Cardinals, archbishops and bishops have many ways to communicate with Vatican officials, and even with the pope himself, outside of occasional personal meetings.
In the digital age, one blunt way to reach Pope Leo XIV is to write a candid letter and post it online. That's what Bishop Robert Mutsaerts, an auxiliary bishop in the Netherlands, did recently. "Holy Father," he began, with "reverence for the office entrusted to you as successor of Saint Peter, and in communion with the Church which Christ built upon the apostles, I address you with this open letter. I don't do so lightly."
What followed was one bishop's heart cry for the pope to speak candidly about why believers should cling to ancient truths, even while struggling with the riptides
of modern life.
Peter, the first pope, "received from Christ not only the commission to unite the brothers, but also to strengthen them in the faith," wrote Mutsaerts. "Ultimately, the world gains little from a Church that merely repeats what the world itself already thinks."
After years of "synodality" meetings built on dialogue with modern Catholics and church critics, the bishop offered hard questions: "Not: How many reports were written? Not: How many people participated? But: Has faith become stronger? Has Christ been proclaimed more clearly? Has Catholic identity deepened? Have more people come to convert? Is Sunday Mass better attended? Are there more priestly vocations? ... Has greater reverence for the Eucharist emerged? Has the moral teaching of the Church become clearer? Has missionary courage increased?"
The auxiliary bishop's superior, Bishop Gerard Johannes Nicolaus de Korte, quickly distanced himself from these words, while debates continued online.
The context for the Mutsaerts letter is larger than headline-grabbing debates about the use of the Latin Mass, bleak attendance trends in Western nations, Catholic politicians clashing with church teachings and same-sex union blessings in many European Catholic churches.
A Pew Research Center survey in 2019 found that only 31% of U.S. Catholics believe that the bread and wine consecrated in Mass become the Body and Blood of Jesus. A subsequent study by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, cooperating with the University of Notre Dame, was more optimistic, claiming that nearly 64% of active, self-identified adult Catholics embraced this doctrine.
Both studies noted that when Mass attendance rates are higher, so is the percentage of Catholics who embrace this dogma of the faith. CARA has found that, after the coronavirus pandemic, in-person Mass attendance among U.S. adult Catholics fell to 17%.
In a recent EWTN interview, Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, noted a relevant fact about the Latin Mass debates that also applies to many other divisions in Catholic life today.
"I think bishops are going to be discussing this among themselves and within their own dioceses," Coakley said, referring to "Traditionis custodes (Guardians of the Tradition)," the 2021 apostolic letter by Pope Francis that empowered bishops to crack down on use of the pre-Vatican II Tridentine Mass.
"I'm not sure that we've heard the last word from this pontificate on 'Traditionis Custodes,'" Coakley said. He added, "Until Pope Leo has spoken, I'm not sure that we know for sure what the way forward will be."
In his letter, Mutsaerts urged Pope Leo to openly address pressing issues in which church teachings clash with the spirit of the age.
"The Church does not exist primarily to affirm people in what they already are," he stressed. "The first words of Jesus' public preaching are not: 'Tell Me first how you feel about the current church structures.' But: 'Repent and believe in the Good News.' That is considerably less bureaucratic. And considerably more radical."
Major institutions that "lose sight of their original purpose" often drift into circular arguments about how to reform the processes that guide them, claimed Mutsaerts.
In the church, "The less evangelization, the more committees about evangelization. The fewer vocations, the more documents about vocations. The fewer people come to church, the longer the meetings about becoming the church. That sounds cynical, but there is a serious thought behind it: Bureaucracy can create the illusion of activity while reality shows the opposite. One is navigating without a compass."
Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Bishop urges pope to clarify church teachings quickly | Terry Mattingly
