• Group lectio divina
“From today’s crisis will emerge a Church that has lost much. It will become small and will have to start more or less from scratch. It will no longer be able to occupy most of the buildings it constructed in its heyday. And since the number of its faithful will decrease, it will also lose a large part of its social privileges… but despite all these foreseeable changes, the Church will rediscover, with renewed vigor, what is essential to it, what has always been its center: faith in the One and Triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, with the Holy Spirit who assists us until the end of time. It will re-emerge through small groups, movements, and a minority that will place faith and prayer at the center of their lives and will once again experience the sacraments as divine service and not as a matter of liturgical structure.” It will be a more spiritual Church, one that does not usurp a political mandate, flirting here and there with the left. It will do this with difficulty. In fact, the process of crystallization and clarification will impoverish it, make it a Church of the humble; the process will be long and arduous… but after the ordeal of its divisions, from an internalized and simplified Church will emerge a great strength.
Gustav Klimt, "Garden of Flowers", 1906.
People living in a completely programmed world will experience unspeakable loneliness. If they have completely lost their sense of God, they will feel the full horror of their poverty. And they will then discover the small community of believers as something entirely new: they will discover it as a hope for themselves, the answer they had always secretly sought… It seems certain to me that very difficult times are being prepared for the Church. Its true crisis has barely begun. It must settle its accounts with great upheavals. But I am also quite certain of what will remain in the end: not the Church of political worship… but the Church of faith. It is certain that it will no longer be the dominant social force to the extent that it was until recently. But the Church will experience a new flowering and will appear as the home of humanity, where life and hope beyond death can be found.
Joseph Ratzinger, "Faith and the Future", Paris, Mame, 1971
Published in Corriere della Sera on 1 September 2012 Translation by Anne Soupa.
CCBF
This interview is Cardinal Martini's testament. Many of us are discovering—or rediscovering—these days how much Monsignor Martini is a genuine and great servant of the Lord. The path of his life follows the central theme of the Gospel: listening to the Word of God; giving primacy to love in all circumstances; integrating rather than excluding; working tirelessly at his own conversion...
Interview by Father Georg Sporschill, S.J., and Federica Racine:
How do you see the situation of the Church?
"The Church is tired, in affluent Europe and in America. Our culture has aged, our churches are large, our religious houses are empty, and the bureaucratic apparatus of the Church is growing, our rites and vestments are bogged down in pomp. And yet, all this says something about what we have become [...] Welfare weighs heavily... We resemble the rich young man who walked away sadly when Jesus called him to be his disciple. I know very well that we cannot leave everything we own behind at a moment's notice. However, we could try to remain free human beings, as Bishop Romero and the Jesuit martyrs of El Salvador were. Where are the heroes among us who could inspire us? Under no circumstances should the chains of the institution hold us back and limit our actions.
Who can help the Church today?
Father Karl Rahner liked to use the image of embers hidden under ashes. I see so many ashes covering the embers in today's Church that I often feel a keen sense of powerlessness. How can we free the embers from all the ashes that hide them, in order to rekindle the flame of love? First and foremost, we must seek out these embers. Where are the generous souls like the Good Samaritan? Who has the faith of the Roman centurion? Who has the enthusiasm of John the Baptist? Who has the audacity of novelty like Paul? Who is faithful like Mary Magdalene? I advise the Pope and the bishops to seek out twelve people off the beaten track and place them in decisive positions. Human beings who are close to the poorest, surrounded by young people and ready to experience new things. We need dialogue with people whose hearts are on fire, so that the Spirit can spread everywhere.
What are the means to combat the fatigue of the Church?
I recommend three very powerful ones:
• The first is conversion: the Church must recognise its mistakes and must embark on a radical path of change, starting with the Pope and the bishops. The paedophilia scandals are pushing us to embark on a path of conversion. Questions about sexuality and all issues related to bodily realities are one example. These are important to everyone, and sometimes even too important, to the point where we must ask ourselves whether people still listen to the Church's advice on sexual matters. In this area, is the Church still an authority or just a caricature for the media?
• The second means is the Word of God. The Second Vatican Council gave the Bible back to Catholics. […] Only those who perceive this Word in their hearts will participate in the rebirth of the Church and know how to respond with discernment to the questions that will be asked of them. The Word of God is simple and seeks a listening heart as its companion […]. Neither the clergy nor canon law can replace human interiority. All external rules, laws and dogmas are given to us to enlighten our conscience and help us discern the spirits.
• Who are the sacraments for?
This is the third remedy for healing. The sacraments are not an instrument of discipline, but an aid for all those who are journeying and are tested in the course of their lives. Do we bring the sacraments to those who are seeking new strength? I am thinking of all those who are divorced, of reconstituted couples, of extended families. They need special protection. The Church supports the indissolubility of marriage.
It is a grace when a marriage and a family succeed [...]. The attitude we have towards extended families will determine how close the next generation of sons will be to the Church. Has a woman been abandoned by her husband and found a new partner who cares for her and her three sons? This second love is successful. If this family is discriminated against, contact will be lost, not only with the mother but even with her sons. If parents feel like strangers in the Church or do not feel supported, the Church will lose the future generation. Before Communion, we pray: ‘Lord, I am not worthy...’. But who knows if he is worthy? [...] Love is grace. Love is a gift. The question of access to communion for remarried divorcees should be able to be overcome.
How can the Church find a way to give sacramental support to those in complex family situations? What are you personally doing?
"The Church is two hundred years behind the times. How is it that it does not move forward? Are we afraid? Do we lack courage? In any case, faith is the foundation of the Church. Faith, trust, courage. I am old and sick, and I depend on the help of others. The good people around me make me perceive something of Love. This love is stronger than the feeling of mistrust that I sometimes perceive in the behaviour of the Church in Europe. Only love triumphs over weariness. God is Love. I have one last question to ask you: what can you do for the Church?"
The lockdown revealed "a certain spiritual illiteracy"
Bishop Grech believes
‘Spiritual illiteracy’, “clericalism”, ‘immature faith’: Monsignor Mario Grech, the new Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, takes a highly critical view of the attitude of many Catholics during the Covid-19 crisis, in a lengthy interview with Civiltà Cattolica, published on 14 October 2020. For him, the Church must learn from the lockdown by changing its ‘pastoral models’ and rehabilitating the ‘domestic Church’.
The former president of the Maltese Bishops' Conference from 2013 to 2016 was appointed undersecretary general of the Synod of Bishops in October 2019 and then secretary last September. In this capacity, he has been tasked by Pope Francis with preparing the synod on synodality, which is scheduled to take place in 2022. ‘During the pandemic, a certain clericalism has emerged. [On social media], we have witnessed a certain degree of exhibitionism and pietism that is more akin to magic than to the expression of a mature faith,’ Bishop Grech lamented in an interview with Civiltà Cattolica. The Maltese bishop describes a Church that has not always been up to the task and has been torn apart by the issue of the impossibility of accessing the sacraments.
‘Some even said that the life of the Church had been interrupted! And that is truly incredible. In the situation that prevented the celebration of the sacraments, we did not realise that there were other ways to experience God,’ he regrets, adding that the fact ‘that many priests and lay people entered into crisis because we suddenly found ourselves in a situation where we could not celebrate the Eucharist coram populo is in itself very significant.’
Going even further, he finds it ‘curious that many people complained about not being able to receive Communion and celebrate funerals in church, but not as much as they were concerned about how to reconcile themselves with God and their neighbour, how to listen to and celebrate the Word of God, and how to live a life of service.’
‘The Eucharist is not the only way for Christians to encounter Jesus.’
Recalling, however, that the Eucharist is the ‘source and summit of Christian life,’ Bishop Grech nevertheless emphasises that it is not the only way for Christians to encounter Jesus.
He quotes Paul VI, who taught that ‘in the Eucharist, Christ's presence is “real”, not by exclusion, as if the others were not “real”.’
For the prelate, it is therefore ‘worrying that someone should feel lost outside the Eucharistic context.’ This shows ‘an ignorance of other ways of engaging with the mystery,’ ‘a certain spiritual illiteracy,’ but also ‘that current pastoral practice is inadequate.’
He then analyses that it is ‘very likely that, in the recent past, our pastoral activity has sought to lead to the sacraments and not to lead - through the sacraments - to Christian life’.
‘It would be suicide if, after the pandemic, we returned to the same pastoral models’
Following in the footsteps of Pope Francis, the new Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops believes that the coronavirus pandemic should become an opportunity for the Church and offer it ‘a moment of renewal.’ ‘It will be suicide if, after the pandemic, we return to the same pastoral models we have practised until now,’ he says.
Moreover, according to him, the crisis has made it possible to discover ‘a new ecclesiology, perhaps even a new theology, and a new ministry.’ First, it has confirmed that serving the sick and the poor is an effective way for Christians to live out their faith and ‘reflect a Church that is present in today's world, and no longer a “sacristy Church”, withdrawn from the streets, or content to project the sacristy onto the street’.
Secondly, lockdown should enable families to grasp their vocation and develop their own ‘potential’. In this sense, he affirms that the crisis must lead to ‘rehabilitating the domestic Church and giving it more space’.
For the Maltese bishop, ‘living the Church within our families’ is a ‘valid premise for the new evangelisation’. He insists: ‘if the domestic Church fails, the Church cannot exist. If there is no domestic Church, the Church has no future!’.
The domestic Church, victim of historical clericalism?
The former bishop of Gozo (Malta) believes that this notion of the domestic Church, although emphasised by the Second Vatican Council, has undoubtedly been the victim of a perverse clericalism. He traces this ‘negative turning point’ in the conception of the domestic Church back to the 4th century, ‘when the sacralisation of priests and bishops took place, to the detriment of the common priesthood of baptism’. In his view, the more the Church became institutionalised, the more the nature and charism of the family as a domestic church diminished.
Ultimately, while ‘many are still not convinced’ of the evangelising charism of the family and its ‘missionary creativity’, Bishop Grech is convinced of the opposite. Spouses are ‘capable of finding a new theological-catechetical language for proclaiming the Gospel of the family.’ He quotes Pope Francis: ‘God has entrusted to the family not the responsibility for intimacy as an end in itself, but the exciting project of making the world “domestic”.’