Quo Vadis

Dec 20, 2023

In this video we share Pope Benedict XVI's Prophetic Vision of the Future of the Church

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Way before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, or even a Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger explained in a 1969 broadcast on German radio for all to hear. . .

the future of the Catholic Church.

Ratzinger didn’t pretend he could tell the future.

No.

He was much too wise for that.

He tempered his initial remarks with this disclaimer:

“Let us, therefore, be cautious in our prognostications.

What Saint Augustine said is still true: man is an abyss; what will rise out of these depths, no one can see in advance.

And whoever believes that the Church is not only determined by the abyss that is man, but reaches down into the greater, infinite abyss that is God, will be the first to hesitate with his predictions, for this naïve desire to know for sure could only be the announcement of his own historical ineptitude. ”

But his era, brimming with existential danger, political cynicism and moral waywardness, hungered for an answer.

The Catholic Church, a moral beacon in the turbulent waters of its time, had recently experienced certain changes of its own with adherents and dissenters alike wondering, “What will become of the Church in the future? ”

And so, in a 1969 German radio broadcast, Father Joseph Ratzinger would offer his thoughtfully considered answer. Here are his concluding remarks,

“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith.

It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves.

To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality.

Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial.

By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened.

He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered.

If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other.

Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us.

If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!

“How does all this affect the problem we are examining?

It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter.

We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous.

Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death.

The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the sidelines, watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.

“Let us go a step farther. 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.

Original text from: papaboys.org

Mirrored from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYU7bkpnTpI