En kirke uten Gud

"The Queen is inseparable from the church."
"What about God?"
"I think he is what is called an optional extra."

(Faksimile fra BBCs "Yes. Prime Minister")

I 1969 forutså Pave Benedikt fremtiden til kirken, lenge før han var blitt pave, og lenge før den kirkelige utviklingen hadde kommet så langt som i dag.

Fader Joseph Ratzinger (som han het den gang) prøvde ikke å late som at han kunne se inn i fremtiden i 1969. Min kloke yndlingspave var selvsagt for klok til det. Faktisk startet han talen sin i tysk radio med å legge inn en skikkelig disclaimer:

“Let us, therefore, be cautious in our prognostications. What St. 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.”

Pave Benedikt og Yes, Prime Minister

Likevel: Les det Ratzinger sa i 1969 og bli sjokkert over hvor presist han så inn i vår tid og enda lenger enn det. 

Man skulle nesten tro at gjengen bak "Yes, Prime Minister" hadde lest sin Ratzinger før de laget denne scenen (se videoen nedenfor) om den "relevante" kirken der Gud er "an optional extra". "Ah, well, the word "modernist" is code for non-believer."

Det er vel verdt å bruke 4,5 minutter på å se denne! Kos deg! Le – og bli klok :)

Og et tips: Se gjerne filmen om igjen etter at du har lest ordene av Pave Benedikt. Det som skildres i denne videoen er nemlig den kirken som Ratzinger omtaler som "the Church of the political cult, which is dead already".



Dette er heldigvis bare satire. Satire fremstiller ikke ting slik de er, men den tar visse trekk ved en person eller en institusjon på kornet og forstørrer dem; gjør trekkene enda skarpere og lettere å se. Jeg er overrasket over at disse trekkene var så tydelige at man kunne lage satire av dem allerede for 20 år siden. I dag er de så overtydelige at man ikke trenger satirens forstørrelsesglass for å se dem klart.

SÅ: Over til fr. Josef Ratzinger skarptseende, avsluttende kommentarer (alle uthevinger i teksten er mine egne):

En kirke med dype røtter

“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!"

A Church without God

“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."

A Church that has lost much

“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.

A more spiritual Church

“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."

The Church of faith will survive

“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.

The Catholic Church will survive in spite of men and women, not necessarily because of them. And yet, we still have our part to do. We must pray for and cultivate unselfishness, self-denial, faithfulness, Sacramental devotion and a life centered on Christ."

I 2009 publiserte amerikanske Ignatius Press fr. Joseph Ratzingers tale “What Will the Church Look Like in 2000” i sin helhet, i boken Faith and the Future (lenke til boken hos Amazon)

Kilde: Aleteia.org

Les også her på bloggen:

• Lutherdommens bidrag til sekulariseringen - og hva løsningen er
• - Sigrid Undsets profeti går i oppfyllelse nå: I 1927 profeterte Sigrid Undset at antallet trofaste kristne i Europa ville minke. Hun forutså imidlertid også at det ville komme misjonærer fra andre verdensdeler som ville snu utviklingen og bringe den kristne, katolske troen tilbake til Norge. - Sigrid Undset har fått rett i begge deler, mener biskop Bernt Eidsvig.