The Church that We Want and in Which We Believe

Pronouncement:
The Church that We Want and in Which We Believe

At the end of May 2019, the Christian Base Communities (CEB) of what was St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Managua met for a Spiritual Retreat like we do every year. What follows is the product of the reflection shared at this meeting.

When sharing these ideas with the public, we are not moved by any kind of spite or resentment, much less hatred. Nor do we believe that we are better Christians than others. We feel part and members of this Catholic Church of the 21st century and we are moved by love for this Church. We are neither theologians, nor ordained priests, nor do we have pretensions of power and that is why we speak with the "freedom of the children of God" as the apostle Paul said.

It hurts us when we listen to ideas and see positions and practices of the Church that do not agree with the Good News of Jesus. Therefore, we want a Church that, to paraphrase St. Augustine, is more holy than prostitute. We make our own the words of the Brazilian theologian Fray Beto who says: "The Church has a very bad and ugly side and a very holy and evangelical side. I feel in the Church as I feel in relation to my family. With some I have more friendship, with others less. That's the way the Church is; and I have love for this Church. If you want to change it, you have to be inside, you cannot be outside the Church that Pope Francis wants".

We are not writing a wish list to Baby Jesus but a barebones list of qualities that are essential to the essence of Christianity and its Church.

The Church we want and in which we believe. The most urgent task of the Church today is to return to Jesus. He did not teach religious doctrines. Jesus announces a fact: the Kingdom of God has arrived, "Thy Kingdom come".

1. The Church as People of God. Without a doubt, the most important contribution of the Second Vatican Council was to say that the Church is the People of God (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Light of the People, Chapter 2, with it overcame centuries of Constantine ecclesiology and doctrine elaborated in the Councils of Trent and First Vatican. "His basic definition is ‘People of God’ he emphatically affirmed. Therefore, before being hierarchical, the Church is a community of disciples who follow Jesus, hence the leading role that the laity must have in order to be more than mere obedient beings and listeners. Pope Francis has put his finger on the wound when he affirms that clericalism is a scourge and fertile ground for many abominations within the Church. Clericalism means the concentration of all sacred power in the clergy above the laity, thus distorting the beautiful concept of the Church as the People of God, where we are all equally priests, though with different functions. It is imperative, therefore, to return to the path of the Second Vatican Council.

2. Church of the poor. Jesus was born and lived in poverty. He walked and defended the most marginalized of Galilee of his time: oppressed and dispossessed people, homeless vagrants, day laborers, beggars, women and also prostitutes, children, the sick. "He went throughout Galilee proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom, healing every sick, hurting person among the people" (Luke 6:18). He was the defender of the least and friend of sinners: delinquents, tax collectors (Luke 19:11), loan sharks, to whom he showed undeserved forgiveness. Jesus puts nothing and no one above the poor. What concerned Him was the life and suffering of the poor, not sin. "I came that you might have life and have it to the fullest" (John 10:10). Jesus changed many of the dogmas of the religion of Moses and the Old Testament. That was Jesus, and if we Christians are his followers, we have to learn to live with a sensitive heart like his.

A few days before the end of the Vatican Council in 1965, 45 bishops, headed by Dom Hélder Cámara, arrived at the catacomb of Saint Domitilla in Rome to celebrate the Eucharist there. At the end, they signed the so-called "Pact of the Catacombs" which was a personal commitment to a way of living in their dioceses the dream of Jesus and the agreements of the Council. One of his commitments was: "We renounce forever the appearance and reality of wealth, especially in clothing and symbols of precious metals" (Mark 6:9; Acts 3:6). Likewise, three days after being elected, Pope Francis told the representatives of the international media: "How I would like a Church of the poor, for the poor! He told them of this desire, evidently because he saw that in most bishoprics this was not the reality.

For us, the fact that the Church is poor is not a rhetorical phrase, but a group and personal commitment to fight for any socio-political system that promotes equality and justice and not one that, by its very nature, creates wealth for a minority and poverty, misery and exclusion for the vast majority, as Pope John Paul II said when he coined his famous expression "savage capitalism" and as Pope Francis denounces all the time, when he refers to the "imperialism of money" and the "idolatry of the market", doctrines that many of those who call themselves "democrats" defend every day without the slightest blush and shame and condemn everything that smells of socialism.

We must admit that the great majority of times the hierarchical authorities of our Catholic Church, including those of Nicaragua, have acted in favor of the ruling classes and the governments that represent them and have condemned governments that fight for a new system. Like other "left-wing" Christians we believe that, despite historical errors, there is no future for humanity outside of socialism as a project to share the resources of our mother nature.

Therefore, we want a Church that has as its goal the defense of the dignity of the most marginalized of our society.

2. Compassionate Church. This is another of the essential and inalienable characteristics of the mission and conduct of the Church. Jesus communicated to us his experience of God through marvelous parables: Compassionate and merciful. For this reason he commanded us to "be merciful as God is merciful" (Luke, 6:36; Matthew 5:48). If we live from God's forgiveness and mercy, should we not introduce a new order of things in the Church where compassion is a principle of action and not an exception?

3. Inclusive Church. We want a Church that welcomes everyone and does not discriminate against anyone, starting with women. In an inclusive Church we are all equal (St. Paul's Letter to the Galatians 3:28) therefore, women should have the same rights as men and exercise the same tasks. There is no reason in the Gospels why the Church continues to discriminate against women. Jesus did not. He who reads the Gospels finds the names of the women who were part of Jesus' group; the first apostles are women (Luke 8:1-4); the first apostles are women: The Samaritan woman announced that she had encountered the Messiah at Jacob’s well. It was especially women who camped along the way with him to Calvary (Luke, 23:27-29). The women disciples were the first witnesses of his resurrection (Luke 24:1-9); Mary Magdalene went to announce it to the apostles--who were afraid after the death of Jesus--that he was alive. There is no reason to justify an absolutely unjustifiable male chauvinism; that is why we do not want a hierarchical and male chauvinist church.

Also, we want a church that is inclusive and respectful of sexual diversity, that respects homosexuals, lesbians, etc., as Pope Francis does; we want a church leadership that is conciliatory and that does not encourage fighting among us.

2. Evangelizing Church. We all know it: The Church in essence should be missionary and witness to Jesus (Luke 24:48). The center of its preaching must be about Jesus and his Kingdom or Good News; in other words, Christ centric. As time went by, many things-- norms, rites, devotions, processions, etc.--which do not hold much of the Gospel, have been adhered to. Someone has said "Poor Catholicism that has never become Christian!” Taking away the dose of exaggeration that the phrase may have, we must admit that it does not cease to have a certain truth. With all due respect, our parishes often seem to be more factories of sacraments and rites than sacred places where they evangelize and where the faithful gather to celebrate the Lord's Supper (Acts of the Apostles, 2:42-47).

The preaching of the Church must be credible for men and women of the 21st century. We have to evangelize on the rock that is Jesus so that the faith of the faithful is solid and does not falter before the slightest setback; that is why, among other reasons, the Catholic Church decreases in numbers day by day. We must be a Church that goes out to meet people and not remain in the temple, as Pope Francis said.

2. Democratic Church. There are no biblical or theological arguments that affirm that in the Church there should be no democracy. However, in many cases it is an authoritarian, patriarchal, macho and hierarchical institution. If it does not start at home, the hierarchy does not have the ethical quality to denounce the lack of democracy from outside.

Therefore, the question we ask ourselves, as many other grassroots Christians do, is: How can we advance in the democratization of the Catholic Church? Our answers are:

• To express, with freedom and without fear of the hierarchy, by virtue of the right and duty we have as Christians, our "opinion on that which belongs to the good of the Church" (Canon Law, 212.3).

• The hierarchy must put an end to the concealment of sexual abuse; it should publicly acknowledge its responsibility towards the victims and modify the internal mechanisms that make these criminal practices possible. The Catholic Church today faces a profound crisis of credibility in the eyes of society, which is why, among other reasons, it is rapidly decreasing in numbers.

• The church must recognize women and men as equal in dignity and must eradicate the discrimination to which they are subjected within the ecclesial institution.

• It must recognize the autonomy of the churches to organize themselves and elect their own pastors.

• Mandatory celibacy must be reformed, making it optional. A broad debate on the priesthood of women must be opened within the church, allowing progress in overcoming the discrimination women experience in the life of the churches.

• Freedom of thought and theological reflection in the church must cease to be attacked.

Where power predominates, there can be neither love nor tenderness; that is why Pope Francis never tires of preaching "tender and affectionate encounters".

2. Integral ecological church. August 13, 2017 was the day of the Overload of the Earth; this day saw the overcoming of the earth's bio capacity to meet human needs, because we already need 1.6 planets to meet our needs and this proportion will continue to increase dramatically and this shows that our lifestyle is unsustainable. Therefore, we have to change our way of seeing nature to a being with total interconnectedness, including with the human species. "We will only stop destroying nature and ourselves when we adopt a new vision that makes us aware of the sacred dimension of nature" (Association of Third World Theologians (Jakarta, Indonesia, 2013). The UN Conference on Climate Change has warned us of the imperative need not to exceed 2 degrees of growth in this century. Pope Francis has told us in this revolutionary text that the encyclical "Laudato SI" "Awaken, Humanity, there is no time!” The Honduran martyr Berta Cáceres has shouted it to us with her life and death.

Why, then, does the church remain silent? Why, if Pope Francis does not tire of repeating it, does the Catholic Church not make this dramatic issue a central theme of its preaching and evangelization? Rarely do we hear Nicaraguan priests and bishops preach it to their faithful. Because our Mother Nature is sacred, it must be the object not only of care and attention, but also of devotion and veneration on the part of all human beings and, especially, by religions and their churches. We ask ourselves: why not make ecumenism a common cause having care and protection of nature at the center? It has been demonstrated that dogmas and doctrinal ideas do not fertilize ecumenism. The survival of our common home and of our species should be our goal.

"I have a dream” clamored Martin Luther King. We, too, and thousands of other honest women and men dream that another world is possible, another Christianity and another Church are possible. Utopias are never reached, but we can get closer to them each day.

Assembly of the Christian Base Community (CEB) “Gaspar García Laviana”

Comunidad Eclesial de Base Oscar Arnulfo Romero (Colonia Primero de Mayo)

Comunidad Eclesial de Base Buena Nueva (Barrio Enrique Gutiérrez)

Comunidad Eclesial de Base Adolfo Reyes (Barrio del mismo nombre)

Comunidades Cristianas de Rivas, Departamento de Rivas,

Comunidad Cristiana de Tola, Departamento de Rivas,

Comunidad Cristiana de San Juan del Sur, Departamento de Rivas

Comunidades Cristiana Casa Regional, Estelí

Comunidad Cristiana “El Despertar”, Estelí, Depto. De Estelí

Centro de Educación y Promoción Agraria (CEPA) Matagalpa

Comunidades Cristianas de Nueva Segovia

Comunidades Cristianas del Depto. de Madriz

Comunidades Cristianas de La Trinidad, Depto. de Estelí

Pueblo Indígena – Matagalpa. Unidos Por la Causa de los Pobres

CEB de Monimbó, Masaya

Colectivo Mística y Revolución

Comunidad Eclesial de Base San Pablo Apóstol (Colonia 14 de Septiembre)

On the 53 anniversary of the San Pablo Apóstol Parish and Christian Base Community

Managua, June 18, 2019.