“Let me go one step further. From today’s
crisis, a Church will emerge tomorrow that will have lost a great deal. She
will be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning.
She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period
of great splendor. Because of the smaller number of her followers, she will
lose many of her privileges in society. Contrary to what has happened until
now, she will present herself much more as a community of volunteers....
"As a small community, she will demand
much more from the initiative of each of her members and she will certainly
also acknowledge new forms of ministry and will raise up to the priesthood
proven Christians who have other jobs. In many smaller communities,
respectively in social groups with some affinity, the normal care of souls will
take place in this way....
"There will be an interiorized Church,
which neither takes advantage of its political mandate nor flirts with the left
or the right. This will be achieved with effort because the process of
crystallization and clarification will demand great exertion. It will make her
poor and a Church of the little people.... All this will require time. The
process will be slow and painful....
(J. Ratzinger, Faith and the Future).
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