God, Francis I writes in Evangelii Gaudium , “is for ever young and a constant source of newness.” And this means that the church needs to be prepare for continual refreshment and renewal:
“With this newness he is always able to renew our lives and our communities, and even if the Christian message has known periods of darkness and ecclesial weakness, it will never grow old. Jesus can also break through the dull categories with which we would enclose him and he constantly amazes us by his divine creativity. Whenever we make the effort to return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for todays world. Every form of authentic evangelization is always ‘new.’”
The Catholic church, he says, must be open to renewal at every level, including its structures:
“Second Vatican Council presented ecclesial conversion as openness to a constant self-renewal born of fidelity to Jesus Christ: ‘Every renewal of the Church essentially consists in an increase of fidelity to her own calling Christ summons the Church as she goes her pilgrim way . . . to that continual reformation of which she always has need, in so far as she is a human institution here on earth.’”
Even the Papacy is not immune to renewal. Francis calls for “a conversion of the papacy, explaining that “It is my duty, as the Bishop of Rome, to be open to suggestions which can help make the exercise of my ministry more faithful to the meaning which Jesus Christ wished to give it and to the present needs of evangelization. Pope John Paul II asked for help in finding ‘a way of exercising the primacy which, while in no way renouncing what is essential to its mission, is nonetheless open to a new situation.’ We have made little progress in this regard. The papacy and the central structures of the universal Church also need to hear the call to pastoral conversion.”
If the church is going to fulfill its missionary mandate, it cannot exhibit “the complacent attitude that says: ‘We have always done it this way.’ I invite everyone to be bold and creative in this task of rethinking the goals, structures, style and methods of evangelization in their respective communities.”
Wise counsel to any church. And, if he’s really interested, I do have some suggestions for renewing the Papacy.
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