The Church and contemporary Challenges

Richard Lennan the church in the 21st Century Center at Boston College had its birth in the throes of the clerical sexual abuse scandal. The reverberations of that scandal continue even twenty years later, but today’s Church also confronts a raft of new challenges. This article surveys some of these and identifies possibilities for the Christian community to address them. The possibilities all have roots in the tradition of faith and provide ways for members of the Church to witness to the life-giving presence of the trinitarian God.

As the Church, our responsibility includes being alert and open to the movement of the Spirit. Doing so requires us to recognize and utilize the single largest resource we have to address issues in our world: our shared faith. It requires too that we never cease to ask whether all we do as Church reflects the Gospel.

1. Global anxiety resulting from COVID-19 and its attendant social and economic impact

Faith in Christ offers hope for the present, not simply for “the next world.” For the Church to embody this hope, all disciples of Christ must expand their vision beyond self-interest to an everdeepening openness to “the common good.” Membership of the Church, then, does not legitimate isolation from the needs of the world but summons us to compassion and generosity.

2. Burgeoning technology and the world of social media

Members of the Church can turn to Christ as “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). This anchoring offers a foundation that empowers resistance to “disinformation” and “misinformation.” Similarly, our grounding in the presence of God in humanity reminds us that “virtual” relationships cannot substitute for sharing each other's joys and sufferings.

3. A culture that combines— uneasily—a hunger for authenticity, suspicion of institutions, and escape into “celebrity” creation is also the God who creates and treasures all people. The Church’s care for the earth and option for the poor are never less than imperatives of Christian faith.

Faith in the God who meets us in the humanity of Jesus affirms human life as the site of grace. Members of the Church can recognize unambiguously the limits of all human projects, but affirm—also unambiguously—that darkness cannot overcome grace. Nurtured through word and sacrament, members of the Church can live as people of hope, even in this complex moment.

4. A nti-racism, religious pluralism, and “decolonialization” Witness to the unconditional love of God for all people is an irreducible consequence of seeing human history as the venue for encountering the grace of God’s Holy Spirit. Members of the Church are called to resist anything that obscures the dignity of any person or group in society. The Church itself must remain open to conversion to God’s limitless vision for human thriving.

7. P revalence of “nones,” “disaffiliation” from the Church, decline in the social influence of the Churches, and the association between the Church and multiple forms of scandal

Today, “the Church,” especially our structures and ways of proceeding, is often an obstacle to the good news that the Church exists to proclaim. Rather than rail against “the times,” we, as Church, must be self-critical, while also discerning together possibilities for creatively faithful changes in our structures and forms of decision-making. Synodality, at the heart of which is truly listening to each other and to the Spirit, enhances these possibilities. ■

5. T he pluralism

Of Human Experience In Matters Of Gender And Sexuality

In listening to, learning from, caring for, being in dialogue with, supporting, serving, and nurturing hope in all people, individual members of the Church, and the ecclesial communities to which they belong, can make Christ present. The Gospel summons us to presume goodwill in all people and to be attentive to the movement of the Spirit in every setting.

6. A nxiety for the future in light of “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor”

Faith in Christ is inseparable from reverence for the physical world as not simply God’s creation but the venue for God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ. The God who gives life abundantly in

Richard Lennan is a priest of the diocese of Maitland-Newcastle, Australia, and is professor of systematic theology and chair of the ecclesiastical faculty at the School of Theology and Ministry at Boston College.

Read C21 Resources— The Vocations of Religious and the Ordained (Spring 2011).

G uest Editor: Richard Lennan