The Holy Father Addresses Bishops from Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana

Every Christian, in carrying out this prophetic mission, has taken on a personal responsibility for the divine truth revealed in the Incarnate Word, handed on in the Church’s living Tradition, and made manifest in the efforts of believers to spread the faith and to transform the world by the light and power of the Gospel (cf. Redemptor Hominis, 19).

This "responsibility for the truth" demands of the Church a forthright and credible witness to the deposit of faith. It calls for a correct understanding of the act of faith itself as a graced assent to the word of God which enlightens the mind and empowers the spirit to rise to the contemplation of uncreated truth, "so that by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves" (Fides et Ratio, Proemium). An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason’s ability to know the truth which alone satisfies the human heart’s restless quest for meaning. At the same time, it must firmly defend the Church as being, in Christ, the authentic minister of the Gospel and the "pillar and bulwark" of its saving truth (cf. 1 Tim 3:15; Lumen Gentium, 8).

For this reason, the new evangelization calls for an unambiguous presentation of faith as a supernatural virtue by which we are united to God and become sharers in his own knowledge, in response to his revealed word.

An essential element of the Church’s dialogue with contemporary society must also be a correct presentation, in catechesis and preaching, of the relationship between faith and reason. This will lead to a more fruitful understanding of the spiritual dynamics of conversion as obedience to the word of God, openness to "putting on the mind of Christ" (Phil 2:5), and sensitivity to that supernatural sensus fidei by which "the people of God, under the guidance of the sacred magisterium to which it is faithfully obedient, adheres indefectibly to ‘the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints’" (Lumen Gentium, 12).

Vatican Article.