From the Crisis of Today, the Church of Tomorrow will Emerge!

By Lavoisier Fernandes –

Recently, on my visit to India, I was in discussion with my octogenarian mother while returning from the daily morning mass that she unfailingly attends. She said that nowadays there are not really any young people coming to church. Initially, I was taken by surprise, as I thought this was a peculiarity of old tired Europe with its postmodernism, the rise of hyper-individualism, and the influence of those who have an axe-to-grind with the church and certainly not of the younger generation of developing India, where faith seemingly still looks strong in family life. Nonetheless, this is a common phenomenon worldwide of the Gen Z self-portrait technology-savvy generation and this is a cycle that will eventually catch up with young India.

Is the Church in a Crisis?

The common default belief is that the Universal Church is experiencing a crisis purely based on the analysis of church membership in Europe. While it is true that Catholic Church membership in the West has dropped considerably with frequent reports of church closings and dioceses declaring bankruptcy. Neither Vatican II in the 1960s, nor St. John Paul II’s New Evangelization has made a dent in this downturn.

Much of the decline in Europe has been a result of two factors, one being the 1970s sexual revolution that attacked the foundation of society, which is marriage, the basic fabric that holds together the Domestic Church (family life), pivotal to human society, and the second being the result of corruption, scandal, and the clerical abuse crisis that has destroyed whatever public credibility that the Universal Church has left.

But today, the dynamics have shifted where in past centuries, missionaries went from Europe to the rest of the world because the majority world (Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Oceania) was defined as the mission field. But the shift in the heart of Christianity from the global North to the global South has facilitated the sending of missionaries in ‘reverse’ – from the majority world back into Europe and North America.

The Church Continues to Grow but with Declining Priestly Vocations and Religious Women.

As per 2022 figures released by the Church’s central statistical office, the church continues to grow exponentially in Asia and Africa and remains stable in North and South America with Europe being the continent that has grown the least. The number of people baptised increased by 14 million, a growth was seen across all continents, with the greatest seen in Africa with an increase of 3% followed by Asia and the Americas. But despite an increase in the number of Catholics all over the world, the number of priestly vocations has decreased even in Asia while it has remained stable in Africa. As the number of priests decreases, the number of Catholics per priest in the world increases, so on average there are 3,373 Catholics for every priest in the world, a rise of 59 people per priest. With Women religious, there has been an overall decrease, with 10,588 fewer nuns.

The Church is Under Constant Persecution- Physically, Internally and Politically.

Momentarily looking at the Universal Church, one can see that it is under constant attack, persecution albeit of diverse forms thus creating a crisis. The Western world through a different flavour of persecution in the form of secularism is trying to extinguish its foundational Christian identity while poaching the church’s biblically conceived values of justice, fairness, dignity, truth, and outreach.

In the US, the persecution is an “own goal” with the polarised divide and infighting internally within the church with external political factors hounding over morally sensitive subjects of abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality.

In pockets of Asia, Africa, and India it is over religious divide rather than harmony and peace, and to erase Christian identity whilst trying to forget the horrors of colonisation which also came with its good albeit through Church missionaries introducing education and health.

“What will become of the Church in the future?”

In the broadcast to German radio in 1969, then Fr. Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) sought to answer the question, “What will become of the Church in the future?” Here is an excerpt of his response:

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her centre: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer, she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.”

Smaller, Spiritual, Poorer, Humble, and less Political Church

Fast-forward, Pope Francis whilst in conversation to Maltese Jesuits and to a question put to him:

“Holy Father, the reality of the Church today is changing. It is becoming smaller and smaller in a secular, materialist Europe. At the same time, the Church is developing in Asia and Africa. What will the Church of the future be like? Will it be smaller, but more humble and authentic? What about the Church’s synodal journey? Where is it going?”

Excerpt of Pope Francis’ response:

“Pope Benedict was a prophet of this Church of the future, a Church that will become smaller, lose many privileges, be more humble and authentic and find energy for what is essential. It will be a Church that is more spiritual, poorer, and less political: a Church of the little ones. As a bishop, Benedict had said: let us prepare ourselves to be a smaller Church. This is one of his greatest insights.

Today there is the problem of vocations, yes. It is also true that in Europe there are fewer young people. Before, there were three or four children per family. Now often only one. Marriages are decreasing, while people focus on their profession.

“What is the vocation of the Church? It is not numbers. It is to evangelize. The joy of the Church is to evangelize. The real problem is not whether we are few, in short, but whether the Church evangelizes.”