concilium-2018_4_bodychurch of future (The Church of The Future)

Thinking how the Church needs to change if it is constantly to fulfil its mission better is an activity that has been part of its life since the beginning. At the end of the last Council Karl Rahner regarded this as a task and an opportunity. The current period is marked by a deep cultural crisis across the world, in which we must learn to identify the upheavals taking place, in technology, the economy and society, the appeals to new structures of authority and participatory decision-making, the population movements associated with globalisation, with the distribution of resources, with environmental factors, etc. The Church itself cannot be content to continue as a rigid system, fixed once and for all. It has ceaselessly to find in Him who is its foundation, and in conversations with the worlds it has to engage with, the means to renew itself to fulfil its role of being the universal sacrament of salvation.
There are four parts to this issue: Why and how can we frame the question of the Church of the future? What view of this issue is emerging in the continents of the South? What are the significant fields we must explore to imagine the future? And where can we find an idea that holds everything together? Of course, these reflections make no claim to be exhaustive or to end the building work. They are a first effort and an invitation to go further, in freedom.