Cardinal Burke: Church is ‘experiencing one of the greatest crises … she has ever known’

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I agree with the good Cardinal that the Church is experiencing a great crisis. But I disagree that it is one of the “greatest crises… she has ever known.” Perhaps we could say it’s one of the greatest (if not the greatest) crises of modern times. But anyone familiar with Church history - particularly with the Patristic period - knows that the Church has endured worse. Heck, we don’t even have three claimants to the papacy yet, so we’ve not quite reached the crisis level of the Great Western Schism.
 
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Phillip_Rolfes said:
Heck, we don’t even have three claimants to the papacy yet, so we’ve not quite reached the crisis level of the Great Western Schism.
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In the age before the printing press, not to mention the internet, most of the laity did not even know the name of the pope. The “Church” for them was their local parish and the activities centered around their community.

If one measures the magnitude of a crisis based on its effects on the laity (Church crises always emanate from problems in the hierarchy) then the present crisis ranks high, if not the highest in history. Today the pews are emptying, the laity are leaving the Church and that is quite unique to this crisis. Cardinal Burke along with Bishop Barron and others are calling on the laity to keep the faith. Perhaps their call to the laity is to not only keep the faith, but keep the faith alive while the hierarchy recovers from its present difficulties. The laity has done so in past crises.

In December 1549—four years into the eighteen-year long Council of Trent called by Pope Paul III, the conclave of cardinals vote to choose the successor of this Farnese pope, a man of the Renaissance who fathered four children and three grandchildren (already made cardinals between the ages of fourteen and sixteen). The Church in the world, unfortunately, failed to remain unadulterated by the world. The Church’s hierarchy, the episcopacy and papacy, had become outrageously worldly. Pettiness, smugness and sloppiness characterized the institutional Church’s millenium long entanglement in the world.

But the disorders in the institutional Church had not affected it at the community level. Although pastors may have been poorly trained and may not have adequately tended their flocks, historian John O’Malley reports that the guilds across Europe were functioning quite well. Requiring no ecclesial sponsorship, the local guilds autonomously responded to the needs of their communities offering programs of sodality and confraternity caring for the poor and teaching the young. O’Malley emphasizes that the disorders in the Church were primarily institutional and focused on the clergy. The Church as community and servant continued to function well.

Pray for vocations, yes. But also pray for a strong laity.
 
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o_mlly said:
Church crises always emanate from problems in the hierarchy
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Multiple missteps over several years also puts all Christians marching in a fast lane to persecution. Multiple missteps, abuses and neglect contributed to a culture of death that can’t seem to be reversed.
o_mlly said:
In the age before the printing press, not to mention the internet, most of the laity did not even know the name of the pope. The “Church” for them was their local parish and the activities centered around their community
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This is true today. On the flip side, many more know more in depth.

Probably just need move ahead and not look back and wonder ‘what if’.
Either way, there is much at stake now…mainly souls.
 
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