INSTEAD OF GOING BACK TO THE 1970'S AS POPE FRANCIS DESIRES, HOW ABOUT LET US GO BACK TO 2010 AND THE VISION OF EVANGELICAL CATHOLICISM JOHN ALLEN DESCRIBED...

I think that most who read my blog, or at least comment, agree that Pope Francis' agenda for the Church is a dead-end and that the next pope will have to do to Pope Francis what Pope Francis has done to both St. Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. The new pope will have to cancel the previous papacy. Hopefully it won't be as hurtful and what Pope Francis did to the previous two popes.

Neo-traditionalism is not the way forward, but the way forward allows for the older form of the Mass and sacraments. But evangelical Catholicism is more in line with the forward looking papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, properly interpreting Vatican II, correcting any time-constrained issues no longer applicable in today's world and evaluating what went well with the poor implementation of Vatican II and what did not. That means changing course, making a course correction.

The next pope will have to emphasize over and over and over again that Catholics do not worship Vatican II, syndodality or the world, especially fads, social trends, sentimentality and anti-intellectualism. We see the Deposit of Faith as a grace from God, practical, concrete, out in the open for anyone to discover, not a select few through a parliamentary process.

Evangelical Catholicism means forming the laity in Catholic orthodoxy and apologetics to be able to live the Catholic Faith in a hostile world, die for the Church if needed but more importantly to help convert the world to the saving mission of Jesus Christ and the eternal life he alone makes possible by his passion, death and resurrection.

Clergy and laity are not going to proselytize the world but attract the world to the clarity of Truth of the true Church by the manner of their lives and the love they show even to the worst sinner. 

Catholic parishes will be hotbeds of ministries to keep Catholics and make them stronger. They will be hospitable and help Catholics to form small support groups for community, catechesis and outreach to each other and the poor.

The Liturgies of the Church will be imminent and transcendent, reverent, otherworldly and splendid, a respite from the noise of the world and the work of evangelization, but an energizer too!

This is Fr. John McCloskey's summary of John Allen's Evangelical Catholicism written in 2010, the year we need to recover and then go forward.

 In his chapter on evangelical Catholicism, (John) Allen waves the white flag of surrender to 50 years of liturgical, doctrinal, and sacramental confusion dating from the proliferation of poorly applied teachings from the misunderstood Second Vatican Council. As Allen puts it, "The defining features of evangelical Catholicism are, a clear embrace of traditional Catholic thought, speech, and practice, the usual word for which is ‘orthodoxy'; eagerness to proclaim one's Catholic identity to the world, emphasizing its implication for culture, society, and politics; faith seen as a matter of personal choice rather than cultural inheritance."

In short, what we are seeing is a dropping out of the lukewarm and "dissenters" from the visible Church in the face of resurgent, vital, orthodox Catholicism. One in 10 Americans is an ex-Catholic, one of the greatest mass apostasies in the history of the Church. The Church of the future will be evangelizing and self-confident--considerably smaller but much more powerful in its effect on American culture and society as mainline Protestantism continues its almost 500-year-long death march to oblivion, giving way before the mainly non-denominational free-standing mega-churches that rely on enthusiasm and private interpretation of the Bible.

The chapter on expanding lay roles allows Allen a different way to approach the reality that 98.5 percent of the Church's faithful are not bishops, priests, or deacons but rather the laity. Allen writes: "What makes lay roles a major trend in the twenty-first-century is that the laity is emerging as protagonists both inside and outside the Church. Internally lay people are occupying ministerial and administrative positions once held almost exclusively by priests. Externally, lay people are taking it upon themselves to evangelize culture and to act on Catholic social teaching. It is this one-two punch, lay ministers inside the Church and lay activists on the outside, that constitutes the trend."

The central teaching of the Second Vatican Council is the universal call to holiness. For the large majority of Catholics, this means holiness is to be pursued (and can be attained) primarily in the everyday world of family, work, leisure, and politics, which inevitably influences contemporary culture. It may take until the end of this century for this first and primary role for the laity to be grasped and put into effect. Allen examines the dozens of lay movements that, approved by the Vatican, all with their proper charisms, personify this approach to the role of the laity in the Church. In some ways these movements can be likened to Pre-Constantine Christians who put little emphasis on structure but rather lived their Christianity in their family life, work, friendship, and works of charity, inspired by a faith that made them willing to bear witness even until death. However, one need not be a member of a lay movement to live out fully one's Christian faith in the world.