Home » Pfarrer Initiative – Parish Initiative – W. Kirchschläger

Parish Initiative! Lively parishes despite lack of priests!

By Walter Kirchschläger, delivered at the Church People’s Conference, Vienna 2018

English translation by Sr Patricia Harriss CJ of Walter Kirchschläger, “Pfarrer Initiativ! Lebendige Pfarren trotz Priestermangel”, Kirchenvolkskonferenz 2018, Don Bosco Haus, Wien, 10. November 2018, available here.

1. REMEMBERING AND FOUNDATION-LAYING

First, a hearty welcome to everyone. It is good that we have come together today to speak about Church in a concrete way, Church as we live it and experience it in our parish communities. This is a burning issue for you and me, and with you I hope that the discussion will bring us a step further today in our efforts for this Church.

We are almost 55 years on from the end of the Second Vatican Council, about five decades from the various diocesan synods and many years from the Dialogue for Austria (1997-98), from the foundation of We are Church, (1995), Parish Priests’ Initiative ((2006), Lay Initiative (1998), from Network Faith for our Time (2015); in Switzerland, after the Statutes for the Day, Perspectives in the Basle Diocese and the Parish Initiatives (20120 – and so on.

It is a serious time, whose signs from heaven are calling for understanding and action. For it really cannot be that we know how to interpret signals from the sky about the weather, but overlook the signs of the times. According to the account in St. Matthew’s gospel (Mt.16:1-4) the Sadducees and Pharisees had already come in for criticism from Jesus for this inability. They overlook these signs, indeed; they disregard them: that is what Church leadership in the decades since the Council has done, for more than enough decades. And so the Council’s instruction runs still more compellingly:

‘For the fulfilment of this task

the Church carries the responsibility at all times [per omne tempus Ecclesiae officium incumbit]

of reading the signs of the times [signa temporum perscrutandi]

and interpreting them in the light of the gospel.[1]

According to the Council’s wish this is to happen regularly: ‘in a way appropriate to each generation.’ [2] That has also happened in the rarest cases.

On other continents signals have been given in this direction, some in Medellin (1968), Puebla (1979) and Aparecida (2007). The local churches in those places were duly punished under John Paul II and Benedict XVI (woman or man could scarcely describe the personal interventions and hindrances in any other way). Here, in Europe, as is well known, during or after various diocesan synods experiments in line with the discussion have often been largely squashed, even at local level. The key-word ‘Dialogue for Austria’ is enough. I assume that many of you could talk about similar experiences.

1.2 Breach of duty. The reference to the Council should make us aware: we are not speaking here of minor matters being neglected. Here, for decades, one of the duties prescribed by this Church assembly, literally an officium per omne tempus, simply under tolerance from the chief shepherd – not to say a requirement – has not been carried out, and thereby the Church’s journey through time has been handicapped in a serious way. Because in connection with this we are speaking of materia gravis, that is, a serious fact, the matter cannot simply be filed away, particularly as it has various methods – like the change in the renewed image of the Church put forward by the Council and the levelling down of Conciliar theology in a universal catechism. John Paul II, on the other hand, affirmed on the occasion of the calling of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 1985:

‘The Second Vatican Council [was] always, and again in these years of my pontificate, constantly the point of reference for my whole pastoral work, and I tried consciously to turn to its guidelines specifically and exactly for each particular church and for the universal Church.[3]

That at that extraordinary Synod of Bishops twenty years after the end of the Council, with authoritative involvement of the then Prof. Walter Kasper- it was still before his later conversion in 2014 – as it were overnight the so-called Communio -Ecclesiology was preferred to the conciliar understanding of the Church as pilgrim-group on the road, may be no surprise. I have nothing against ‘Church as community’, communio. But this image of Church has a decisive catch: it puts a brake on the dynamic of being on a journey, which the Council built up in what it said about the Church: ‘The Church walks between persecution by the world and God’s consolations on its pilgrim way,’ it says in the Constitution on the Church, using Augustine’s words.[4] Apart from its strong and varied biblical placing, this idea  also contains movement, change, adaptation on the way: in short, inculturation with regard to the signs of the times. But dynamism was (and is) scarcely if at all called for in the Church, rather consolidation of what already is, for example in a new catechism – also a consequence of that extraordinary Synod in 1985.

So it doesn’t seem difficult to trace back the continual neglect of duty against the Council’s instruction and locate it in the higher levels of responsibility in the Church. The carefree attitude, the courage and the trust in God of a John XXIII is lacking to the Church everywhere. True, Bishop Francis speaks of a ‘field-hospital’ Church, but his teams are not ready to draw the consequences from this picture, which signals a crisis. … The crisis of the middle, the episcopal level of leadership in the Church, cannot be overlooked. Centralisation takes its toll precisely in this area, with immediate and at the same time lasting consequences. Often it seems that the Congregation for Bishops does not once take note of the oft-formulated criteria for episcopal service from Bishop Francis, let alone obey them. The daily-increasing lack of loyalty shows that in the Church and its administration crisis reigns.  ‘In this hour of the Church’[5] we are gathered here today. This is how Julius Döpfner, Archbishop of München-Freising and one of the presidents of the Council, described the time of the Council and the time following it. It is this, it is our own hour of the Church, which certainly lives through the centuries, but specifically lives and has to live in the here and now. Nobody can gloss over the value of a present-day analysis of the Church, even if here and there new patches are sewn on. But doesn’t it need a new garment? Doesn’t it need new wineskins, so that the precious wine of the gospel doesn’t spill out unnoticed? (cf. Mark 2:21-22).

1.3 Principle for interpretation. As I was preparing this, Paul’s way in ‘the Church of God which is in Corinth’ (I Cor. 2:1-3) kept coming into my mind – a way that he reflected on again shortly after he left Corinth, in his first letter to this church, at the beginning of the 50s of the first century:

‘Now when I came to you, sisters and brothers, I did not come with any brilliance of oratory or wise argument to announce to you the mystery of God. I was resolved that the only knowledge I would have while I was with you was knowledge of Jesus, and of him as the crucified Christ. I came among you in weakness, in fear and great trembling….’

Granted, naturally: this is not Paul. But at least this is Church. What moves me, in this autobiographical note from Paul is not only his modesty, in which I wholeheartedly join him. More decisive is the principle for interpretation that Paul formulates in these sentences for the Corinthian Church, and that he – as all the letters that we have from him show – made the fundamental principle of his preaching and of his pastoral work: ‘not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ.’

That is exactly the point – and I want to unite myself with it today, in method and content. Focus on Kyrios Jesous Christos, the Lord Jesus Christ, become man, living among us human beings, crucified and risen, is the beginning and middle of all the considerations that we can put forward about universal Church and local church. That is so since soon after Easter; first and foremost Paul is a teacher in this methodical beginning.

For a detailed exegesis of I Cor.2 it is not enough. It is notable that Paul, with his reference to the crucified Christ, is going back to the paradox of Christian faith that he has reflected on before, immediately after the beginning of his letter, in I Cor.1. Yes, the Christ, God’s Anointed at the end-time, as crucified – that is not fitting for the time, nor does it agree with any human logic. For the one it is a ‘scandal’, for the other it is ‘folly’, but for us, Christian women and men of all times, no matter where we come from and what our culture is, this is ‘Christ, the power and the wisdom of God’ (I Cor.1:24, cf. 1: 22-25).

So it must be accepted, once and for all, that the contours of a Church of God, then as today, do not have to fit seamlessly into their surroundings. On the contrary: the Church stands as counter to common main-stream maxims of society as this Kyrios Jesous Christos, of whom Paul says in another place that his name, and so his identity, is from God in the consequence of his humbling himself ‘even to death, death on a cross’, raised and exalted ‘above all names’ (Phil. 2: 8-9), even though his biography can be explained only by recourse to the wisdom of God, not that of men – a wisdom that seems folly, but because of its leading back to God still far surpasses every kind of human wisdom.

1.4. Fundamentally, today this Christo-centrism is no theological novelty. John XXIII, on the occasion of his summoning of the Second Vatican Council on 25th December 1961, referred expressly to the ‘one thing necessary’ for the world, and thereby made the Christ-event the theme of the Council. [6]  In his programmatic radio address a month before the beginning of the Council he could speak, logically, of Jesus Christ as ‘Light of the world’[7], and in the opening address of the Council openly reaffirm that Christ ‘is still the centre of history and of life.’[8] Bishop Francis, already at the closing Mass of the conclave, out of which he emerged as Bishop of Rome, spoke emphatically to the cardinals from this perspective:

‘We can go as far as we like,

We can build up a great deal,

But if we do not confess Jesus Christ, the business will not succeed.

We shall have a charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of Christ.’[9]

Since then Bishop Francis has never tired of urging this Christo-centricity of the Church in ‘deed and word’[10]:

‘Sometimes the Church has let itself be caught up in little things, in little regulations. But the most important thing is the first message: Jesus Christ has saved you.’[11]

Decisive, finally, is the Council’s approach to this question. In the Constitution on the Church, Jesus Christ in his universal dimension is the source of the Church. The opening sentence of this document begins accordingly with the foundation-statement: ‘Since Jesus Christ is the light of humanity… ‘(Lumen gentium cum sit Christus), from which follow all further considerations for understanding the Church. This knotting together is constitutive. If it were to be undone, in the strictest sense nothing could be said about the Church. Over the ages the Pauline approach sets the direction: in his first letter (that to the Church in Thessalonika) the apostle orders the various local churches to God. This remains working practice for him, with a single exception (Rom.16:16). Through it he sees these churches realised ‘in Christ.’[12]. In this sense I Thess. 2:14 speaks of ‘the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus.’ That means: the Christ-event makes the ground for enabling and the finally-binding reference-point for being Church.

But then it is expressly, and with Paul, to be affirmed: the Kyrios Jesous Christos stands not only at the beginning of the Church and before its beginning. He creates also, as the authoritative reference-person, its theological basis in right teaching and right practice, therefore in its self-understanding and practice of faith.

And then it is not surprising when, with a view to firm establishing of norms in further considerations, we insist precisely on this point.  This does not mean that out of it an imitation of Jesus’ time and his followers’ movement should or may be derived, on a 1:1 ratio. But if the Church is to remain, today and tomorrow, a Church in Jesus Christ, it must let itself be marked in the foundations of its life by the principles of the one who is its means and origin, and its life must be able to be derived from the beginnings of the Church.[13] Orientation on these beginnings of the Church takes seriously the normative power of the Christ-event and the spirit-marked biblical tradition of the first generations of this faith-community. On these grounds this look back is indispensable. It is not optional but normative, and has norm-making consequences. For the direction-setting foundations of the Church are to be found not primarily in the traditions that have grown up over the centuries but in the beginnings of the Church determined and marked by the Kyrios Jesous Christos.

In this a necessary methodical reflection on the biblical message as a norm-giving foundation is called for. Thereby it is decisive that the beginnings and the further tradition of the Church  (and so its foundation, understood as normative ) do not stand unrelated beside each other. That does not mean in any way that they must look the same. But at least recognisable lines of a derivable connection of tradition with the beginnings of the Christ-event and its attestation in the biblical writings are indispensable. Without such connection and derivability of content so-called tradition proves to have no Biblical anchoring – which reduces and makes relative its meaningfulness for theology and its binding nature for the Church.  [14] Precisely in view of the present topic this realisation is essential, because it shows the meaning and the necessity of Bible-based questioning and re-reading.

Such a ‘normative re-reading’, as this method can be described, can be traced already in the Acts of the Apostles as a methodological principle for reflection on the Church. Particularly in his presentation of the life of the early Church in Jerusalem but also in his description of the (predominantly Pauline) missionary activity, Luke is not pursuing primarily a reporting-historical interest. In his ‘looking back’ he is examining in a reflective way some points about the life of the first two generations after Easter. This is directed ‘up front’ at his own Church, and has as its aim to present the beginnings of the Church after Easter as the paradigmatic reality for the Church in his own time also. [15]With the help of the key-words teaching of the apostles, sharing, prayer, breaking of bread, – and all this with perseverance – this can easily be reconstructed from the first collected accounts. (cf. Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-37; 5:12-16).[16]

With this I would like to conclude the introductory and basic part of my explanation. I could go on with what I have just said, and ask about the vitality of parishes with the help of the collected account in Acts. Probably you know this approach, so I will continue in another way. But it should at least be said that Luke’s perspective, particularly his five elements of community life, teaching of the apostles, sharing, prayer, breaking of bread, and all this with perseverance, has not lost its relevance.

I would like to recall briefly what we are to look at later: along with critical observations on the present state of the Church there are two main points: first, the unlimited and indispensable concentration on Jesous-Christos-Kyrios (and deliberately in this threefold form of the Biblical characterisation of Christ). The other point is the conviction that we must start out from the Biblical analysis, on which a developing theological tradition must anchor itself, and which is at the same time a bench-mark of its value. If that is not possible, this tradition does not belong to the priorities but to the final details in deciding what can keep or make our parishes alive as local churches.

So now we come to ‘living parishes’ – whereby, you might say, at last we come to our topic. Naturally I limit myself to what seem to be really essential points.

2. LIVING PARISHES AS LOCAL CHURCHES.

The title of this section shows you how I rank today’s parishes in the Church as a whole. I go back to Paul again, once more to his first letter to the Church in Corinth.

  • Church as an organisational totality, articulated in a manageable way. Perhaps it has struck you that I use the expression ‘Church’ in singular and plural. This is not an accident, but goes back to the New Testament analysis. Certainly Paul addresses his letter to ‘the Church of God which is in Corinth’ (I Cor. 1,2), as for example in I Thessalonians and 2 Corinthians. The plural expression in Galatians (‘to the churches in Galatia’) and the use of the church concept in Philemon (‘to the church in your house’) shows the varied understandings of ekklesia, but especially the structural principle of the early local churches, which gathered themselves together in several house-churches, and developed church life where they were. The churches of the New Testament early period are not organised top-down but bottom-up. The size of a house church probably followed the local conditions, say, what was possible in the meeting-room. I learn once again from I Corinthians that a community member called Gaius made his atrium available for the whole church when on particular occasions the whole local church ( that is all the house-churches)  gathered together. (cf. I Cor. 14:23; Rom.16:23). This is not the regular practice. Normally the service on the first day of the week happens in the house-church, as does the social care for one another, the sharing and communicating of ‘joy and hope, sorrow and anxiety’ in the life of individual Christian men and women. [17]

As you know, this did not always work as it should. Paul’s criticism of the factions and quarrelling in the Corinthian churches can be read about, as is shown already in I Cor. 1, continued in Ch.3 and then in I Cor.11. Disunity and quarrelling are such disruptive factors that Paul argues with heavy weapons: he sets the serious problems in Corinth against the account so well-known in this local Church of ‘The night on which the Lord Jesus was betrayed’ (I Cor.11:23) – notice, nothing pragmatic, but an eminently Christocentric argument!

Church structure in this way is not at all the simplest kind of structure, but it is what works for the community of followers of Jesus, and now for the community professing faith in the Kyrios Jesous Christos.! For only this enables immediate communication with one another,  care and cultivation of relationships.

Our age of communications makes available to us countless opportunities for seemingly unlimited means of communication. The speed and extent of the communication-media bring people to the limits of their capacity. If we understand communication not only as an exchange or conveying of information or news, but as an opportunity for total, personal-human meeting and a corresponding person-to person sharing, we should formulate this analysis in a very reserved way. For the development in communications over recent decades has brought a great deal of superficiality and routine in interpersonal meetings (and thereby into everyday life.)

What we learn from this experience means: we cannot extend the radius of interpersonal communication simply by using any kind of technical aids, either by enabling the gathering of a greater number of people to an event, by modern means of transport, or through the fact that I have 500 friends, or even more, on Twitter or Facebook.

That is true also if I put together different forms of verbal and non-verbal communication. As a speaker I can address 50 persons at most with direct eye-contact, and the range of normal human social mixing does not go beyond 500 metres. Naturally there are exceptions. On occasion great events can release an unexpected intensity of communication, including emotional phenomena; but  such gatherings of people are not everyday events. [18]

Lasting communication between people can in the long run only be cultivated in a manageable space. This is not a matter of clear standards but rather of the principle. It is about manageability, which opens up various levels (and opportunities) for communication and so enables an interpersonal relationship in basic trust and growing familiarity. Both are conditions for a sharing in depth, that engages the whole person. I can’t simply engineer this manageability somewhere or other, but it needs – again, usually – one’s own familiar environment, which offers the very best comfortable space.

You will notice, I’m sure, that I am already, between the lines, talking about the church which lives in the neighbourhood. It can be said at least as an example that the previous considerations have found their way here and there into the Church. In an interview in 2007 Jorge Mario Bergoglio, then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, declared:

‘Our sociologists of religion tell us that the influence of a parish covers an area of about 600m. In Buenos Aires the distance between one parish and the next is about 2000m. I once said to the priests ‘If you can, rent a garage, and if you can get some available lay-person to go there, let him see what he can do. He should take care of those people, do some catechesis, even give communion, if he is asked to.’[19]

We can come back to this remarkable quotation. For the moment what has been said should be enough to urge thinking again about the large buildings planned in so many places. True, many details are lacking in the Biblical material; all the same, indications about suitable houses are scattered so widely in the New Testament writings that they give a general idea of what was needed.  Appropriate practice is carried out in Paul’s usual way in the Pauline school. Concentration on the classical house is described in this later period of the early Church, as well as in Acts. Traces of it are also to be found in mission accounts in the Synoptic gospels, in which those sent out are told to take lodgings in one (single) house when they go to a new town, and to work from there. This manageable space evidently makes it easier to live typical church life with one another.

Even if contextual reasons alone were not decisive for choosing the way of many manageable church units, it cannot be assumed that this form of church life has been historically superseded. The reflections already given, from communications and sociology, show the appropriateness of this strategy, independent of time. The Church can achieve the following of Jesus in manageable communal solidarity in every age. That a structure of this kind need not lead to isolation and cutting-off, but is to be valued for the care of catholicity in solidarity, should be asserted once more. Precisely where it is a question of interpersonal solidarity, of sharing and communicating sorrow and anxiety, hopes and joys, this manageability is indispensable.

Honest people in positions of responsibility in the Church do not dress up the reorganisation that is going on at the moment with theological or sociological arguments by rote, but admit that it is a question of shortage of personnel that demands such a way of proceeding from them. But if the true value of the subjects and arguments were borne in mind, this is precisely what should be questioned, or rejected as a way of acting. For the Church is for people, not the other way round, and church life likewise, and service in the church must also be organised for the Church and especially for its centre. Before we turn to this aspect, a further fundamental question about understanding the Church should be taken up.

  • Clergy and laity, or People of God. The problem underlying these alternatives is well-known. The clericalization of the Church was discussed critically during the analysis of many cases of abuse. Many examples show that this tendency is by no means overcome.

In the Jesus movement we can recognise various groupings, which were put together in different ways and perhaps also had various emphases in their commitment to Jesus’ message. I think for example of the circle of the Twelve, in it again of the so-called ‘inner circle’ (Peter, Andrew and the sons of Zebedee), of other disciples, women and men, of the group of women. Peter on the one hand and Mary of Magdala on the other very probably had special positions. In the early Church, also, different services were performed. Acts speaks of a particular respect for the apostles. But we certainly cannot speak of a division of the Jesus-community, or then in the post-Easter community of believers, into women and men who were office-holders, and others, which was even theoretically justified. No-one ever thought of it, probably, and no need for it was seen. At least no influence from the Jewish division of priests, Levites and people can be noticed, at most respect for particular skills like those of the rabbis or the scribes.

A development was introduced first with the institutionalising of a formal priesthood in the course of the Constantine changes, which in the course of Church history took on dogmatic features, found its lasting expression in canon law, and endures to this day. ‘From the beginning’ it must however be recorded, ‘it was not so.’ (cf. Mt.19:8) It is well known that Jesus’ attitude to the Jewish priests in the Temple tended to be reserved; apart from Hebrews that is also true of the New Testament period. At all events, in the following period incredible misunderstandings mix into one another. So a passage in I Clement 40 at the beginning of the 2nd century contains gross mistakes, and the distinction made there between laity and clergy, based on the Jewish religion, is continually carried over into the structure of the Christian Church.  [20] Hand in hand with that, in the early European Church tradition the understanding of the emerging cultic priest was carried over onto the New Testament expression presbyteros, although the so-called ‘Elders’ in Judaism were the representatives of those not engaged in the cult, so, if you like, they are laity. This has been available to be read more exactly in Herbert Haag for about 20 years.[21] Until the present day these false developments have not been presented accurately; instead of that, an understanding corresponding to them is still theologically excessive. Unfortunately, even the last Council could not stand against this tendency.

Early Christianity knows no clergy and no laywomen or laymen. What constitutes the dignity of a Christian woman or man is their baptism. In this initial event the person is baptised into the one Body of Christ (about which Paul speaks to the church in Corinth, I Cor.12:13). It is this procedure, gradually become fundamental and a sacrament, which initiates what is decisive for people and for the Church: incorporation into the people of God, being placed under the name of Jesus, or of the Triune God, in the sense of a family relationship as daughters or sons of God and as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and one another; thereby enabled to celebrate with them at the table for breaking of bread. There is the sense of a new birth in the power of the Spirit, and indeed so intensively that Paul can speak of being ‘in the Spirit’, (I Cor.12:3), and therein enabled to witness and to confession of the one Kyrios Jesous Christos (cf. I Cor.1:3, 12:3), because in baptism the sanctification and choosing of people in and through Christ Jesus takes place. You have gathered along with this that the Pauline way of looking is bonded with the whole New Testament view. I refrain at this moment from listing individual points for a comprehensive theology of baptism – although such a fundamental theological reflection would be more than ever necessary.

Because this personal understanding of the dignity of our baptism is largely lacking, and even though it is present in the theory of faith, it does not get through to local church practice, that is, in the parish. Against it the unfortunate way of speaking about laywomen and men is apparently insurmountable. At all levels in the Church a division is suggested, that plays dishonestly in the assignment of responsibilities, because it becomes an argument for exclusion. Local Church can only live in a community in which all understand each other on the same level, disregarding the different and varying tasks which are allotted to them.

As conclusion to this theme I maintain firmly: the eagerly adopted reference to a ‘priesthood of all believers’ is not helpful for connecting clergy and laity, and this particularly for two reasons: first, the Biblical basis for relationship, with at most four examples in I Peter and Revelation, in which this expression is borrowed in a metaphorical sense from the Jewish use of language, is too small and insufficiently penetrating to serve as foundation for the development of this concept. Most of all, second, because in the New Testament witness to what Jesus did, no trace can be found that Jesus of Nazareth wanted to lead his community of followers anywhere near a priestly understanding of themselves – even in a metaphorical and derivative sense.

It would make sense for woman or man to avoid this misleading way of expression in the Church. It would be good if we could understand our parishes as the People of God on pilgrimage (as in Lumen Gentium Art.9, see above), that gathers us together as baptised persons; as a people that at the same time has open borders, that is on the way, so that some are hurrying ahead, others staying behind, a third group resting for a longer or shorter time at the roadside, so as to go on further; as a travelling company that stand by one another in daily life, and at the same time endure and share good and less good experiences. So it is also in solidarity, as the absolutely indispensable opening sentence of the Pastoral Constitution for the disciples of Christ, women and men, maintains; as a community committed to their central conviction and held together thereby; that can give credible witness in their locality,  above all through what they do and less through formal instruction,  ‘about the hope that they  have’ (I Peter 3:15), which is that this Kyrios Jesous Christos , is for them the personal sign of God’s salvation, their root-sacrament, that they can meet him in all people, especially in the marginalised, the poor and distressed of all kinds, and that they want to do it.

Somehow in this way future-fit, credible, salvation-bringing local church happens. Anyone who carries out a service in it is doubly challenged to promote, support and implement this vision in her or his area of responsibility. The task of the leading authorities with a wider sphere of action over one or several parishes is to promote this effort, to network, at most to remind and encourage the occasionally or constantly necessary solidarity between the parishes, and therefor take care that the view over the edge of the local church is not blocked. Without doubt it is also the task of those responsible at parish level, or for  its outposts, not to allow the edges and corners of the message and activity of Jesus to go under, to set themselves crosswise and act against the trend, when their own conviction demands it, and to protect those who under the supposed cover of ‘Christian’ values want to approach this community of believers or who despite their responsibility for leadership keep quiet about it.

You notice: we are gathering speed and it is clear that there is no question of legitimising or sanctioning ‘as before’. ‘In this hour of the Church ‘we are facing a long overdue paradigm-change, which will overturn a great deal, and bring it out of its previous way of doing things. As a method, that may be an expression of impatience before a dynamic that is failing in many ways.[22] Above all it is the consequence of a fearless contemplation at the level of this central reality, Jesous Christos Kyrios, in a time which gives so many obvious signs that a ‘simply go on as before’ is irresponsible. The perhaps leading question ‘Are we allowed to do that?’ can confidently and comprehensively receive the answer ‘Yes’. Instead of that, better to look steadily at the priorities in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

2.3 ‘as I (have done) to you….’

Here it would be advisable to draw a comprehensive picture of Jesus of Nazareth, the Easter Christ and Kyrios, covering the witness of the gospels. I shall not try to do that now. I confine myself to a few indications, that according to my understanding show the way, and I leave it to you and your theological and spiritual competence to fill out the remaining teaching-points with appropriate details from the stories of Jesus in the gospels.

In the gospel- presentation we meet twice an explicit linking of his action with the command to his disciples, women and men, to do the same as he has done. Hereby the personality of Jesus and his special nature are presented to his community of followers as example for a way of life. In both cases the corresponding word from Jesus is characterised by a striking ‘as I have done to you’. This implies that the community around Jesus himself have experienced in their own reality what, as the gospels see it, Jesus expects from these people in their life in a post-Easter Church. Both sentences are in St. John’s Gospel; the emphases in them, over and above the striking formulation, can be amply verified in the Synoptic gospels, so that we can speak authentically of a collective finding from the gospels. Both instructions are formulated in the context of the Last Supper, and so through this setting have a certain urgency and authority.

(1)      After the washing of feet, the fourth evangelist formulates an instruction from Jesus to the disciples, women and men, in which this symbolic action is pointed out and made part of the life of the community of followers: Even though I am the Kyrios and Teacher, I have washed your feet. If I have done this, you ought to act in the same way. Then, expressly in words: ‘I have given you an example, so that, as I have done to you, you should do to one another.’ (Jn.13:15).

The instruction given in Mk.10 (and Synoptic parallels) about priority of service can be cited as interpretation for this symbolic action and for this word of instruction. The priority of service is indispensable, because Jesus lived it and died for it. Woman or man can also not weaken it into an option (Mk.10:43: ‘Among you this is not to happen’), as happens significantly in connection with the later Matthew parallels (Mt.20:26)[23] in nearly all current Bible translations up to the present day, (including the revised EÜ, excepting the revised Luther Bible:  ‘But it is not so among you’), while the original text in Mk.10:43 emphasises the negation in the indicative, beginning  ‘It is not so among you’.

The community of Jesus’ followers is a service-community – or it is not a Jesus community. Significantly, the expression ‘Amt’ (office) derives from Middle High German andbahti, and that means ‘service.’[24] Despite that – or rather because of that – this community calls its leader Jesous Christos Kyrios. Hereby it is also to be recorded – against the trend – that because this Kyrios at the same time stands as a personified programme for it, Lordship in this Church works differently from the world, and so is only credible when it is lived out of a fundamental attitude of service. It made an appearance as an attempt of the present Bishop of Rome, five years ago, to give us an example: ‘Real power is service’ – the original tone of Bishop Francis in May 2013[25].

For this instruction to serve one another is valid at all levels in the Church and for all people in the Church. In it numerous interpersonal relationships are bound up, which I need not name in detail. Right away it is striking that such important themes as option for the poor, solidarity, trust, humility, personal moderation, encouragement, and so on, are related to the required behaviour. I invite you to picture life in the local church and then from this point of view let it run before your spiritual eyes. The need for action will not fail to appear.

Perhaps also, as a first step in this area, we might change our way of speaking. In the strict sense there is no ‘office’ in the Church. There are various services at the different levels of Church. Everything else passes by, in the Biblical testimony. Here and in other areas it is true: Tell me how you speak, and I’ll tell you how you think. Our speech betrays us!

(2) In John 13 also, the evangelist puts into Jesus’ mouth, so to speak, a farewell survey of his whole work, summed up once more in a basic teaching: ‘Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you. In this all people shall know that you are my disciples: if you have love one for another.’ (John 13: 34-35.) Love, therefore, as evangelical witness in the world. Here it should be said, also: This teaching has many sisters, beginning with mercy, fidelity and selflessness. This teaching is a summary of Jesus-identity, and includes the whole of life.

Both references mentioned under this expression ‘as I …you’ seem like a short formula of Christian ethics and relationship with God – yes, also relationship with God, in which the so-called ‘eighth sacrament’, developed in the parable of the Last Judgement in Matt.25 – meeting Christ in oppressed people of every kind – can be seen clearly. Both instructions include the pro-existent fundamental attitude of Jesus. They can be traced back to the pro-existence of God, shown constantly in the Bible – a key-expression in any biblically-based discussion of God and/or the Christ-event. All of that is not authoritative for just a moment, but is fundamental for the whole of life. Thence, these keystone-principles are not meant for a particular number or size, but for the measureless-ness of life, so ‘overflowing’. For I am no longer to forgive seven times, but 70 x 7 – which does not mean 490 in Jesus-mathematics, but means: without limits of any kind. (cf. Matt.18:21-22). God’s measurement is excess, the measure of love is measureless.  It is one thing to speak such sentences. But we know: it is another thing to live them.

According to my conviction, which touches on the gospel findings, with these two references to the person and work of Jesus we can manage. Naturally we must add to them here and there. If we build life in the local church on these two fundamental sayings, that is, a continual readiness for service and love, and keep putting them in relationship with the Bible message and with Kyrios Jesous Christos as their embodiment, probably most strategies for acting and living will come of themselves. Then it might also be possible that we experience ourselves more and more as community, that together, precisely as people of God, wants to cope with life and thereby takes care of one another, still more: that offers and gives help.

Where this is possible, and experienced more and more in daily life, where awareness around it grasps that ‘the eye cannot say to the hand ‘I don’t need you’ (I Cor.12:21), the readiness and the urgency may also grow to celebrate this community and make it experienceable, liveable in the liturgy. My reflections on this must be discussed in the last section.

3. PARISH INITIATIVE

3.1 Preliminary considerations. Naturally this can happen, and does happen, in various ways. But we all know that precisely in this area in past decades there were irresponsible omissions, because the need was not seen and the signs of the times were not noticed and pointed out. True, the teaching office was never tired of describing the celebration of the Eucharist as highest form of religious service, but those in leadership failed to provide the means to enable the Lord’s Supper regularly in parishes on the first day of the week. The Church lost itself in secondary details with astonishingly higher regulatory decrees and thereby lost sight of and access to the living relationship with Christ, precisely the centre of this Church. To speak logically, this would be a contradiction. To speak theologically, it is an injustice and a scandal. That it has come to this is the result of a continual breach of duty on the part of Church leadership, at least since the Council – I have already spoken of this.

Injustice and neglect of duty are not only to be lamented, they must be eliminated. Words are no longer enough for this: there will always be talk, and too much. – from 1976 until 2018.  Arguments (for example the one about the ordination of women) do not gain in power of persuasion when they are repeated with constant regularity over decades. The opposite is the case: patience and goodwill become strained, at the same time expectations are reduced. We might rejoice when a bishop can consider the possibility of diaconate for women and think it conceivable, and another concedes that celibacy for priests is not set in stone, and woman or man can reflect –well, not in the immediate future.

But time is running out, and it is not five to twelve any more. It is too late, wrote the former Abbot of Einsiedeln, Martin Werlen, a few months ago. It is already after twelve.[26] Probably anyone of you working hands-on in a parish would confirm that. The often-asked question, how can bishops can still go on sleeping in face of the serious pastoral difficulties, is also too little. For this question expresses responsibility, co-responsibility, and these must be made concrete. ‘Enough words have been exchanged’, woman or man could say, with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.[27]

What is in order today is action. At the moment (as Goethe says) it cannot be a question of compliments, but of something useful that ought to happen. I should like to try to point out steps and lines of argument in that direction. If you wish, you can understand the previous explanation as leading to this, as a (somewhat long) but necessary introduction to this section. For when now it is concretely a matter of how a parish can live as local church, this should not be derived only from the distorted pastoral situation and a pragmatism bound up with that. It is only responsible if it can be theologically anchored.

3.2 Parish- the Body of Christ in this place. Still the most suitable image for building up the life-process of the Church, is the expression ‘Body of Christ’, which Paul brought into Christian theology about the church in Corinth (cf. I Cor.12:1-30). It is no accident that this image begins with the confirmation of the giving of the Spirit for the confession of Christ (I Cor. 12:3: ‘No-one can say Kyrios Jesous unless they speak in the Holy Spirit’), also no accident that as a continuation the variety of graces given as free bestowals of the Spirit will be listed (I Cor. 12:11 and 12:7) The core of Paul’s teaching is placed with the emergence of this body as community of the baptised with one another, which therein, once more filled (literally ‘given to drink’, see I Cor.12:13) with the Spirit, presents ‘the Christ’. (I Cor.12:12). Out of this pneumatic representation of Christ grows responsibility and empowerment for the baptised individual. About this, that we must win back this fundamental dimension of our being baptised, I have already spoken. This awareness, and our common conviction of our giftedness from the Spirit and corresponding empowerment (cf. formulation in John 1: 12) on the basis of baptism, I consider as the indispensable requirement for every further responsible action. Paul goes on to detail the way this body functions in the collaboration of the individual organs (I Cor. 12:14-27), and finally draws our attention to the variety of gifts and services that contribute to this organism’s successful living (I Cor. 12, 28-30).   It is simplistic, and unfounded in fact, to take up this Pauline concept in its meaning, with the indication that this structure, marked with gifts of grace, has been overtaken by the so-called office-structure of the Church. At all events, it cannot be deduced from the text of I Cor. What is more it presumes that the character of baptism has changed fundamentally since the time of the early Church. The Church in every conceivable size, even the small local church, lives as the body of Christ. It is not to be thought of as a filiation, but as a comprehensive Church reality. In that it depends on the gifts of grace that are alive in it and are brought for community building and community life, so can be taken in to service. We can read the model for this procedure in the choice of the Seven (Acts 6:1-6), and on the basis of Luke’s account it can be formalised in  this way:

  • The starting-point is a stock-taking of the needs of the local church.

  • As a second step comes the assessment of the gifts of grace available in this church, that can be awakened, promoted, maybe also trained and deepened. I refrain from giving reasons once more why this should happen ‘without limitation by sex or state of life’ and with consideration only of human and relevant competence (and so of gifts of grace). [28] On the basis of a previously considered vision of a living parish it should be checked whether central areas of church life cannot be covered in this way. In this case the solidarity of the surrounding Church region should be appealed to, or there are other solutions, at least provisional solutions to be developed. [‘Provisional solutions’, because a ‘tourism’ of services in the building up of interpersonal and community relationships is disturbing and to be avoided as far as possible.]

  • If there is a contact-person or manager or appropriate team available, that is where responsibility for this procedure lies. The process itself has a synodal character, which means: it happens with the involvement of the broadest possible involvement of the people who want to live in that place as the body of Christ, and all people of good will. (You will remember my earlier observations about the ‘open borders’ of the Church.) All that also means: this is not possible overnight, it is a journey together. One parish will get there sooner, another will be slower. That doesn’t matter, provided we keep going. If church leadership wants to be involved, it must be content to take a back seat. More tasks and services than we have today will certainly become clearer, and they will certainly be different in the individual local churches. But of course:  that was what Paul said about the variety of gifts.

  • The day on which all this comes to a good conclusion will be a festival in this parish, a Golden Age for this local church, with Martin Gutl I might say ‘a festival without end. [29] Naturally all the services recognised as necessary must be taken on, and therefore commissioned. That can be done simply, but better, and preferably, solemnly and during the liturgy. With few exceptions there are scarcely any limits set for you. Who is to forbid you to lay the book of the Gospels, or hands, on a person, or to put other gestures into a liturgical celebration. It is not forbidden, just because it is not part of any ritual, and is not customary.

The ticking-off by the senior shepherds which mostly follows might be answered by a counter-question: Where were you waiting, as we were looking for ways to give our parish life, and set it up? And why haven’t you stormed around Bishop Francis to bring changes forward here? Because as far as I can see only Erwin Kräutler has approached the Bishop of Rome about this. That is how a Commission was et up for this purpose, and it remains to be seen what result the special synod about Amazonia will produce in the coming year. At least one bishop has tried this. And the countless other bishops? It is a question to shame all of them.

Besides that, the old and stubborn, of course well-cultivated misunderstanding that catholicity means uniformity must be cleared away.

-The usefulness and effectiveness of putting together all the activities in the parish, this present, specific body, must be tested periodically, in the interests of vigilance about the also-changing ‘signs of the times’, as the Council foresees. (See above.) For that reason it is worth considering appropriate commissioning for prescribed periods, and then at the set time to reconsider.

  • Not only on this great feast, but regularly, the parish must reflect on its basic principles.  It should not forget, in interpersonal conversation and in public, the twofold ‘as I have done to you’, in all the breadth of variation contained therein; it must make it experienced in celebrating the liturgy, and must confess its own identity as the body of Christ.

3.3. Celebrate the body of Christ. More clearly and insistently than we are often aware, Paul has bound together with one another the reality of baptism and Eucharist. What Paul says in I Cor.12 about baptism is not possible without his understanding of the Lord’s Supper expounded in Ch.10. This is not mere theological wishful thinking. Baptism and Lord’s Supper are dependent on one another like the two focal points of an ellipse, so that the one without the other remains a fragment, at least theologically. The eucharistic hunger of parishes for decades is a grave offence, which should not be accepted any longer.

We have experienced all possible replacement-solutions. That the large-scale parish (or whatever the image might be called) goes against the biblical understanding of Church, and a meaningful relationship-based pastoral policy has already been explained. For all those engaged in pastoral work the multiple occupations planned today are an imposition, insulting to human beings. They cannot lead to a balanced, realistic situation, but put names as place-holders, to hide the increasing number of empty spaces in the personnel area. To an increasing extent, even in Europe, the practice of many mission-areas has been adopted, to hold Liturgies of the Word with Holy Communion, instead of Eucharistic celebrations.  It is shocking, how little sensitivity can be recognised in this for an open Eucharistic theology– as though it were enough simply to give out previously-consecrated hosts to people. In this we have put up with an irresponsible diminishment in understanding of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, in which nevertheless the gathered community is to experience itself as the body of Christ, and therefore, in the meeting with the risen and glorified Kyrios in his Word and at the table of the Bread, be fed and so strengthened – not to mention that this form of service does not venture to express the meaning of God’s Word for itself, but only thinks that it has to extend the celebration of God’s Word with a communion, so to speak, from a ‘little side-table.’[30]

All that, in the end, because the question of Church discipline, who can lead a celebration of the Lord’s Supper, is settled by instructions and convictions, which are human laws and at most half as old as the Church itself, which are granted nevertheless, with great determination and without any dynamic of priority, against the regular celebration of the personal centre of the Church. That does not display the virtue of perseverantia, persistence, but its opposite, stubbornness.

In my opinion that cannot be accepted.

When the Church in its organs of leadership demonstrably, for decades, does not carry out the obligations laid on it by the Council;

When in its understanding of so-called ‘office’ it permits injustice and injury to the equal value of all people;

When it does not act according to its own ordering of laws, according to which the salvation of souls is the highest legal value, but gives preference to man-made rules against this claim;

When it disregards the central character of the Christocentric centre of the local churches, and because of their second-ranking legal position hinders the local churches in the development of their life and faith,

When, in the development of structural forms, it bypasses the biblical analysis, neglects the Conciliar image of the Church and in so doing creates theological injustice, and when it does this continually for decades, despite audible appeals from the baptised;

Then the people of God, which because of the gift bestowed on it in baptism ‘cannot err as a totality’, [31]must itself act. True, the Council intends unity in action with the bishops. When the latter constantly refuse, additional considerations should be put forward.

3.4. Act responsibly. I have spoken several times in my introduction about crisis, and also about underlying neglect of duty. This is less about assigning blame than about describing the current situation. When the People of God experiences no leadership, or more concretely: when the middle level of leadership finds its loyalty to the Bishop of Rome, and to the People of God entrusted to it, wavering, lacking even to non-existence, emergency measures must be considered. The quickly-emerging word ‘disobedience’ can confidently be repudiated. I should rather speak of necessary awareness of responsibility, which elsewhere lies fallow. It should furthermore be remembered that Cardinal König, already in the preparation-phase of the Council, expressed the opinion that where there is a failure in discipline not only should the one who committed it be condemned, but also the one who through his attitude tempted him to do it. [32]

This imperative to action comes, therefore, from the conviction that we as baptised were equipped with the dynamic power of the Spirit – I have spoken about this. The prerequisite for action is an express consensus, that we, for example in a parish or other grouping, brought about in the largest possible number and must make it clear. From this conviction we can invite people whom we consider reliable and capable, and commission them, as local church, to preside at our liturgical celebration and lead us in the celebration of the Supper. In this connection we must presumably come to an agreement beforehand over some points:

  • Such a procedure also needs a synodal preparation and support carried out in the local church.

  • Because the procedure is unusual, irritations are to be expected, and everything must be done to keep them as small as possible – which calls for a sensitive way of acting.

  • For this reason the previous liturgical forms should be maintained as far as possible, at least for a certain period, so that no-one feels compelled.

  • The shaping of the celebration of the Supper should of course keep the fundamental elements of the Eucharistic celebration, but in text and execution should, especially, reflect the composition of the celebrating community.

You will certainly have noticed that I have avoided the title ‘celebration of the Lord’s Supper.’ It is not necessary to go on doing what is expected, as is sensible. Apart from that, I am convinced that, when a community of the baptised, conscious of its giftedness by the Spirit and conscious of the community’s needs, comes together in the name of the Holy Trinity to celebrate its Church-identity as the body of Christ, in which it listens to God’s Word and receives the bread of his body, what we say of Eucharistic celebration will happen.  The risen and exalted Lord is present in this community, he communicates himself in the Word that is proclaimed; in bread broken, shared and eaten together, and in the shared Cup. In the celebrating community he makes his personal presence, the sharing with Christ and community with one another perceptible, so that the community can take out from this celebration the shalom received as gift in it.

This not only because we can trust in the assurance of Jesus Christ’s presence, that he is ‘among us’ when we gather in his name. (cf. Matt.18:20). First and foremost, because in this we accept the conviction of the Church. For, according to its liturgical tradition, it is the Spirit who makes the gifts ‘holy’ so that they become ‘the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.’[33]

In my view the irregularity in the celebration bound up with that can be disregarded. And I recall once more in that connection: that is, so to speak, an emergency regulation. This is significant for me also because I don’t want to break any bridges, and likewise, in practice it is no help when we offend people. Besides, I am concerned to keep boundary-crossing to the minimum and to what is possible, and to avoid provocation. ‘At this hour in the Church’ I consider this manner of proceeding as a possible and justified way.

Try the opposite: Do you really believe that a meal celebrated by people in the prescribed way with a corresponding intention would have simply no meaning before God? That I absolutely could not believe. For our God enfolds us in love with an open heart. The biblical God is neither a book-keeper nor a master of ceremonies.

4. ENCOURAGEMENT

I want to end here. For the details left open I appeal to your creativity, your imagination, and also to your collegiality in sharing opinions and experiences.

I return once more to the New Testament and lead you back to the life of the early Church, also in a critical situation. In the same way Peter and John were released by the Sanhedrin, after which experience Luke formulated the memorable sentence from Peter: ‘You must judge whether in God’s eyes it is right to listen to you and not to God’ (Acts 4:19) – also a thoroughly suitable commentary on the considerations just presented.

Peter and John return to the gathering of the Church in Jerusalem, they report on what they have experienced, and then they ‘lifted up their voices to God with one heart.’ (Acts 4:24) In this they come to speak of the mighty deeds of God in creation and in Jewish history.  With the expression ‘And now, Lord…’ (4:29) they turn to their present situation: ‘stretch out your hand to heal and to work miracles and marvels through the name of your holy servant Jesus’ (4:30).

Luke concludes: ‘As they prayed, the house where they were assembled was rocked [theological Passive]. From this time they were all filled with the Holy Spirit [theological Passive] and began to proclaim the word of God fearlessly’ (4:31)

I want to give you this picture of local church not as conclusion, but for what is to come. With the experience of God’s presence, and building further on it, aware of themselves and courageous, gathered in prayer, one in heart, all filled with the Spirit, and because of that – full of courage.

Should we not keep silence, so that we do not fail to hear what is being shaken?

Translated by Sr Patricia Harriss CJ

Notes

[1] Gaudium et Spes Art.4

[2] Ibid., emphasis WK

[3] John Paul II in l’Osservatore Romano, 25th January 1985

[4] Lumen Gentium Art.9,4, after Augustine, De Civ.Dei XVIII 1,2, in PL 41,614

[5] Cf. Julius Döpfner, In dieser Stunde der Kirche. Words to the Second Vatican Council, Munich 1967

[6] John XXIII, Speech Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II of 25th December 1961, in Acta et Documenta Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano II Apparando, II,I, Rome 1964, 144

[7] See John XXIII, Radio message La grande aspettazione, 11th September 1961, Acta et Documenta Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano II Apparando, II,I, Rome 1964,349-350

[8] John XXIII; Gaudet Mater Ecclesia, opening of Second Vatican Council, 11 October 1962, in Acta Synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumici Vaticani II, 1,1, Rome

[9] Francis, ‘And now we begin this way’, Freiburg 2013, 18

[10] Note this connection of words as a fundamental characteristic of the actions of Jesus in Lk.24:19, (cf. Mk.1:21-22, 27), as in the whole event of revelation in Dei Verbum Art.2, and in Art. 4 and 17 (concerning the Christ-event).

[11] Bishop Francis in Antonio Spadaro, Interview with Pope Francis, Freiburg 2013, 48. Documented further in Walter Kirchschläger, Christ at the Centre. Points for being a Christian, Vienna 2014, 9-17, 127-140

[12] For analysis of this result see Walter Kirchenschläger, ‘The Churches of God  (which are in Judea) in Christ Jesus (I Thess.2:14. Notes on the Preamble to an Understanding of Church (Luzerner Universitätsreden 23), Luzern 2012, here 10-13.

[13] See in more detail Walter Kirchschläger, Local churches in the New Testament. Stocktaking and consequences for tomorrow, in Walter Kirchschläger/Leo Novak/Anneliese Hecht, Visions of the Church, Biblical Perspectives for a future-fit Church, Stuttgart 2007, 15-49, here 16-20; Thinking Church, New Testament reflections on a future Church, in Maria Eder, 20 Years European Academy of Learning and Art, Salzburg 2009, 453-454.

[14] Cf. Walter Kirchschläger, Permanent and Changeable in the Church. A Biblical Contribution to Systems Analysis, in Alois Schifferle, Parish in the Post-modern. Community-building in a post-Christian time. Fs. Leo Karrer, Freiburg 1997 pp. 131-135

[15] Notice in this connection the happy title of Thomas Söding’s book on a related theme, Look Back to the Front. Pictures of living communities in the New Testament, Freiburg 1997.

[16] On, particularly, the liturgical significance of this leading concept see Peter Wick, The Early Christian Liturgies. (BWANT 150), Stuttgart 2002, esp.pp.286-293; cf. Walter Kirchschläger, What the New Testament says about the meaning of faith for believers, in Günter Koch , Conversation in Faith, Würzburg 1993, 7-24, esp. 8-10

[17] See the seminal work of Hans-Josef Klauck: House communities and house-churches in early Christianity (Stuttgart Bible Studies 103), Stuttgart 1981; Communities between house and town: the Pauline Church, Freiburg 1992

[18] It is certainly also no accident that the quality control for universities today puts care-relationships under close scrutiny and prefers to start from a 1:40 ratio. Lectures in large halls, although incomparably more economical, are not valued, because they make drastic cuts in the effectiveness of learning, and have no lasting value.

[19] Jorge Maria Bergoglio, What I said at the Consistory, in Tübinger Quartalschrift 193 (2013) 175-180 Quotation 179

[20] Presented in Walter Kirchschläger, Priest-class – special class. Service in the Church as test-case in the Church, in Platform ‘We are the Church’ , ‘Celibacy – no! God’s amputated love. (4. Herden brief), Vienna 2002, 228 -235

[21] Cf. Herbert Haag, Where it comes from. Did Jesus want a two-class Church? Freiburg 1997; Only the one who changes remains true to self. For a new understanding of the Catholic Church, Freiburg 2000.

[22] See Hans Waldenfels, Wann endlich tut sich was? (When is something going to happen, at last?) In Christus in der Gegenwart (Christ Now) online, no.18, October 2018.

[23] Lk.22:26 writes a nominal sentence: ’With you this must not happen’.

[24] Friedrich Kluge, Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, Berlin 1975, 20.

[25] Homily in Santa Marta on 21st May 2013: ‘Il vero potere è il servizio’.

[26] Martin Werlen: Too Late. Provocation for the Church, Hope for All, Freiburg 2018

[27] ‘Word have been enough exchanged, Let me see deeds as well, at long last!

While you compose compliments, something useful can happen.’

[28] See in detail Walter Kirchschläger, Without limitation through sex or state of life. Towards a biblical foundation for service in the Church, in Orientation 71 (2007) 31-36

[29] Martin Gutl, ref. to Psalm 126.

[30] See Walter Kirchschläger, Lay the table of the Word, in Dein Wort – mein Weg, no. 3/2013, 4-6, note 6, and in more detail: Can the Bible be wrong? God’s Project Bible ( Cardinal König Library), Vienna 2014, 149-156.

[31] Cf. Lumen Gentium Art.12: ‘The whole body of the faithful who have an anointing that comes from the holy one (cf. I John 2:20, 27) cannot err in matters of belief.’

[32] 7th session of the Central Preparation Commission of the Council, 19th June 1962: ‘Correctly, in the text were listed’ [Schema on the Church, Ch.8: On authority and obedience in the Church] ‘the possible misdemeanours of those obliged to obey the Church authorities. But it would do no harm if something were also said about the misdemeanours that might be found in those who, having authority in the Church, in their practice follow a false interpretation of their own authority. Thereby the opposing misdemeanours would be assessed in the same way.’ (Acta et Documenta Concilio  Oecumenico Vaticano II Apparando. II, II, IV, Rome 1968, 644).

[33] See the corresponding formula in the epiclesis in the canon: ‘Sanctify our gifts through your Spirit…’