The Church of Tomorrow. For a True Reform

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Claude Barthe, L’Église demain. Pour une vraie réforme [The Church of Tomorrow. For a True Reform], Éditions de L’Homme nouveau, ‘Carnets’, 2024, 125p, €13

By the early 60s of the 20^th century, the Church had run out of steam after its prolonged struggle against a radically hostile modernity. It certainly stood in need of a reform, that is, a revitalization similar to that of the Tridentine Counter-Reformation or to that which has been dubbed the Gregorian Reform. But instead of a reform, it underwent a revolution.

The seizure of magisterial levers, during the Second Vatican Council, by the “nouvelle théologie”, a form of liberal Catholicism, allowed for the integration of a certain liberal pluralism into official teaching, which in turn led to the dramatic collapse in missionary zeal, in religious practice and in the recruitment of clerics and religious.

A regeneration will undoubtedly accompany the end of the disorder from which the Church is currently suffering. But before that happens, bishops, whether diocesan or otherwise, along with prelates and cardinals, can anticipate this process, in particular by promoting a revival of moral teaching, a reconstruction of the liturgy, a renewal of preaching on the Four Last Things, a catechism that teaches the faith, and a traditional formation for diocesan priests.

This will entail a process of recovery, which could also be described as a re-centering, a bringing back to the center of that which has been rejected and which today survives as best it can “on the margins”.

Introduction – Vatican II, a Missed Opportunity for Renewal

My sole purpose, in the pages that follow, will be to call for a true renewal of the Church. Even if Her Lord allows betrayal, or simply the worldly cowardice of Her children, to appear capable of capsizing the Barque, the holy and immaculate Bride of Christ will not die. When She succeeds, with Her shepherds, pope and bishops, moved by the grace of God and sustained by the merits of the saints, in warding off the disorder that is presently afflicting Her, She will need to implement a regeneration, a salvific reform. Yet already, bishops, prelates and cardinals can pave the way for this rebirth. Indeed, they must do so, all the more urgently as we are in a situation that is, in many respects, that of a Catholicism in a state of sheer survival.

It is increasingly reduced to a “tiny flock”, which is, moreover, barely distinguishable from the mass of contemporary mankind, at least in the West; for, indeed, in other parts of the world, it is still very much alive, and sometimes even growing. However, Rome, its head, is in the West. The life of Christians is that of a minority which is being morally persecuted, either latently or openly, by a modern society that has excluded the Bride of Christ and is pushing them to abdicate their status as members of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9). Admittedly, their situation is essentially normal for followers of Christ, who are in the world without being of the world, but with this caveat: namely, that the world encircling them is the modern world.

Indeed, for modernity, and even more so for modernity in its extreme phase, the Church’s vocation to baptize the nations, and lead them to the unique way, constitutes a radically foreign claim. It is therefore essential that Christians recover the awareness that the Church is not simply one religious association among many, even if a novel teaching leads them to demean the unique Bride of Christ in the manner of an Assisi gathering. In other words, to be clear from the outset, the revitalization of Catholicism comes first and foremost at the theological and spiritual price of parting with the “Vatican II frame of mind”.

To order L’Église demain. Pour une vraie réforme : L’Église demain – L’Homme Nouveau