Dr. R.J. Matava, who was previously a Liddon Fellow at Oxford’s Keble College, presented a talk titled “Conversion and Apologetics: Personal Vocation as a Key to the New Evangelization.” Positing that holiness of life is essential for apologetics, Matava treated the nature of apologetics through a theological and historical lens, looking at what it needs to be effective within the New Evangelization.

“While the original evangelization generally brought the Gospel to the pagan world, the ‘new evangelization’ must bring the Gospel to a world described by some as ‘post Christian,’ and not least to people who are baptized but lack faith,” said Matava. “What then is the most urgent task of a new apologetics for the new evangelization? I would suggest that it is to cultivate in others, so far as we are able, the necessary dispositions to earnestly consider the reasons for the faith.”