I have good news for you and bad news. The bad news is that the Catholic Church is in crisis. The good news is that it has been there before. In fact, anyone familiar with church history might get the impression that crisis is one of the few truly enduring Catholic traditions. We’ve had corrupt popes, worldly bishops, heresies, schisms, revolutions, persecutions, and liturgical commissions. And yet we still exist.
To me, that last point seems to be proof of the Church’s divine origin. A purely human organization governed the way the Church has been governed at times would likely have gone bankrupt around the fourth century. Yet the situation is serious. Not because the Church is unpopular. Not because its market share is declining. Not because it fails to connect with the modern consumer.
