About That "Smaller, Purer Church" . . .

I can't quite pinpoint when I first heard that Pope Benedict XVI had predicted that we would have a "smaller, purer church." It was almost always written like that, too. In quotes. As if that was exactly what he had said and all that he had said. Usually, it was mentioned with gleeful overtones, as the person relished the idea of this imminent change. Quite often, it seemed like they were happier about the "smaller" than the "purer."

Are we hoping for a more faithful Church or just one that is smaller because it looks exactly like us? 

It was years later that I read the entire quote:

“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. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.
And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.” -Pope B16

That's a lot to unpack. The right person (not me) could write an entire book unpacking those three paragraphs. It certainly gives a different, and clearer, vision than the paraphrased version I had heard so many times. The full quote speaks of a Church that is smaller, yes, and less prosperous. It outlines a future for the Church without prestige and privilege. It also describes a Church whose members have detached themselves from the tribalism of politics.

The problem I have with the "smaller, purer Church" paraphrase is that it is often used to imply "a church more like me." Whatever the speaker envisions is what they assume this smaller church will look like. That is their vision of purity. They imagine that this small, pure Church will Catholic exactly as they Catholic. It is an image often romanticized by nostalgia (real or imagined) and personal preference.

As the Church dwindles to a more faithful core, it will not be so pretty or shiny, I think. The people will be grubbier and grittier than many who love the paraphrase imagine. It will be less, "Father Knows Best," and more "Addams Family." Passionate. Peculiar. Unpopular with the neighbors.  The Church shall be strange and shabby and looked down upon for both. There seems to be a thirst for an internal purging--not against the clergy whose scandals have so recently rocked our Church, but against fellow laity. Those who imagine they are pure wish to drive out, with whips (like Jesus!), those who they see as impure. They imagine themselves as saviors in the temple, and all who do not measure up are the bankers cheating people. Their image seems to leave out the broken, the hurting, the people who are too loud, or too quiet, or too scattered, or too emotional.

Their image of what is pure and impure sometimes drives these people away.

We don't go to Church to fit in. We don't go to be part of the clique. We certainly don't go to be admired for our holiness. If we do, if we try, we end up broken, or more broken, or breaking others. Some will hold the pieces together so well we cannot tell, but others will shatter, and suddenly, they are less welcome, because we can see all their mess. When people leave because they are harmed and broken by their own congregation, because staying hurts too much, they are often heaped with more pain and derision. In the Age of Social Media, even strangers feel free to attack hurting people for their decisions. This is wrong. This is a grave offense against charity. People who love the Church do not leave her out of malice. They leave because we have made it too painful to stay. 

We are sometimes reminded that we must make disciples of all nations. We are told that we must fight for the souls around us, to bring them to God and his Church. We would do well to remember that the goal is not a smaller Church or a shinier Church or a Church with a pious veneer, but a more faithful one, and that means a more charitable one. Our Church must not break the bruised reeds or extinguish the smoldering wick, and we Catholics must be careful not to break to extinguish our fellow Catholics either. We will answer for those we have driven away.