[00:00:20] Jim Jansen: I am here with J.D. Flynn, Co-founder of The Pillar. We're here at the Amazing Parish Conference. And we're gonna flip roles. so here we go. Hot take. The New Evangelization needs more repentance.

[00:00:36] JD Flynn: Well, agree. 

[00:00:37] Jim Jansen: Okay, so here's the thing, you look at the prophets, and the prophets are never like, "Hey, you guys are doing great, but we have some best practices." , Like, they would say "Hey, you're off track. Turn around. Repent." And I feel like this should be a home game for us. 

[00:00:53] JD Flynn: " I married this prostitute," they say. 

[00:00:54] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Yeah. Just to show you what you're doing. 

[00:00:56] JD Flynn: Right. Exactly. 

[00:00:57] Jim Jansen: Yeah. And I'm not endorsing that. That would be another conversation.

[00:01:00] JD Flynn: That's a Hosea reference.

[00:01:00] Jim Jansen: Yeah. Check out Hosea. That is not an endorsed pastoral practice.

[00:01:04] JD Flynn: Red flag, as the kids say. 

[00:01:06] Jim Jansen: Okay, simply trying harder, simply trying to be more faithful, simply adopting best practices, I feel like if we don't acknowledge and repent of the things that have kept us off we've missed it, right?

I'll just give a couple of references here for trying to do it all by ourselves, for not even seeing our neighbors, for judging their neighbors who we haven't really ever seen. There's a long list of things we could all repent for, but I feel like the New Evangelization needs repentance so that our action flows from converted hearts and isn't just a meaningless collection of best practices. 

[00:01:46] JD Flynn: Yeah, and I actually think that's good. Agree. And I think if the New Evangelization is the re-Christianization of once Christian lands and peoples, then actually the model of Old Testament prophets is precisely the model for the New Evangelization, and Old Testament prophets were very much in the vein of "You're God's people, so you have to be who you are, so knock all this stuff off." 

[00:02:06] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:02:06] JD Flynn: And so I think precisely, perhaps even more than evangelization ad gentes, the New Evangelization is a place where turning back from your wicked ways is an appropriate kind of admonition. 

[00:02:17] Jim Jansen: And that is for the non-Latin scholars, ad gentes, to the nations. You're saying to the nations, calling them to repentance. I mean, yes, they're doing dumb stuff, but they didn't have the law. They did not know. And so calling them to come back to a way of life they never knew, that's different than the New Evangelization, which is like, "Hey," "you were once God's people. Come back." 

[00:02:41] JD Flynn: Yes. 

[00:02:42] Jim Jansen: Okay. So how do you do it? 

[00:02:45] JD Flynn: Oh. 

[00:02:46] Jim Jansen: You're like, "Hey, this is your hot take. But what would be an appropriate public, corporate, individual repentance? What would that look like? 

[00:02:53] JD Flynn: An act of penance, you mean? Or like, um- 

[00:02:56] Jim Jansen: Well, a repentance. What does it look like for us to repent?

[00:02:58] JD Flynn: Well, I think it... I mean, I, I don't know if this is the question that you're asking or not, but I'll answer it anyway. I think that, a lot of times... So you and I are at a kind of conference right now for people who are engaged in leadership and ministry in the Church, and it's all very good and things like that. But that's a place where a lot of times our framework is often, not always, but our framework is often sort of, again, "Here's how you can be more effective," in the vein of best practices, without, "These are the ways in which we've allowed ourselves to go, go astray."

[00:03:26] Jim Jansen: Right. 

[00:03:26] JD Flynn: Or, "These are the ways in which we have really allowed ourselves to turn away from our obligations to the Gospel," 

[00:03:31] Jim Jansen: Right. To, to name it. Yeah. Like, maybe a public naming. 

[00:03:34] JD Flynn: Yeah. 

[00:03:34] Jim Jansen: like, boy, most of us, it's all individual, but there's some patterns of giving into fear and forgetting our neighbor, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:03:42] JD Flynn: Yeah. 

[00:03:43] Jim Jansen: Think Lent has some potential. So rather than just an individual personal repentance, to do a little bit of a corporate, like, what is the Lord asking for on the cross?

Not, like, less chocolate. Not give me more devotional prayers. But He is thirsting for souls. So if, if part of Lent is this corporate repentance for being self-referential, not looking at our neighbor, then it could be appropriate to say, Lent is a time where we look anew, to our neighbor, not just to physical needs, but to the spiritual needs. And actually try and draw people in. 

[00:04:24] JD Flynn: I think it would be great if we could figure out a way and let ecclesially have a public expression of our own repentance-

[00:04:30] Jim Jansen: Yeah

[00:04:31] JD Flynn: a sort of the bishop in the square with us in sackcloth and ashes, repenting to the world or our neighbors of our own manifest sinfulness- 

[00:04:40] Jim Jansen: Yeah ... 

[00:04:41] JD Flynn: and then inviting other people into it. I think that would be... Would that we had a sacramental of that or a sort of liturgy of that. 

[00:04:48] Jim Jansen: Yeah.

[00:04:48] JD Flynn: Which we can.

[00:04:49] Jim Jansen: You can, invent it. I mean, you probably know this. There was a John Paul the second moment where he's kinda spontaneously- 

[00:04:54] JD Flynn: Yeah.

[00:04:55] Jim Jansen: Apologizing.

[00:04:56] JD Flynn: Yeah. I thought that after the great reckonings of the Church faced in 2018- 

[00:05:03] Jim Jansen: Yeah ... 

[00:05:03] JD Flynn: in the United States, that there might be some mechanism for that. And if you'll recall, there were some moments to talk about, like, a sort of day of contrition and things like that, and it effectively fizzled out, I think because nobody really wanted to do it.

But I think it's time for us to talk more about some collective expressions of repentance and contrition.

[00:05:22] Jim Jansen: Yeah. I think we need it.

[00:05:24] JD Flynn: Let's call this the penitential revival. 

[00:05:26] Jim Jansen: Penitential revival. I love it. 

[00:05:26] JD Flynn: And then we'll have the National Penitential Congress. 

[00:05:28] Jim Jansen: Yeah. 

[00:05:28] JD Flynn: Yeah. 

[00:05:29] Jim Jansen: I feel, like, this unpopular urge for, like, I think we need to repent more.

[00:05:32] JD Flynn: I agree. I actually, I, you know, I, I, not only do I agree- but I think that this is the rife moment for it. Like, I think there's, there would be a really powerful-

[00:05:42] Jim Jansen: Yes ...

[00:05:42] JD Flynn: evangelical witness for that. And I also think some collective mode of contrition might be really unifying for the church. I love that we're in a real mode of revival of processions right now. we're doing all these Eucharistic processions now far more than we ever used to, and things like that. And I think that's really good and unifying and a public witness, but it would be easy enough to couple one of those with some public expression of contrition and atonement. This is well-reasoned, Jim Jansen, and I concur. Hot take. 

[00:06:11] Jim Jansen: All right. Awesome. J.D. Flynn. Co-founder of The Pillar. Thank you for being with us.