Catholic Perspectives on Reform

Catholic theologian Michael Seewald of the Cluster of Excellence Religion and Politics explores possibilities and limits of reform in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is under great pressure to change, and there is a long list of controversial issues: the rights of women, the evaluation of same-sex partnerships, the issue of abuse, and the participation of the laity. The church could be more flexible than it currently is because the discussion about reform is within a dogmatically narrow range that sets itself as Catholic without any alternative, but which in reality represents only one among many possibilities to push theology ahead.

In his book, Seewald explains the self-image of the magisterium and shows its peculiar modernity. From the latter, the tremendous amount of innovation can be understood with which it attempts to create the impression that it merely wants to preserve the traditional. On this basis, Seewald explains various modes of dogmatic development and outlines the concept of reform, especially by means of defining the relationship between the Gospel and dogma. All this takes place against the backdrop of the current pressing questions. However, this is neither a practical book, nor does it contain a wish list of things that should change. Rather, the book illustrates how the Catholic Church can reform itself fundamentally while at the same time remaining true to itself.

The first step towards a theologically accounted for reform of the Church is to acknowledge the specific modernity of the Church, writes Michael Seewald. It is inaccurate and even misleading to demand certain changes under the often-heard slogan that the church needs to modernize. Reforms do not need to modernize the Church because it is already modern. However, we must ask whether the already completed modernization of the Catholic Church has been successful or whether there are reasons for placing the Christian faith differently today than is being done at present.

Michael Seewald is professor of dogmatics and dogmatic history at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.