The Church in Crisis — and How We Must Not Save Her
Twelve Issues, Uncomfortable Truths, and a Catholic Way Forward
I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that the Catholic Church is in crisis. The good news is that she has been here before. Indeed, anyone with even a passing familiarity with Church history sometimes gets the impression that crisis is one of the few genuinely enduring Catholic traditions. We have had corrupt popes, worldly bishops, heresies, schisms, revolutions, persecutions, and liturgical committees. And yet here we are.
That last fact strikes me as evidence above all of the Church's divine origin. A purely human organization governed the way the Church has sometimes been governed would probably have gone bankrupt around the fourth century. And yet the situation is serious. Not because the Church is insufficiently popular. Not because her market share is declining. Not because she fails to connect adequately with the modern consumer.
The crisis is serious because within the Church there exists uncertainty about precisely those matters on which she ought to provide certainty: What is true? What is sin? What is marriage? What is the priesthood? What is liturgy? What is obedience? What does mercy mean? What has Christ actually entrusted to his Church? And perhaps more fundamentally still: Do we truly still believe that the Church has received something from Christ that she may not herself alter? That is the crux.
1. The First Necessary Reform: Stop Pretending Everything Needs to Be Reformed
We live in a culture in which change is treated as almost automatically equivalent to improvement. A phone from 2019 is old. A computer from 2012 is an antique. And so we sometimes unconsciously assume that a doctrinal formulation from the year 325 is urgently in need of a software update. But revelation is not an iPhone. Christianity is not a product that requires a new model each year. The task of the Church is not to produce a new religion at regular intervals. Her task is: to receive, preserve, deepen, and proclaim what she has received from Christ.
That does not mean nothing may ever change. Pastoral methods can change. Canonical disciplines can change. Forms of governance can change. Liturgical disciplines can change. But truth cannot be true today and false tomorrow.
A bishop ought to ask himself one simple question at each ecclesial innovation: Does this help my people grow holier? Not: "Is this innovative?" Not: "Is this inclusively worded?" Not: "Can we form a working group for this?" But: Does this bring people closer to Christ, the sacraments, and eternal life? That could shorten quite a few meetings. And that may itself constitute a modest ecclesial reform.
2. Synodality: Useful Instrument, Poor Direction
There is nothing un-Catholic about synods. The Church has known them for centuries. What becomes risky is when synodality shifts from being a method to being an almost autonomous theological ideal. Christianity did not begin with: "Where two or three are gathered in dialogue, truth will spontaneously emerge." The Apostles were entrusted with a faith. After that, they were permitted to deliberate about it. That order matters.
Listening is excellent, but Catholics must sometimes dare to ask the impolite question: Listening to whom? To the culture? To opinion polls? To interest groups? To ourselves? Or to Christ? For when the outcome of an ecclesial listening process becomes predictably identical to the wishes of modern secular culture, one may at least ask whether we have truly been listening to the Holy Spirit or perhaps mostly to the spirit of the age.
The Holy Spirit has one peculiar characteristic: he speaks in continuity with what he has said over the previous twenty centuries with remarkable frequency. A small observation for my brother bishops: Use synodality, but be a bishop. A bishop has not been elected to serve as a permanent facilitator of group processes. He is a successor of the Apostles. That means: teaching, sanctifying, governing, and sometimes saying: "No. This we cannot change." The word "no" has a poor reputation these days. But parents know: the one who never says no does not love his children more deeply.
3. Restore the Distinction Between Mercy and Affirmation
No one needs a harsh Church. But neither does anyone need a Church that only dares to name sin in historical documents. Christ was infinitely merciful. But his mercy never consisted in treating conversion as superfluous. To the sinner Christ says: "Come." But also: "Follow me." And following necessarily means we do not remain exactly where we stood.
That seems simple. But today it is revolutionary. The pastoral temptation sometimes runs: We do not want to wound anyone, so let us no longer speak of sin. The problem is that forgiveness then becomes meaningless as well. One who is never sick has no need of a doctor. One who never sins has no need of a Savior. And suddenly we discover why Christ, in such a theological system, finds himself with less and less to do.
A word for my brother priests: Preach again about sin, grace, heaven, hell, confession, virtue, chastity, prayer, sacrifice, and conversion. Not all of them at once every Sunday — the faithful need to make it home for lunch. But let people know that Christianity is genuinely about something.
4. Save the Liturgy from Both Experiment and Ideology
The liturgy is one of the most sensitive questions within the Church. That is understandable. Lex orandi, lex credendi. As we pray, so we learn to believe. The struggle over the liturgy is therefore never merely aesthetic. It is ultimately about God.
A Catholic Mass is not primarily a gathering in which the community celebrates its sense of togetherness. It is the sacrifice of Christ made sacramentally present. It is not a meal in the form of a sacrifice, but a sacrifice in the form of a meal. That changes everything. When that is truly believed, what follows is natural: reverence, kneeling, silence, beauty, care, sacred music, and a priest who does not assume the liturgy is improved by the spontaneous insertion of a funny anecdote. The Holy Spirit has many gifts. Improvisational theater at the altar does not, to my knowledge, figure among the seven.
A word for my brother bishops: Do not automatically treat attachment to the traditional liturgy as a psychiatric condition. Not every young Catholic who loves Latin is a covert agent from 1957. When young people are drawn to Gregorian chant, silence, incense, kneeling, ad orientem celebration, and classical spirituality, do not immediately ask: "What has gone wrong here?" Ask instead: "What are they seeking here that they cannot find elsewhere?"
And a word for traditional Catholics — because they too must allow something to be said to them. The traditional liturgy can sanctify. But an ancient rite does not automatically make someone holy. One can attend the most reverent Mass imaginable and then proceed to curse three bishops and the entire Vatican in the parking lot. Liturgically that may be traditional; spiritually it is somewhat less advisable. Tradition without charity becomes archaeology with a temper.
5. Stop Treating Young Believers as Though They Were Religious Porcelain
According to certain pastoral models, young people primarily need: low thresholds, few demands, short services, accessible texts, ample input, and above all nothing that sounds like an obligation. There is only one problem. That model does not appear to work particularly well. Many young people who discover the faith are looking for precisely the opposite: truth, order, asceticism, identity, confession, adoration, the sacraments, intellectual depth, and a community that actually asks something of them.
We have underestimated the young. We offered them fruit juice when they were looking for wine. We gave them slogans when they wanted to read Thomas Aquinas. We assumed Gregorian chant would drive them away. Some of them are now downloading it voluntarily on Spotify.
A word for my brother priests: Have the courage to treat young people as adults. Teach them the Catechism. Teach them to pray. Teach them to fast. Teach them why the Church teaches what she teaches. Do not offer diluted Christianity. No one has ever been martyred for a vague sense of belonging.
6. Vocations: Who Still Asks for a Sacrifice?
We speak at length about the shortage of priests. That is understandable. But the discussion quickly tends toward: mergers, administrative models, lay presiders, restructuring, and of course celibacy. All discussable matters. But perhaps we should first ask something simpler: Why would a young man want to become a priest?
If what he hears is: you will manage eight parishes, your calendar will be full of meetings, you must above all offend no one, and after twenty years you may receive a policy plan on sustainable property management — then it is astonishing that anyone shows up at all. But say to him instead: Give your life to Christ. Celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass daily. Forgive sins. Baptize children. Be present with the dying. Proclaim the Gospel. Become a spiritual father. Lead souls to eternity. That suddenly sounds quite different.
A word for my brother bishops: Do not seek candidates who are primarily skilled managers. Seek men who pray. A mediocre administrator can be helped by a capable financial officer. A priest who does not pray cannot be saved by any management course.
7. The Bishop Must Become a Father Again
A modern bishop can easily become a kind of director-general of religious services. He has: meetings, lawyers, communications advisers, property issues, press inquiries, personnel matters, protocols, and committees. All of it necessary. But when his priests barely know him and his faithful see him only on a Christmas card, something has gone wrong.
A bishop is primarily a father and a shepherd. He must therefore know his priests. Know his seminarians. Visit parishes. Oversee religious education. Protect the liturgy. Combat abuse. Proclaim the faith. And every so often say something publicly from which everyone immediately understands: Ah yes. This man truly believes that the Catholic faith is true. That would be refreshing.
I take the liberty of offering a concrete suggestion. Every bishop could reserve a significant number of days each year on which he attends no meetings but instead: visits the seminary, meets with priests individually, encounters catechumens, visits schools, hears confessions, meets with young people, and visits parishes. That provides a clear view of what his diocese truly needs.
8. Priests: Be a Priest, Not a Presenter
A priest does not need to be the most popular man in the parish. Fortunately. The Catholic Church would otherwise face serious staffing challenges. Nor does he need to be perpetually "relevant." His relevance does not derive from his personality. It comes from Christ. When a priest anoints the sick, he is relevant. When he absolves, he is relevant. When he celebrates the Eucharist, he is relevant. When he accompanies the dying, he is more relevant than all the talk shows broadcast that evening.
Concrete priorities for priests are not difficult to identify. Pray the Breviary faithfully each day. Reserve time each day for silent prayer. Celebrate Mass worthily. Offer generous opportunity for confession. Be available to the sick. Give real catechetical instruction. Preach substantively. Avoid liturgical creativity. Read theology regularly. Live simply. And be fatherly. That last point matters. A priest is not merely a sacramental administrator. He is a spiritual father.
9. Laity: Stop Waiting for Rome to Solve Everything
Catholics sometimes have a peculiar habit. We complain that the hierarchy holds too much power. And then we expect the hierarchy to solve everything. Those two things are incompatible. When the culture needs to be re-evangelized, that happens largely through the laity: in families, schools, universities, businesses, media, the arts, politics, science, and local communities. At least, that would be the ideal. The early Christians had no bishops' conference with a professional communications bureau. They evangelized the Roman Empire nonetheless. That puts our excuses in some perspective.
The most important catechetical program remains the family. A word for parents: pray with your children. Take them to Mass. Go to confession yourself. Talk about the faith at home. Introduce them to the saints. Teach them that Sunday is genuinely Sunday. And do not be surprised when a child does not remain Catholic after spending eighteen years observing that being Catholic made virtually no difference to his parents.
To Catholic intellectuals I offer this: write, teach, debate, found, organize, be present in the culture. Catholic orthodoxy must not become a hobby for intellectuals who converse exclusively among themselves. Thomas Aquinas did not write for a closed group chat.
10. Fight the Culture War Without Becoming a Culture Warrior
There are real conflicts between Catholic morality and modern culture. That cannot be denied. But traditional Catholics sometimes face their own particular danger: that the struggle against error gradually becomes more important than love for the truth. That distinction is subtle but crucial. One can end up spending so much time combating modernism that Christ becomes almost incidental. One can read daily about everything going wrong in Rome and almost never open the Gospel. One can receive news of the latest disaster in a dicastery within ten minutes and not know which saint's feast falls on that day.
That is not a victory for tradition. That is spiritual distraction. A practical rule: read more Augustine than ecclesiastical Twitter. Read more Benedict XVI than angry blogs. Pray longer for your bishop than you spend complaining about him. That last one is particularly difficult. Which is probably why it is good for the soul.
11. Abuse: Zero Romanticism About Institutional Reputation
There is little room for humor here. Abuse and the culture of concealment surrounding it have caused enormous damage. The traditional Catholic must never think that defending the Church means giving priority to institutional reputation over truth and justice. Precisely Catholic orthodoxy demands: justice, love of truth, protection of the vulnerable, and accountability from those in authority. A bishop who protects an abuser in order to "avoid scandal" is precisely what causes scandal. The Church is not defended by concealing sin. The Church is defended by combating sin.
In practice: protect victims first. Investigate seriously. Cooperate lawfully with civil authorities. Be transparent where that can responsibly be done. And recognize that the Church's reputation ultimately belongs to Christ. He can withstand the truth better than a lie.
12. Stop the Eternal Inferiority Complex Before the Modern World
For several decades now, a portion of the ecclesiastical establishment has seemed almost terrified of being considered old-fashioned by the modern world. But we can relax about that. The modern world does indeed find us old-fashioned. Christianity teaches, after all, that chastity is a virtue, that marriage has objective meaning, that children are gifts, that truth exists, that suffering can be given meaning, that possessions create obligations, that forgiveness matters more than revenge, that humility is good, that man is not his own creator, and that God is ultimately more important than autonomy — and yes, also more important than the economy.
None of that will ever become entirely fashionable. Nor does it need to be. Christianity has not survived two thousand years because it rewrote its message every twenty years. It has survived because the message proved greater than any fashion.
What Must Actually Be Done?
Let me close with a simple program — not another new committee, but something for each of us.
To bishops:
(1) Proclaim the faith clearly — not only when there is no controversy, but precisely when doing so is unpopular. (2) Form good priests: intellectually orthodox, spiritually deep, humanly mature, liturgically formed. (3) Give priority to orthodox seminaries. A diocese without vocations should ask not only why young men are not coming, but also what they find when they do. (4) Restore liturgical peace. Do not treat faithful Catholics who long for the traditional liturgy as problem cases. (5) Promote confession and adoration. The renewal of the Church does not begin with management. (6) Protect Catholic education. A school that calls itself Catholic but no longer dares to teach the Catholic understanding of the human person has primarily a historical logo. (7) Be visible as a shepherd. Go to your people.
To priests:
(1) Pray. That sounds almost offensively simple. But many crises begin precisely there. (2) Celebrate the Eucharist daily — and celebrate it reverently. The faithful at Mass do not come to encounter the priest's personality. They come to encounter Christ. (3) Preach the full truth: with love, with intelligence, with humor where appropriate, but without shame. (4) Hear confessions. Provide generous opportunity for confession. Ringing the rectory doorbell does not count as such. (5) Seek out young people — not to be cool with them. That is a lost cause. A sixty-year-old priest attempting to speak like a sixteen-year-old is one of the strongest arguments for a monastic vow of silence. Be a father. That is enough. (6) Maintain priestly brotherhood. An isolated priest becomes vulnerable. (7) Love your people — even when they are difficult. Especially then.
To the laity:
(1) Become holy yourself. That is more difficult than being angry at Rome, but ultimately far more effective. (2) Build Catholic families. (3) Give your children real catechetical formation. (4) Support good priests — not by placing them on a pedestal, but by helping them remain priests. (5) Found Catholic initiatives: schools, publishers, student groups, prayer groups, cultural institutions, good media. (6) Know your faith. A Catholic who does not know the Catechism but discusses ecclesiastical politics daily resembles a football analyst who does not know whether a ball contains air or sand. (7) Be joyful. This may be more important than we think. Bitterness converts no one.
Let me say something that may be less welcome to a traditional audience. Tradition can itself become an ideology. One can become so convinced that one is defending truth that one forgets that truth is a Person. We can: be right and be loveless, be orthodox and be proud, be liturgically correct and spiritually cold, be theologically sharp and humanly insufferable. That would be a rather peculiar kind of victory.
The traditional movement will be truly fruitful when it becomes recognizable by: holiness, large families, vocations, intellectual life, beauty, charity, joy, and missionary zeal — not primarily by criticism. A tree is ultimately known by its fruits. Not by the sharpness of its tweets.
Where Does True Reform Begin?
Perhaps not in Rome. Perhaps not at a synod. Perhaps not at a bishops' conference. Perhaps it begins tomorrow morning. When a priest prays half an hour longer before breakfast. When a father prays the rosary with his children. When a young person goes to confession for the first time in ten years. When a bishop decides to explain an unpopular truth calmly. When a seminarian chooses holiness over career. When a parish begins Eucharistic adoration again. When a Catholic teacher refuses to reduce his faith to vague humanism. When a married couple truly lives their marriage as a vocation.
That is how the Church has always renewed herself — not primarily through programs, but through saints.
So: no panic. We may take the crisis seriously. We need not make it more dramatic than it is. For the future of the Church does not ultimately depend on the competence of her bureaucracy. Thank God. That may be the most consoling teaching in this essay.
Christ did not say: "You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my strategic multi-year plan." He said: "I will build my Church." That does not relieve us of our responsibility. It puts that responsibility in its proper place. We do not need to reinvent the Church. We do not need to save her, as though Christ, after his Ascension, forgot how his own Church works. We must do something simpler: preserve the faith, speak the truth, receive the sacraments, raise our children, serve the poor, form priests, promote vocations, celebrate the liturgy worthily, love our enemies, and love Christ more than our own ecclesiastical faction. That last one may be the most difficult of all. Because in the end there are no traditional saints and progressive saints. There are only saints.
And perhaps that is precisely the reform the Church needs now. Not another new Catholic program. But Catholics who take the Gospel so seriously that other people begin to wonder: "What have they found that we are missing?" When that question is asked again, the new evangelization truly begins. And perhaps the Church will then rediscover something she has always known in her finest moments: that the world is not converted by our becoming ever more like it, but by its seeing something of Christ in us.
† Rob Mutsaerts
[Source, in Dutch]
