Ecclesiastical Minefield
Papacy, Synodality, and Renewal
by Jeffrey A. Mirus
Log in or subscribe (free) to download this ebook! Available in multiple formats for different readers.
Book Description
Everybody wants personal renewal and every Catholic wants the renewal of the Catholic Church. But Church renewal is a minefield, in which God often writes straight with crooked lines—and we sometimes trigger explosions. These are essays written from March of 2019 though January of 2022 in which I explore how much care we must take with the papacy, the concept of synodality, and authentic Catholic renewal.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Ten steps every bishop can take to renew the Church
- Theories that Francis is not the Pope (or can be deposed) destroy the credibility of the Church
- On saving the Church by breaking the tensions intrinsic to the Church’s life
- Once the crazy talk starts, it is hard to stop
- German Catholic women, in thrall to the world, boycott Mass
- On raising our voices in and for the Church
- Cardinal control: Is the Church’s future at stake?
- Pope Francis answers: Part inspiration, part frustration, so how can we grow spiritually?
- What’s wrong with popular causes (and with clerics who ride them)?
- How to explain Pope Francis without making things worse
- Church troubles: What good Catholics may and may not do
- Sedevacantism: An attack on the Church’s Authority Principle
- On funding (or dissolving) episcopal conferences
- Catholicism is even more local than politics
- The German Synodal Path: Noteworthy or not worthy?
- On Synodality and the German call to expand it
- Lay Catholic social action: The bishops must have our backs.
- Our Church: How should the watchman of Israel act?
- How long, O Lord? Praying about Pope Francis
- The Pope’s video on fraternity? Let’s go deeper.
- 5 things I regret that went uncorrected in 2020
- The road to heaven is paved by a healthy Church
- The Church and social policy: When less is more
- A Church dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century
- Synodality and the evasion of responsibility
- Francis knows the Church is in a rut. But does he know why?
- My battle cry for Church renewal? Debureaucratization!
- So the best we can offer is “encounter” and “dialogue”?
- Pope Francis stresses importance of democracy. Why?
- The ten commandments of liturgy
- “Radical change is coming in the Church”
- Diplomacy in the Church, in light of the Gospel