Words on change have already been posted here this week. Here's a snip from the pope's last speech before leaving Germany this past week, including some thoughts on change and a word of wisdom from Blessed Mother Teresa (emphasis added):
For some decades now we have been experiencing a decline in religious practice and we have been seeing substantial numbers of the baptized drifting away from church life. This prompts the question: should the Church not change? Must she not adapt her offices and structures to the present day, in order to reach the searching and doubting people of today? Blessed Mother Teresa was once asked what in her opinion was the first thing that would have to change in the Church. Her answer was: you and I.
Two things are clear from this brief story. On the one hand Mother Teresa wants to tell her interviewer: the Church is not just other people, not just the hierarchy, the Pope and the bishops: we are all the Church, we the baptized. And on the other hand her starting-point is this: yes, there are grounds for change. There is a need for change. Every Christian and the community of the faithful are constantly called to change.
What should this change look like in practice? Are we talking about the kind of renewal that a householder might carry out when reordering or repainting his home? Or are we talking about a corrective, designed to bring us back on course and help us to make our way more swiftly and more directly? Certainly these and other elements play a part. As far as the Church in concerned, though, the basic motive for change is the apostolic mission of the disciples and the Church herself.
Read the whole text here, thanks to Rocco!
Tweet
Subscribe to A Concord Pastor Comments
Reading this gives me a migraine- because I feel the church does need to change on certain issues and I just end up going round in circles.
ReplyDeleteI have never been so confused about my church as I am now.
I'm with Philomena on this! I'm confused as well about where we are heading (and where I am heading personally) I read and hear that there has been a betrayal of the Council.I think that's true! Too many issues to list or discuss in a combox. Many of us are disappointed but haven't given up hope altogether. Example...one issue that will not go away anytime soon is the fact that the women of the Church will increasingly demand greater equality and representation. Hopefully, those forces will help to continue the renewal begun at Vatican II.
ReplyDelete