Wolfgang Bernhardt

The Catholic Church is in free fall, the abuse as the latest alarm signal. An insolvency of its own kind: empty churches, empty seminaries and empty monasteries, parishes without priests, sale of (church) buildings. It is the bishops (and other clerics) who have brought the church into this situation, not the laity, who have patiently and painstakingly gone their own way to this day, despite all the headwinds. Parish leadership by lay people, men and women, according to Can. 517 § 2 CIC is the order of the day to fill the (priestly) gaps - if ecclesial life is not to become bogged down and desolate. The Church will rise again, as so often in its history, but it will (have to) be a different Church, orientated towards the lives of the people and their concerns, less clerical and aloof, a poor Church for the poor. A people's church. Home.