This is an interesting article from the Catholic Herald: Catholics today could see the birth of a new model of Church. Mass media seems to have changed everything, especially the Internet, blogs and social networking. Freedom of the press indeed, not only of professional journalists but also of anyone able to write!

I have also noticed this explosion of new means of communication, and at the same time our increasing inability to dialogue rationally. Evidence of that is the current conflict in the Anglican world, not over the ordination of women, but the tolerance of diversity in the Church and society. Are our computers becoming Orwelliam telescreens? Some would say – Of course, what else? As a blogger with some experience, the freer we are in our writing, the more we will be shot down by the pensée unique in the comment box – or at least someone’s political correctness.

Dialogue with the world? That is my life as I often do not meet a priest or even a believer from one week to the next. I was discussing the same-sex marriage issue with my wife the other day, and her instinct was quite surprising. Who cares as long as they don’t try to make a “sacrament” out of it? It could be more complex in England for Churches to refuse “sacramental” same-sex marriages, but here in France, we have  civil marriage as in required by the law before going to be wedded in church. No priest or religion in France has the legal powers of a civil registrar as does a local Mayor or one of his or her deputies. Of course, in civil same-sex weddings, there is the question of children, which is a hard one. I don’t pretend to solve that one here.

The trouble is that there is no dialogue, simply the imposition of opinions and the dominant version of political correctness. All that is left now is violence or for the Church to relinquish its public profile. We now have “dogmatic” secular liberalism and religious fundamentalism, one against the other and very little else. I know just about zilch about modern educational methods, since my wife and I have not been able to have children and send them to school. But, one thing that is said and written is that children are not taught to reason, but rather to react emotionally to slogans and turn their back on the culture of the past. I’m not that old – we got Bible stories in school when I was little, and my schoolmaster was most insistent on the correct use of words and language. Now, it seems that the kids no longer get Bible stories, English grammar or very much else.

What’s going to happen to the Church? Well, there are historical precedents: the French Revolution and the Anti-clericalism of the late nineteenth century to World War I. Churches were expropriated and monks and nuns forcibly run out of their monasteries in the 1900’s. There seems little need of that, for the Church has been persecuted and run down by its own over the past forty years. With the influence of “brick-by-brick” Benedict XVI, we seem to be getting a resurgence of intégrisme, regardless of the rite of the liturgy. Catholicism with teeth and an identity, but with how many real faithful? That is what I observe with the traditionalists and conservatives, the zealots and the bigots, and quite frankly a model of Christianity that does not attract me.

A small and elite church? That seems to be a goal of both the secular humanists and the integral Catholics, but will that influence the world? I give the question a lot of thought. As a priest, I’m afraid I amount to very little. My own opinion matters very little, but I am concerned about the future being formed by the clash of relativist and fundamentalist ideologies. Such is not the kind of Church I would ever want to join. I would prefer to remain with the marginalised and unchurched of this world.

If the “official” Church decided to shed its “old skin”, it would not only be painful but also would remove any distinction between the “real” Church from its vagante competitors! Malachi Martin, in one of his books, prophetically suggested that if the Church lost its standing at the green-topped tables of power, the Pope would find himself relegated to a status similar to that of the Dalai Lama and lesser religious leaders. In a certain way, the new model of Church already exists, but perhaps not one envisaged in Rome in the early 1960’s. It will be a Church that will no longer be able to rely on truth, because “truth” would be the monopoly of “Big Brother”. Thank goodness for post-modernism!

All that will remain will be the ability to re-enchant and make outsiders say – “Look, how the Christians love each other!”