Imperative for Renewal
Essays on restoring the Church's health
by Jeffrey A. Mirus
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Book Description
This collection of essays, written between early 2017 and early 2019, places the emphasis on what is necessary for a much-needed sustained renewal of the Catholic Church in our time. From clerical abuse to doctrinal murkiness to rampant accommodation with modern secularism, the Church today is weakened at every level from the papacy down to laypeople in (or out of) the pews. Jeffrey A. Mirus identifies the neuralgic points, and what we must do about them.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Renewing the Church includes renewing ourselves in Christ
- Combatting the dictatorship of relativism, one soul at a time
- Bad—I mean really bad—arguments for changing the Church
- The first requirement of Church renewal in our time
- Obstacles to “Rightsizing” the Church
- How can the laity renew the Church?
- Renewing the Church: Yes, we do have a plan.
- Renewal Phase 2: Making the parish central again
- The problem with doctrinal obscurity
- The perils of “apostolic necessity”: The soul of the apostolate is Presence.
- Liturgical renewal—and every other kind—in the light of Christ
- The pastoral imperative—and when it becomes a sin
- Catholic Justice: When the Church should not defer to the State
- Renewal in secular cultures: The need to distinguish between sheep and goats
- Vatican enforcement: Why does the Church lack teeth?
- Picking up papal themes: Discernment and accompaniment
- Insistence on the Church’s authority is required for growth.
- Catholic parents taken unawares? Not any longer.
- In denial about not ordaining homosexuals?
- The removal of the Church’s Cone of Silence
- Gambling with souls: The choice for or against God
- Church in crisis: The scourge of a sycophantic society
- Hardened sinners? Perhaps more than you think.
- Prospects for renewal in a Church without discipline?
- Love of God is known by the courage of correction, against the world
- Should pro-abortion Catholic politicians be excommunicated?