Belgian cardinal says the Church of the future will be more humble (original) (raw)

Published May 26, 2021.

Belgian Cardinal Jozef De Kezel is convinced that there is still a bright future for Christianity, even in secular cultures like Europe.

The archbishop of Malines-Brussel, who will be 74 next June, explains the reasons for this conviction in a newly released book called Foi & Religion dans une Société Moderne (Faith & Religion in a Modern Society).

Cardinal De Kesel is just getting back to work after undergoing several months of cancer treatment.

He spoke to La _Croix_’s Christophe Henning at the archbishop’s residence in the Flemish city of Mechelen (Malines).

La Croix: You stepped down from office for a few months when you found out you had cancer. What’s the latest on your health?

Cardinal Jozef De Kesel: I have had three operations, in August and December of 2020 and again a few weeks ago. Today I am on the mend.

I have always been confident, but it is trying, and still today the chemotherapy causes lasting fatigue.

Coincidentally, my cancer was discovered at the same time as the COVID-19 epidemic.

I had never thought about cancer, and our modern society did not imagine such a pandemic, either.

It was good for Africa or Asia, but not for us!

We were all confronted with our fragility... I will always be struck by this.

Has your faith been put to the test?

Every day, I recite the Liturgy of the Hours. Gradually, I discovered that the words of the psalms were my own words. My lament, my anguish, my gratitude...

I did not decide upon them, I did not say: "I am going to invest myself in prayer." This was given to me.

With the illness, the Lord invited me to take a detour. You don't come out of a trial like this the same way you went in.

It is the story of the People of God: when coming out of Egypt, there was a shorter way to the Holy Land, but the Lord made a detour to let them discover some very important things for the future.

Does the pandemic also have consequences for the Church?

Perhaps we also need to take a detour.

For example, Christians have struggled with not coming together to celebrate during the pandemic. I understand that, and the Eucharist is obviously very important.

But aren't there other ways? Listening to the word of God, which is true food, for example.

Western Catholicism is going through a deep crisis. Is the Church threatened, is it on the way out?

I am absolutely convinced that this is not the case. We are going through a crisis, but the trial can also be a moment of kairos.

In the Church as in society, there remains in our collective unconscious the idea that Christianity can only be itself when society is Christian. This is not true.

Some people think that secularization is the number one enemy, the cause of all our difficulties; this is not true.

It is not the Church that is in decline, it is society that has changed. I would even say that modernity is another culture.

This is not without risk: just like religions, secularization can deviate, become radicalized. Secularism, when it becomes laicism, is a kind of substitution for religion, as it imposes a single mindset.

Hasn't faith been sent back to the intimate, personal sphere?

I am absolutely opposed to the privatization of faith: we have something to say in this culture, as Christians and responsible citizens.

I made a trip to Iraq, to Erbil, and Patriarch Louis Sako explained to me: "We need a secular regime here, not a religious one. In a religious regime, we are second or third class citizens..."

He further said, "Let them stop treating us as a minority, we are Iraqis, citizens, and we are Christians. Citizenship comes before religion."

I would add that it is because of my faith that I am, and try to be, a responsible citizen.

What can Christians bring to the world?

First of all, to proclaim the Gospel, that is to say, to be present in the world and to proclaim the word of God. This is the raison d'être of the Church.

Christianization is something else; it is the project of a society that becomes Christian again.

This is not possible and absolutely not desirable. In a secularized society, no religion has a monopoly, and there is only one solution, which is tolerance.

But how can we proclaim the Gospel in a pluralistic and secularized society?

The Church can only mean to the outside world what it lives on the inside.

We must have authentic communities that live by the word of God, that celebrate the liturgy and that work for a more human and just world.

The Christian who claims to live the Gospel alone is mistaken: we need the other. Otherwise, how can we become brothers and sisters?

How can we deal with tired and weakened ecclesial structures?

What will the Church be like in a century? I don't know.

We do not know what will remain or what will be born! We need the institution, but probably not all the institutions we have today, nor perhaps others that do not yet exist.

The Church will be more modest and humble, but it will not be in the minority, not in France and not in Belgium, anyway.

When half of the children are still being baptized, it is not a minority: sociologically, that does not make sense.

Doesn't intervening in a secular society sometimes lead the Church to be a sign of contradiction?

The central values of secularized culture are reason, freedom and progress. There are abuses when freedom becomes absolute and becomes the ideology that dominates everything.

In ethical debates, for example, euthanasia or abortion are broadened, because it is supposedly progress. And everyone does what they want.

Along with others, the bishops and Catholics have always warned society, but "progress" trivializes these issues.

Is allowing abortion until the 18th week progress? Is abortion an ordinary medical act?

An abortion is always a failure and it is not because the law allows it that there will be no suffering.

In this de-Christianized world, how do we recognize Christians?

Sometimes we don't recognize them...

There are different degrees of belonging to the Church.

Of course, there is always a core group that regularly comes to Mass and keeps the Church alive. But reducing faith to this definition has never been the position of the Church.

Some people come from time to time, for Christmas or Easter, for a family celebration... We must respect them and not say, "Will we see you next week?"

We risk proselytizing when the proclamation of the Gospel is done without respect for the other, with the sole concern of recruiting, which has happened at times with certain new communities.

It is friendship that evangelizes. The encounter has meaning in itself: it is not a missionary tactic.

I would like people in contact with the Church to be welcomed, respected and listened to, without judgment.

Let's not forget that there is that which I can do and that which God does: I can witness, meet and be what I am. But I cannot give faith to another. The Lord does that.

The Holy Spirit is at work and does not depend on the expansion of the Church.

Small and humble, the Church is also universal. As a cardinal how do you see the Church of Rome?

What I can't understand is that there is sometimes very harsh opposition to the pope. We will not go back.

Today, he invites us to synodality, that is, to live in fraternity.

It is a process of discernment - the pope is indeed a Jesuit! - to discuss together, to take time, to discern. And to discover what the Lord is asking of us.