Towards a Public Church: Challenges for a Contemporary Ecclesiology

Abstract

The present article sets out to analyze the causes of the current crisis of the Church and offers, in the end, a few clues for action and effective changes. It begins by claiming that among the multiple causes of this crisis are also the very structures of the Church, thereby objecting to the widely spread thesis that it is, actually, solely about a crisis of God, predominantly motivated by secularization,
and not about a crisis of the Church. Having put that premise, it is necessary to methodologically ask which kind of Ecclesiology might be in a position to face that crisis and what the resources are, within Tradition, to which one can make recourse to. The thesis put forth is that a subject-oriented Ecclesiology is able to combine both structural and God-related issues. The resources retrieved from
Tradition to ground such Ecclesiology are the doctrines of sensus fidei and the sacramentality of the Church. Finally, I elucidate a few necessary reforms that emerge from the Ecclesiology I propose. These cannot be carried out without the active commitment of all members of the Church and are the precondition so that the Church may become a public Church.