Downsizing the Church

CWR Dispatch: Analysis: The US Church is going broke. Here’s why, and what it could mean by JD Flynn for CNA

Does the patriarchate of Rome, especially in the US, have an opportunity for radical reform? If not with the current economic downturn due to COVID-19, then when collapse proceeds full speed ahead? (Assuming that there is a temporary respite between the two.) Or will clericalism and institutional inertia (as well as lay people holding on to status and power) be obstacles to reform?

Some will likely praise the winnowing of the Church’s bureaucratic class. But those with day-to-day experience of ministry professionals will acknowledge, even while criticizing a tendency towards bureacratic bloat, that the individuals who fill Church positions usually do so because of a desire to serve Christ and the People of God, and usually do so after ample investment in their own education for ministry.

As if credentialing were the most important part of becoming a bureaucrat. Bureaucracy is not ministry. Bureaucracy merely upholds the top-down power structure that strangles the freedom and initiative of local ecclesial communities. "You must take this class to be a certified catechist, or you must have this degree to become a bureaucrat." There is no questioning by the faithful of whether those standards are appropriate allowed. It's all left to the "expertise" of "experts" accountable only to the bishop and the bureaucracy, not to the people.

Nevertheless, barring some dramatic change in forecasts, those things seem practically inevitable.

They will require a new way of living the Church’s life, or the rediscovery of old ways.

A poorer U.S. church, even one made poor through tragedy, might find that it meets the vision of Pope Francis’ hope of a “poor Church for the poor.”

 "Poorer," smaller parishes would be a change in the right direction. "Poor Church for the poor" is a pious platitude mouthed by those who are well-off and don't have to live with the poor. Such interactions are to be handled by standards of community-formation and communal life, which are observed and upheld by men, who won't be involved in any sort of sanctioned endeavor by the institutional Church.

Such a Church will require more Catholics to take personal responsibility for the mission of the parish, the diocese, and, ultimately, the Gospel.

The culture of clericalism,  "niceness," and feminism will never allow this sort of Christian freedom to be exercised by men.

When faithful Christians call out parish ministries or their pastor for heterodoxy, what will the "official response" of the Church be?

The downturn may well occasion a rise in the prominence and influence of ecclesial movements, whose lay members generally give far more time than other Catholics to missionary work, and often with more evangelical fervor. It may also occasion the emergence of small tight-knit faith communities within parishes, who meet regularly in homes, rather than in large parish events. It might even occasion a rise in the frequency of catechesis undertaken mostly at home, by parents themselves.

How long before ecclesial movements and small parish groups are criticized by those with power for being too divisive because they start to disagree with their opinions? Given that so many parents are ignorant of their faith, it is unlikely that they will embrace such a catechetical role for their children.

The downturn might also occasion a new zeal, and opportunity, for evangelization, as people shaken by the pandemic and its aftershocks find themselves looking for meaning. That evangelization will likely be undertaken organically, which is say to cheaply, rather than by professional initiatives driven by expensive and time-consuming pastoral plans.

Undertaken organically by whom? Women in a feminized Church? How are they going to reach out to disempowered men?