Is the church the people or the institution?

[Crowdance]

From the NYTimes Magazine on this day celebrating resurrection:

"This is the question that has divided the church since the reforms of Vatican II in the 1960s: Is the church the people or the institution? In Europe, the institution may be on life support, but the Vatican knows there is energy to be harnessed among the masses. So far, Benedict seems to want to have it both ways. When he held the second gathering of lay movements in May 2006, attracting a crowd in the hundreds of thousands, he praised their energy, but the praise came with a warning and a reminder that they are not citizens in a religious democracy or diners at a spiritual buffet but are members of an institution whose power flows from the top, its infallible leader, and moves through the channels of the bishops and priests down to the laity. “I trust in your ready obedience,” he said."

Is the church about obedience to an institution? Or is it about individual relationships with Spirit and each other?

"The Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere is just as ancient and just as packed with icons that are featured in art-history texts as Sopra Minerva. Here 300 people filled the pews, as is more or less the case seven nights a week at 8:30 p.m. They were mostly in their 20s to 40s, most seemed to be professionals, a group both well shod and featuring some extreme eyewear. The setting couldn’t have been more Catholic, and yet it wasn’t a Mass that was taking place. No priest officiated; there was no Communion offered, no body and blood of Christ. It was an energetic, soulful lay service, a 30-minute meditation — a well-orchestrated mix of prayer and song on a spot where Christians have celebrated their rites since around 300 A.D., conducted by and for ordinary people. Precisely at 9 o’clock it ended; people gathered into clusters and chatted briefly and then everyone headed into the night."

"This is the home church of the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay movement that began here in the Trastevere section of Rome in 1968 and now has a presence in 70 countries. The roots of it are these prayer events, which take place every evening in cities around the world. “I would say half of us had left the church or were never in the church,” Leone Gianturco, a 44-year-old economist with the Italian Treasury, told me following the service. “This is personal fellowship. It’s a community that makes sense for us.” "

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/magazine/08pope.t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=magazine

As one who left the Catholic church long ago to eventually find a spiritual practice with more meaning for me, this is a question I've pondered for decades. The discussion still holds interest for me.

[valerief]

1. It's the govt and the media. nt

[kwassa]

2. It seems like the Catholic church is at a crossroads

and Benedict will change nothing until the church is taken from his cold, dead fingers.

It will be interesting to see if the power of the papacy wanes forever over the next few decades. I think that the priest sex scandals was a critical blow to the central authority of the church, as it is a direct and corrupt bi-product of a centralized, top-down absolute hierarchy.

The Catholic church in this country is sustained by new immigrants, but even they are attracted to other religious expression once they are here.

[struggle4progress]

3. The Protestants, with their tendency to schism, seem to have ...

... answered against a purely institutional view of the church long ago.

[cyborg_jim]

4. When you get enough people invovled it's pretty hard to avoid an institution

[JerseygirlCT]

5. The institution is supposed to exist simply to support the people

in their community of worship.

Once the institution becomes more important than the people, it has ceased to serve its purpose.

[MistressOverdone]

6. Depends on the church

depends on the people.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. The type of institution developed

tells a bit about the thinking of those who founded it--for example, the Catholic Church is more about the heirarchy where Protestant churches like Baptists are more controlled by the people in that the individual congregations select their ministers rather than some central authority assigning a minister. So what is the church? Depends on the church, I guess.