Mythbusting: “African Catholicism is a Vatican II Success Story”

Bishop Gregory Ochiagha, of Orlu Diocese in Nigeria, offering pontifical Mass in the old rite

In a recent episode of “Word on Fire,” Bishop Barron responds to Ross Douthat’s two NYT pieces on Vatican II and its failure, by making two arguments:

Argument #1: To blame the collapse of Catholicism in the West on Vatican II is a “post hoc propter hoc” fallacy.

Argument #2: The growth of the Church in Africa since Vatican II is entirely thanks to The Council.

It hardly requires pointing out that he has fallen into the same fallacy of which he accuses Douthat and others.

Nevertheless, this oft-repeated claim about Africa really deserves to be examined more closely, as it is one of the great myths of our time.

A certain “MrCasey” on Twitter noted:

In Africa, touted most frequently as a “Vatican II success,” the number of Catholics receiving the sacraments per 1000 also collapsed after Vatican II, as this chart indicates (source; interestingly, it seems that CARA has removed the study from their own website, without explanation, although it was reported on widely at the time): 

MrCasey continued:

In 1900 Catholics were 2% of the total African population. By Vatican II, that had ↑ to 13%. After Vatican II, the number's been nearly stagnant: ~16%, paling in comparison to Prots, whose % doubled during that time, 15% → 29%. The “Catholics” ↑ = b/c the population tripled. (source) “But that [post-Vatican II] growth is primarily due to a higher birth rate, ‘not to conversion or evangelization,’ observed Fr. Thomas Reese, social scientist & columnist for NCR.” (source) “CARA: the growth can be attributed to high fertility rates...” (source)

Another interesting graph shared by MrCasey:
 

A reader pointed out to me this graph (click to enlarge):
 

His comment:

The 600% increase in Catholics in Africa to 1970 has been followed by a 50% increase since. What, I wonder, caused the inflection in the graph? Oh right: the counterfactual that it would have been worse had the Council never....

George Neumayr, the investigative journalist whose death in Africa last week shocked the Catholic world, was in Ivory Coast working on a book on the state of the local Church. One can read on his Twitter feed, from December 26 to January 15, some initial impressions. For example, concerning this photo—
 

—he comments: “Here is a picture of the 9am Mass at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Abidjan. I spoke to the presiding priest before Mass. He was in complete denial about the crisis and said that Islam is only stronger than Christians because of ‘immigrants.’”

On January 13, he tweeted: “As the Freemasons got stronger and stronger on the Ivory Coast, they were condemned not by Catholic bishops but by Pentecoastal preachers. The bishops only weakly criticized them out of embarrassment after it came out that the head of a Masonic lodge had been receiving Communion.”

In recent weeks he has published a series of articles at The American Spectator, enlightening though depressing, about the downfall of Catholicism in Côte d’Ivoire, with many parallels to other parts of postconciliar Africa:

• “The Decline of Catholicism on Africa’s Ivory Coast” (Dec. 28, with the subtitle “Decolonization and the liberalism of Vatican II didn’t help”)
• “Islam and Protestantism Grow on Ivory Coast While Catholic Church Fades” (Dec. 31)
• “Why Are the Evangelicals Eating the Church’s Lunch in Côte d’Ivoire?” (Jan. 14, with the subtitle: “It is because they are more Catholic than the Catholics”)
• “The Curious Story of Ivory Coast’s Notre Dame Basilica, Africa’s Largest Catholic Church” (Jan. 7; the church and its grounds were built to accommodate 200,000 worshipers—18,000 indoors—but only 70 come for daily Mass)

In their article-series at Church Life Journal, Drs. Cavadini, Healy, and Weinandy commit the error of “African exceptionalism” when they write: “Across the continent of Africa, for example, celebrations of the Mass that are both vibrant and reverent attract thousands of people to the Church.”

The assessment of Mass in Africa as “vibrant and reverent” seems to be true as far as it goes, but why should this be attributed to the celebrations rather than to Christ Himself who draws people to the Church? After all, before the imposition of the Novus Ordo, it was the traditional Latin Mass that served marvelously to convert Africans to Catholicism in the first place. I suspect anyone visiting their Masses then would also have found them full of reverence and joy.

Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was a missionary in Africa from 1932–1959 and oversaw an astonishing spread of Catholicism in the regions of Africa for which he was responsible, which came to include twelve archdioceses, thirty-six dioceses, and thirteen Italian Apostolic Prefectures.

Just like everyone else on the globe, Africans, too, have been denied something that had already been an appreciated part of their Catholic heritage. The several flourishing TLM parishes currently in Africa, especially in Nigeria and Gabon, suggest that African Catholics, like so many in the West, might flock to the TLM were it made more available to them. The lack of its availability can hardly then be used as an argument against its appeal or power of attraction.

Here it is not inopportune to mention that the notion of an “inculturated” African-style liturgy was not the work of Africans themselves but of European experts who imagined in their classrooms how their southern brethren might best be served. (For a thorough treatment of this question, see “Inculturation: A Wrong Turn” by a Nigerian Catholic, published in parts at New Liturgical Movement in August and September 2022 and available as a single PDF here.)

As we have seen, any honest examination of the state of Catholicism in the “global south” must include reference to the fact that, while Catholicism is growing in absolute numbers due to population growth, Protestant and Pentecostal sects are experiencing much higher rates of growth — and tragically, attracting fallen-away Catholics into their numbers. This does not sound like an unmitigated “success story.”

Notably, the growth rate of Catholicism in Africa was proportionately much higher prior to 1970 — that is, at the tail end of the much-maligned “Tridentine” period. (See the Pew Research Center, “Overview: Pentecostalism in Africa.” For further considerations on the question of missionary expansion, see my article “Did the Reformed Liturgical Rites Cause a Boom in Missionary Lands?” from July 6, 2020.) In short, the African Church is growing simply because the population is growing (since Africans largely want to have families, unlike the trend in Western nations), so there are more Catholics in absolute numbers than sixty years ago; but the rate of growth is dramatically less today than it was prior to the Council. The conclusion is unavoidable: if Vatican II was supposed to be not just about maintaining the status quo of the 1950s but about launching a new evangelistic and missionary expansion, it failed in Africa, as it did everywhere else, compared to the old-fashioned approach followed over the preceding century.

* * *

What we are seeing with claims of African exceptionalism, a myth called into question by the facts, is very similar to what we see in nearly every discussion of the glories or successes of Vatican II or of the liturgical reform that followed it: namely, a willingness either to ignore evidence or, possibly, even to twist the truth for ideological reasons.

Book Recommendation: Eucharist by Bishop Robert Barron

Eucharist, by Bishop Robert Barron, is an excellent explanation of the importance of the Eucharist as a sacred meal, sacrifice, and the Real Presence of Christ. It is short - a little over 100 pages long - but rich in content. Bishop Barron establishes his arguments by drawing on Salvation History, Church history, and Thomistic philosophy and theology. Throughout, he does so in an accessible style appropriate to a wide readership, one that both assumes the intelligence of the reader yet demands little prior knowledge of formal theology. Without relying on obscure jargon, he explains all his points from first principles, guiding the reader through to the conclusions, without shying away from the most conceptually difficult aspects of eucharistic theology.

As the Second Vatican Council famously told us, the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life. I propose in light of this that a focus on the Eucharist should be seen, therefore, as both the first and the final lesson of any scheme of catechesis, for it is the illuminating light that gives understanding and meaning to all other Christian teaching and the end to which it is all directed. The Eucharist is not simply the icing on the cake of the Faith, it is the principle that causes the existence of the fundamental matter from which cake and icing alike are formed; and which arranges it in such a way that it delights us. I would recommend this book as a worthy foundational text for such catechesis.

Finally, he explains profoundly and powerfully why full acceptance of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist (aided of course by our best understanding) is so important in giving us the happiness that we all desire in this life.

When I was in the process of conversion to Catholicism in London nearly 30 years ago, the first books that were recommended to me before I began my personal instruction were short texts written by the English priest Msgr Ronald Knox, himself a convert, who died in 1957. These were the Mass in Slow Motion, The Gospel in Slow Motion, The Creed in Slow Motion, and finally The Belief of Catholics. These were foundational to my grasp of the Faith, each was a simple and accessible text that was nevertheless written on the assumption of an intelligent reader who is lacking the basic information, as good as any of this type that I have seen. It seems to me that Bishop Barron’ Eucharist is a good complement to Knox’s instructional booklets, focusing on particularly noteworthy lacks in our times: first, the lack of faith in the Eucharist as sacrifice and as Real Presence, and second, a lack of understanding as to why this sacrificial real presence is at the heart of the Christian Faith.

Barron begins in the introductory chapter with a description of the book (and film) called Babette’s Feast by the Danish author Karen Blixen, because, he says, poets often ‘say it best’. He explains how the different aspects of the Eucharist that he will focus on later on in the book are symbolized within the story of a maid who came into money and sacrificed it all, giving her mistresses, two austere Lutheran sisters, and their guests a sumptuous feast. He refers back to this imagery throughout the book.

One of the great flaws of contemporary instruction in the Faith, often coming from the pulpit but not restricted to it, is to oversimplify difficult topics, or to avoid them altogether. As a result, nearly all people are put off by this patronizing approach, which treats all as though they are too stupid to understand. Nobody likes to be treated as though they are stupid - least of all those of us who are - but all are flattered if they are treated as capable of intelligent thought, even if we are not. It is far better, it strikes me, to assume intelligence and lose a few in your explanations than to lose most by assuming the listener or reader will not understand and trot out trite simplifications. In this text, Bishop Barron, in the manner of the brilliant and natural teacher that he is, tackles theologically difficult ideas without ever resorting, at least without full explanation, to what would be, to many people, overly obscure jargon. Having said that, his use of language is deliberate and precise, and he had me reaching for a dictionary from time to time, which I didn’t mind at all. His chapter detailing the development of Eucharistic theology through centuries will be enlightening to many, I think. Certainly, I learned a great deal about the history of the perception of the Real Presence through this chapter.

As an example, here is a description of how he helps us to understand the principle of transubstantiation; referring to the work of theologian Msgr Robert Sokolowski, Barron writes:

Sokolowski argues that there are three ways to think about the relationship between spirit and matter. According to the first, which he calls ‘Darwinian’, matter is really all that there is, and we call ‘spirit’ is simply an epiphenomenon of matter. In this Darwinian reading, mind, and will, for example, are only refined brain functions.

A second way to understand the relationship between the two realities is what he characterizes as the ‘Aristotelian’. In this view spirit and matter exist more or less side by side and interact with one another in complex ways. Think for instance of the standard view of how the body and soul relate to each other.

But the third model, which Sokolowski calls ‘creationist’ or ‘biblical’ holds to the precedence of spirit over matter. According to this mode of interpretation, the properly spiritual - mind and will - preceded matter and can determine matter according to its purposes. Everything we have said about creation through the word is intelligible only in the context of this third framework.

Problems occur in Eucharistic theology, Sokolowski maintains, when we try to think of the Eucharist in either of the first two frameworks. Within a Darwinian framework, the Real Presence is just so much nonsense for matter is all that there is. Within an Aristotelian framework, the Real Presence comes to be thought of as a sort of inner-worldly change, some new and unprecedented way for finite natures - one spiritual and the other material - to relate to one another. But within the biblical context, things can make a bit more sense, for in this reading, God is not one nature among others, one being within the world, but rather the creator of the world, the ground of all finite things. And this God can relate to matter in a non-competitive way, become present through it, without undermining it. The supreme instance of this non-competitive involvement of God is of course the Incarnation and the Eucharist is nothing but a sacramental prolongation of the Incarnation. Thus God can use the material as a vehicle for his presence without ceasing to be God and without overwhelming the matter he uses. The Eucharist does not involve the supplanting of one fine nature by another - as though a tree becomes a leopard but continues to look and react like a tree - but the non-competitive presence of God within an aspect of the nature he has made. Thus concludes Sokolowski, when the Church speaks of Christ being substantially present in the Eucharist even as the material appearances of bread and wine remain, it is assuming this uniquely biblical perspective on the relation of spirit and matter.

In addition to explaining what the Eucharist is, he goes on, crucially in my opinion, to describe what this means for our lives, that is what happens to us Catholics who take communion as believers. We undergo a supernatural transformation - the partaking of the divine nature - that happens by degrees in this life so that we have, to put it simply, the greatest happiness that anyone can have in this life.

I became a Catholic not so much because the Faith is true - although I believed it to be so; not so much, even, because of the beauty of Catholic culture and the cosmos - although I responded so powerfully to both; but rather because I believed that both of these aspects of the Faith, so intimately bound up with it, indicated that I would be happiest as a Catholic who might be part of the very Truth and the Beauty that drew me into itself. In the years since I have wondered how many Catholics are really aware of what is on offer to them.

Fr Barron wrote of this happiness in just a couple of pages at the end of the book. It is a small proportion of this short book, but I hope people who read it will believe what he says:

Earlier in this chapter, we saw that many of the Church Fathers characterized the Eucharist as food that effectively immortalizes those who consume it. They understood that if Christ is really present in the Eucharistic elements, the one who eats and drinks the Lord’s Body and Blood becomes configured to Christ in a far more than metaphorical way. The Eucharist, they concluded, Christifies and hence eternalizes. Now, again, if the Eucharist were no more than a symbol, this kind of language would be so much nonsense. But if the doctrine of the Real Presence is true, then this literal eternalization of the recipient of communion must be maintained.

But what does this transformation practically entail? It implies that the whole of one’s life - body, psyche, emotions, spirit - becomes ordered to the eternal dimension, to the realm of God. It means that one’s energies and interests, one’s purposes and plans, are lifted out of a purely temporal context and given an entirely new spiritual valence. The Christified person knows that his life is not finally about him but is to be found above and not below. Wealth, pleasure, power, honor, success, titles, degrees, even friendships, and family connections are all relativized as the high adventure of life with God opens up. The eternalized person can say with Paul, ‘It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me,’ (Gal. 2:20), and ‘Here we have no lasting city,’ (Heb. 13:14).

The paradox is this: such a reconfiguration actually makes such people more rather than less effective and happy in this world. G.K. Chesterton said that when he was an agnostic and was convinced that he could be happy only through the use of this world’s goods, he was actually miserable. But when he realized that he was not meant to be finally satisfied here below - when he was eternalized through the Eucharist - he found, to his infinite surprise, that he became happy...This is why I tell people to be very careful when they approach the Eucharist. Were the elements simply symbols - inventions of our own spiritual creativity and desire - they would pose no particular threat. But since they are the power and presence of God, they will change the one who consumes them. When the communicant says ‘Amen’ and receives the proffered host and chalice, he’d better be prepared to live an eternal life.

The Catholic Christian life well lived is a happy life. That happiness is more authentic, deeper and more permanent than anything on offer to those who do not consume, authentically, the Body and Blood of Our Lord, and it is a happiness that transcends all human suffering. And I really mean the happiness of the sort that all people, regardless of their level of education know, deep down, that they desire - there is no need for nuance, or the depends-what-you-mean-by sophistry that in academic circles so often seems to accompany discussions of this goal in life. It is no-holds-barred happiness.

This is a truth, it seems to me at times, that even pious Catholics hesitate to believe is possible, and so diminish, at best, its realization in their own lives. And if we who are part of the mystical body doubt it, why should any who are outside the Church believe it either? This then is the task of evangelization for Christians: to demonstrate the art of living happily in good times and bad. Those who see such happiness and belief, and to whom we communicate knowledge of its source will, without any exception, convert if they believe it is available to them too..

Bishop Barron’s book cannot in itself transmit such happiness to anyone, but my hope is that it will lead people to the eternal banquet which is its source.

Buy here. Author: Robert Barron, ISBN: 978-1-943243-82-2, 136 pages; Publisher: Word on Fire Institute, Dimensions: 6 x 9

How Liturgical “Forms” Concretely Define Religious Belief — or Undermine It

For a thousand years, priests offering Mass in the Roman rite observed the rule that they should hold their thumb and forefinger together from the time of the consecration until the ablutions (a rule still observed, of course, wherever the traditional Latin Mass is celebrated). This custom reflects the Church’s profound faith in the Real Presence. After the consecration, Our Lord is really, truly, substantially present wherever the outward appearances of bread and wine are present, which means in every last particle of the host. For this reason, the priest should not casually handle other things after touching the host, but keep those two fingers together except when distributing communion, until he is able to wash them in the ablutions. In this way, too, the priest is continually reminded of the awesome mystery he is handling with his fingers — and so are the laity.

As a layman, it bothered me that this longstanding and sensible custom had disappeared, so I decided to pose a number of questions to a sizeable group of priests who celebrate the usus antiquior, primarily to learn the importance they themselves attach to the custom. The results were published at NLM in five installments, with a concluding reflection (links may be found here). One priest responded to the series with the following account:

At the Mass in which I was ordained a deacon, the Eucharist was “served” from a glass dish of sorts … I purified it with great care after Holy Communion; it required a rather noticeable period of time to do so, which was obviously more than local clergy and people were used to. After that Mass both the vocation director and the ordaining bishop “corrected” me on this matter, with the bishop reminding me that the purification was only a “ritual purification” and that such care was not needed in carrying it out, since a sacristan would wash everything after. (A totally incoherent position.)
          This was my introduction — and a rather painful one, at that — to the practical lack of faith on the part of the clergy in the Real Presence, which I have witnessed and experienced many times in the 11 years since then. I say “practical,” because few would deny the Real Presence and most would even defend it quite eloquently. But the way they actually handle the Eucharist betrays their lack of understanding and/or belief. (This is particularly the case with how they handle the Precious Blood, the purificator, etc. — but this is the topic of another discourse.)
          Therefore, when I began to study the usus antiquior and learned about the detailed and systematic process of purification, which really leaves little room for error, and of the practicalities such as holding the consecrating digits together until purification, my faith was confirmed. And, although knowledge of the Church’s historic practice served, perhaps, to heighten my awareness of just how bad things generally can be now, and thus heightened my sense of pain, yet at the same time, it was a consolation to know that I was on the right track.

This author has put his finger (if I may say so) on the nub of the problem. The Catholic faith is not something purely abstract that we learn and assent to as an intellectual exercise. We learn our faith and we discern its meaning through practice, through what we do with or to the words, things, and persons that embody this faith. How we speak to Our Lord or about Him; how we handle the sacramental signs and, above all, His all-holy and life-giving Body and precious Blood; how we treat our priests and how they treat their people. This is where we find out, experientially, day after day, what the Catholic religion is — and whether it has been replaced by a rival system of belief.

In our practice, we teach ourselves; by our example, we teach those around us, especially children. This is where modern liturgy has grievously failed, in numerous ways and as a matter of practice, through its repudiation of the meaning of vital forms of expression, forms that convey the essence and purpose of the Mass. What is at stake in the escalating tensions between divergent liturgical “sensibilities” is not just mere “form” (as if we were talking about matters of taste or fine art), but rather, the meaning inherent in form and expressed by it — that is to say, truth. And not truth alone, but justice, as in the virtue of justice by which we give to God and the things of God that which they rightly demand and which we owe as His creatures and dependents. Thus, the divergence between “old rite” and “new rite” is a divergence of truth and justice: two different “religions,” taking this word in its Thomistic acceptation.

Just as the reverent forms and practices of the traditional liturgy point to and express vital truths for our faith, the numerous casual practices that permeate Novus Ordo liturgies are not coherent with the meaning and the purpose of the Mass. A friend of mine, a young lady who transitioned a few years ago from the Novus Ordo to the traditional rite, sent me a reflection that illustrates this point:

In my years attending the N.O. at very mainstream parishes (not like Oratorians at all), I experienced a palpable and oppressive sense of what I can only describe as a dictatorship of the casual. It wasn’t that I didn’t personally wish for more reverence, but the atmosphere just made it feel very out of place. It felt strange to be one of the few who bowed in the creed (we never dreamed of making a genuflection). It felt equally strange to show extra reverence such as bowing of the head after adoring the host at the consecration. Some faithful received on the tongue, but this was unusual. If one stayed in the pew, even for a moment, to make acts of thanksgiving after Holy Mass, one was most certainly in the minority. Then of course there was the chit-chat about sports games, social events, and all kinds of trivialities that took place in the Sacred Presence. Also there were frequent rounds of applause tucked into liturgies. Rounds of applause for a good joke in the homily, for a speaker advertising the parish picnic, for the choir upon completion of the rousing recessional song — the occasions were all too frequent.
          There is a pervading “bad attitude” that results in this oppressive dictatorship of the casual. It is a mystery to me what drives this insidious force. It took root years ago, but why does it still thrive when many good people in these parishes desire, if only in a vague way, greater reverence? Now, I know that we should all be willing to openly express our faith in God even unto death. However, something has gone terribly wrong when one feels a furtive sense, almost guilt — a feeling of “Well, who do you think you are, acting all holy!” — when one expresses reverence in a visible act.
          I’ll give a vignette that comes to mind. My sisters and I thought wearing veils would be kind of nice, but I remember my argument against it was: “We’re already such a distraction up in front of church playing our instruments in view of everyone. Then we’re going to throw veils into the equation? Besides they don’t ‘go’ with the kind of music we play.” I really don’t know if that reasoning was sound, but it illustrates the conundrum of reverence-hungry faithful who find themselves in the rigid N.O. framework. It’s a framework where piety and devotion often look ridiculous. Think of it: we have on our hands an atmosphere where showing due honor to Our Lord in what is supposed to be His house, at what is His Sacrifice, looks ridiculous. This is a brazen evil.

It is ironic that some Novus Ordo proponents criticize those who favor the traditional liturgy as people fixated on form, when in reality it is impossible not to care about form, since there is no truth accessible to us humans without the clothing of form. Every liturgy comes to us as a definite concrete set of forms with their own inherent meaning, and this meaning will be either full, rich, accurate, and nourishing of orthodoxy, or banal, impoverished, ambiguous, and inadequate to our needs. In this sense, everyone is fixated on form because human language and spiritual activity are formal through and through. The primacy of form, and the corresponding priority of getting it right, are inescapable; there is no “essential thing” independent of form that is “enough” for us.

No doubt, truth is known by the divine intellect apart from any created form; but men know the truth as expressed in a definite way, under sensible and intelligible signs. Some signs are well suited to the truth they signify, and others are not. For example, solemnity is compatible with, indeed required by, the notion of the sacred, while casualness and spontaneity are not.

Martin Mosebach’s The Heresy of Formlessness illuminates the folly (and ugliness) of imposing on ourselves the modern faith in abstract society and an abstract world with abstractions reigning globally and governing relationships individually, in contrast to the real spiritual vitality that can be found in things, real things, and how real things and actions resonate in the spiritual realm. This sensitivity to material reality is something our society has lost — not only the idea that there is a spiritual reality encompassing the material world, but also that we touch the spiritual through what we do with matter, or, in other words, that the form of things and what we do with them matters in the life of the spirit. One sees the same Cartesian contempt for the flesh in the liturgical reform, which strips barren the inherited treasury of forms in order to present as purely verbal and conceptual a worship as is still consonant with public human activity.

As the historical record indicates, Modernity fears Catholicism because Catholicism reminds it — reminds us — that reality includes the supernatural, that which encompasses and penetrates the natural with mysterious powers that reason can approach, but only through faith and analogy. This approach requires a surrender to the divine and an acceptance of tradition that modern epistemology in its egocentric rationalism and voluntarism cannot tolerate. Like liberalism in Newman’s analysis, a halfway house between Catholicism and atheism, the Novus Ordo is a halfway house between a time-embracing and time-transcending tradition and a modernity trapped in its own death spiral.

In conclusion, the past fifty years of liturgical praxis have taken a serious toll on the faith life in our communities. The Novus Ordo perspective dwells erroneously on abstractions like validity and fails to recognize the deep (human and divine!) connection between form, meaning, and truth. The consequences of this error are now unmistakable. According to Bishop Barron, for every new Catholic, six are leaving the Church. In a survey of Catholics, 80% under age 50 do not believe in the Real Presence. The pandemic has only accelerated the already glaring differences between the traditional practice of Catholicism and its modern substitute. The loss of faith evidenced statistically is understandable, even predictable, given that the main catechism for most Catholics is the Mass. A concerted return to the traditional liturgy is not simply beneficial but necessary for the continued life of our churches. Bishops who do not grasp this in time will preside over the white-chasubled funerals of their cremated dioceses.

In the cycles of history, including the history of salvation unfolded for us in Scripture, we perceive times of exile, as well as the varied responses people make to their exilic condition. It seems that we are living in a peculiar time marked by institutional self-exile, as if the Church had become its own Pharaoh and Pilate. That is no excuse for failing to do what we can and must as children of Israel, as disciples of Christ; rather, it is the perfect opportunity to pray for and seek a return to Catholic tradition, having at its heart a liturgy that is worthy of — and truly communicative of — the most important work the Church does, and, consequently, that is capable of serving as the foundation for a coherent future.