The Church that ‘travels light’

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 24, 2026

In the Gospel read at Mass yesterday (Luke 9:1-4), Jesus gives the power authority over demons, and sends them out to preach.

And He said to them, “Take nothing for your journey: no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics. And whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart.

No bag, no money, no change of clothes: the first apostles traveled light. Not so their successors today. There are still some bishops living in poverty in missionary lands, but in the Western world every bishop has plenty of bread, and a wardrobe far beyond “two tunics.” A typical diocesan bishop has an enormous staff—not a walking stick, but an office staff, hired to help with his work.

Nor would I begrudge a bishop his comfortable home, his healthy diet, and his adequate diocesan budget. But I wonder about the office staff, and the management responsibility that comes with it. Can an effective missionary program be run as an efficient business? I doubt it, and the Lord’s charge to his apostles supports my doubts.

Moreover, the accumulation of material goods brings new responsibilities, new distractions. A home needs repairs; a car needs maintenance. The same is true for an institution. Hire more good employees, and more work can be done. But the boss will spend more time dealing with the employees’ concerns, and less time focused on the organization’s essential purpose. The original apostles, with no homes and no staffs, had no such distractions.

During the past few centuries the Catholic Church built up a tremendous powerhouse of institutions: parish churches and rectories, parochial schools, colleges and universities, hospitals and charitable institutions of every description. The machinery worked wonderfully—until it didn’t. Now the parishes are closing, for want of people in the pews; the schools are closing, too, as costs exceed the ability (or willingness) of parishioners to pay. Many of the colleges and universities are renouncing their connections with the Church—sometimes formally, sometimes without admitting the rupture. The hospitals are being taken over by large for-profit corporations.

Was this inevitable? Was it all a consequence of a general erosion of Catholic faith? Was that erosion itself inevitable? Was it caused, at least in part, by the natural temptation to pay more attention to the physical plant and the organizational structure rather than the working of the Holy Spirit? Christ’s instructions to the apostles might be taken as a reminder to focus first not on the works of the Lord, but on the Lord of the works.

Which came first: the external collapse of the Catholic institutions or the internal decay of the Catholic faith? The Church today is unquestionably suffering from the indifference or hostility of a dominant secular culture. But a more vigorous evangelical Church would not have allowed that secular culture to become dominant.

The Church that developed those impressive institutions became involved with other powerful institutions: sometimes as a competitor, sometimes as an ally. The institutional Church and its leaders formed political alliances, always ostensibly for good causes. But alliances often require compromises; one sacrifices some of one’s resources and energy for the goals of one’s allies.

Writing in Settimo Cielo (in an essay appearing in English translation on Sandro Magister’s web site) the Italian political historian Giovanni Orsina criticized the new papal encyclical Magnifica Humanitas for placing too much confidence in the powers of government:

The problem lies in the Church’s social doctrine, poorly developed in social doctrine à la ‘Secretariat of State’: that is, a social doctrine suited for a dicastery so immersed in its relationship with states that it is no longer able to grasp their distorting ideological roots.

Here Orsina’s complaint matches my longstanding contention that the Secretariat of State should not be the uber-dicastery of the Roman Curia, setting the agenda for Vatican affairs. By its nature, the Secretariat of State is too much concerned with secular affairs. The Vatican needs such an office, to manage relations with the world’s governments and the world’s bankers. But when that office has the strongest voice in setting pastoral policies, the temptation is too great to see the world through the eyes of the world, rather than through the eyes of faith.

Every day, now, we read statements from Vatican officials and from other leading Catholic prelates on AI and climate change, on immigration and military strategy, on welfare policies and international trade. These are all important matters, but not matters on which the Church can claim special expertise. Yes, the Church can and should address the underlying moral principles involved. But the voices of Church leaders will be persuasive only to those who already recognize the claim of the Church to speak with moral authority. So Catholicism loses political clout as it loses spiritual vitality. The work of evangelization must always take precedence.

“We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers,” said the then-young (well, 42) Father Joseph Ratzinger in a prophetic Christmas homily in 1969. “It is utterly superfluous.” In that homily he outlined his vision of a future in which the Catholic Church is smaller but more vigorous, and therefore paradoxically more influential:

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members…
But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.

In later years Pope Benedict would refer to the smaller Church as a “creative minority.” From a different but undoubtedly sympathetic perspective, the late Rabbi Lord Sacks picked up the same theme, again using (while correcting) Toynbee’s concept of the “creative minority,” when he delivered the Erasmus Lecture in 2013:

The fourth possibility, to become a creative minority, is not easy, because it involves maintaining strong links with the outside world while staying true to your faith, seeking not merely to keep the sacred flame burning but also to transform the larger society of which you are a part. This is, as Jews can testify, a demanding and risk-laden choice.

Risk-laden, yes. It is dangerous to travel from town to town without making plans for lodging, food, and expenses. Far safer to sit inside the walls of large institutions, managing the day’s problems, hoping and praying for a revival of the faith. But at the Lord’s prompting, the first apostles took the former, the riskier course, acting as that “creative minority” that changes societies. If the formula hadn’t been successful, we wouldn’t have those large institutions today.