Faced with a notable drop in religious practice, the drastic decline of vocations, open disagreement with the Magisterium, and transgressions regarding Church law, many people today are speaking about the “decline” of the Church. Instead, I am convinced that what we are dealing with is not a decline but rather a purification. In other words, the Church today is going through one of those periods in her history in which the Holy Spirit-her guide-is renewing her, bringing her back to the purity of her beginnings so that so can continue to faithfully make Christ present in the world and proclaim the Gospel. As has already happened countless times in her 2000-year history, it is a “return to the apostolic times.”
The present crisis can certainly also be linked to the profound socio-cultural changes that have accompanied the transition of the world from the modern to the post-modern era. These changes brought to an end the so-called “reign of Christianity,” which was born in the West with the decree of Constantine (313 A.D.) and, with many ups and downs, lasted until the 20th century. At the beginning of the Third Millennium, the overlapping of faith and politics, throne and altar, sword and crucifix, that characterized the centuries of “Christianity” seems to have been definitively left behind on both the historical level, as a result of the processes that have secularized the contemporary world, and on the theological level, as a result of Vatican Council II. Consequently, the Church now finds herself deprived of the supports and privileges she enjoyed during the “reign of Christianity,” when she was universally considered to be a power among powers. Today she is poor and unarmed-a condition similar to that of her beginnings, in spite of the fact that many vestiges of her old power remain and still have to be purged.
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