Here's the former Father Joseph Ratzinger, on the same subject - crisis in the Catholic Church - as Pope St John Paul talked about in 1976.The future Pope Benedict XVI had prophesied similarly nearly a decade earlier, in 1969.
This came to me today from a dear friend, an eremitical religious, who was sent it by her friend, an Orthodox monk. (You didn't know I moved in such spiritually exalted circles ...)
This came to me today from a dear friend, an eremitical religious, who was sent it by her friend, an Orthodox monk. (You didn't know I moved in such spiritually exalted circles ...)
From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek… But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church.”
–
Father Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), 1969
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