Church Reform
According to St. Oscar Romero
Here’s an excerpt from St. Oscar Romero’s second pastoral letter in 1977 that I thought was timely for our moment in history.
Clearly, then, the Church has changed. It is obvious that the Church, in recent years, has a new vision of the world and her relationship to it. Anyone who fails to understand, or to accept, this new perspective is incapable of understanding the Church.
To remain anchored in a non-evolving traditionalism, whether out of ignorance or selfishness, is to close one's eyes to what is meant by authentic Christian tradition. For the tradition that Christ entrusted to his Church is not a museum of souvenirs to be protected.
It is true that tradition comes out of the past, and that it ought to be loved and faithfully preserved. But it has always a view to the future. It is a tradition that makes the Church new, up to date, effective in every historical epoch. It is a tradition that nourishes the Church's hope and faith so that she may go on preaching, so that she may invite all men and women to the new heaven and new earth that God has promised (Revelation 21:1; Isaiah 65:17).
What is it that bestows this energy, this perennial modernity, on the eternal tradition of the Church? What is the reason for the current changes in the Church as she confronts the world and the history of humankind?
It is not opportunism, nor is it disloyalty to the gospel — two charges that have often been leveled at her in the recent past. The answer has to be sought in the very depths of our faith.
Seen in the light of faith in the mystery of the Church, the changes taking place are far from ruining her, or making her unfaithful to tradition. On the contrary, they make the Church even more faithful and better identify her with Jesus Christ.
This is the theme of my letter: the Church is the Body of Christ in history. By this expression we understand that Christ has wished to be himself the life of the Church through the ages.
The Church's foundation is not to be thought of in a legal or juridical sense, as if Christ gathered some persons together, entrusted them with a teaching, gave them a kind of constitution, but then himself remained apart from them. It is not like that.
The Church's origin is something much more profound. Christ founded the Church so that he himself could go on being present in the history of humanity precisely through the group of Christians who make up his Church.
The Church is the flesh in which Christ makes present down the ages his own life and his personal mission.
That is how changes in the Church are to be understood. They are needed if the Church is to be faithful to her divine mission of being the Body of Christ in history.
The Church can be Church only so long as she goes on being the Body of Christ. Her mission will be authentic only so long as it is the mission of Jesus in the new situations, the new circumstances, of history.
The criterion that will guide the Church will be neither the approval of, nor the fear of, men and women, no matter how powerful or threatening they may be.
It is the Church's duty in history to lend her voice to Christ so that he may speak, her feet so that he may walk today's world, her hands to build the kingdom, and to enable all its members to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ (Colossians 1:24).