we failed to teach them about right and wrong, about the common good, about the nature of the human person. This left many no longer able to admit that we are sinners who need Jesus because many no longer know what sin is. This lived experience of people not being fully or correctly presented the truth of the faith illustrates why we are called to the New Evangelization.”

http://www.catholic culture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=25045

"Further, whilst Jesus was kind to sinners and to those who went
astray, He did not respect their false ideas, however sincere they might have appeared. He loved them all, but He instructed them in order to convert them and save them. Whilst He called to Himself in order to comfort them, those who toiled and suffered, it was not to preach to them the jealousy of a chimerical equality. Whilst He lifted up the lowly, it was not to instill in them the sentiment of a dignity independent from, and rebellious against, the duty of obedience. Whilst His heart overflowed with gentleness for the souls of good-will, He could also arm Himself with holy indignation against the profaners of the House of God, against the wretched men who scandalized the little ones, against the authorities who crush the people with the weight of heavy burdens without putting out a hand to lift them.
 
He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross. These are teachings that it would be wrong to apply only to one's personal life in order to win eternal salvation; these are eminently social teachings, and they show in Our Lord Jesus Christ something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism."

Pope St. Pius X.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington has issued a pastoral letter, dated Pentecost Sunday, on “why it is so crucial that we reassert and strengthen our Catholic identity, and that our freedom to do so be respected in society and in law.”

“When I was a young priest in the 1960s and 1970s, there was much experimentation and confusion in the Church,” he recalled. “Teachers and clergy were encouraged by some to communicate an experience of God’s love, but to do it without reference to the Creed, the sacraments, or Church tradition. It did not work very well. Catholics grew up with the impression that their heritage was little more than warm, vaguely positive feelings about God.”

“Those years of experimentation left many Catholics weak, spiritually and intellectually, and unable to withstand the tsunami of secularism that came in recent decades,” he continued. “We lost many people because we failed to teach them about right and wrong, about the common good, about the nature of the human person. This left many no longer able to admit that we are sinners who need Jesus because many no longer know what sin is. This lived experience of people not being fully or correctly presented the truth of the faith illustrates why we are called to the New Evangelization.”

http://www.catholic culture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=25045

A lot of Trads hear of Evangelization and think the novus ordo is started to turn around and start preaching the Holy Gospel to the world.  No, the novus ordo teaches that those who are now in the pews of the novus ordo are "sacramentalized but now need to be evangelized" so, in short, they want to preach to the choir all the while using a watered down version of Catholicism - a return of the 1970's but with a little better window dressing.  

The concept of sacramentalized but not evangelized is a common conception on EWTN and among the effeminates and novus ordite leaders like Card. Wuerl.  They don't want to spread the Holy Gospel to the world, they want to just reteach it to the lukewarm novus ordites.  

This is a form of self-referentialism.  It's what the novus ordites accuse Trads of being because we aren't out there screaming about climate change or some other socialism-lite social justice idea.  

And the "New Evangelization"?  I guess a new church with new sacraments that renounced EENS needs a new evangelization to replace the old one.  

Cardinal Wuerl, to be kind, is part of the problem.  There are probably worse things that could be said about him.

I wonder how many people were disqualified for the priesthood or religious life because they had too much of a "Catholic" identity?