Frank O’Loughlin has done it again!  In the past four years he has produced a book a year.  New Wineskins in 2021, Gathering the People of God in 2022, Does Sin Matter in 2023 and now The Catholic Church: Into the Future, in 2024. This may be the best one yet!  Actually, the four need to be read together (with his earlier This Time in the Church), as they form a unity of thought and reflection on the nature and mission of the Church in the world today.

The Catholic Church: Into the Future is deeply grounded in the Tradition.  It is biblical, sacramental, historical, ecclesial and a practical look into the future.  As in each of his recent books Frank begins with an exploration of the culture and context of today.

“Secular attitudes are not the only acceptable approach to human life and the reality of the world, but a secularising culture can tend to make it seem so.  This calls on Christian believers to present and nourish a different approach by entering into dialogue with the mentality of the secularising society; a dialogue which needs to be open and can be mutually enriching and positively critical.” (page 18).

Frank reminds us again and again that we can only look into the future of the Church if we have a very sure footing in the nature and mission of the Church as handed on to us.  It is time to get to the heart of the faith of the Church.  The Church does not exist for itself.  God is first and foremost interested in humanity – the whole of humanity.  Frank will take to task those who believe in a sectarian Church.  Instead Frank gives us ten things to leave behind, he names eight signs of the times and gives us four things to take into the future.  If you read the book all ten, eight and four things will be revealed!  In the meantime here is what Frank had to say himself at the launch of the book.

This is a transcript taken from the book launch of Fr Frank O’Loughlin’s latest book ‘Into the Future’ on 29 August 2024.

1.  Background – There are considerable tensions in the Church at the moment about what our future will be.

• There are those who seek to go back to the past because things seemed better then;
• There are those who think that our present time does not need roots in the past;
• There are those who are quite confused, even petrified in both senses of the word.

2.  This led me to look back into our past – distant and not so distant.  What we find there is a constant tension towards the future and so we look at Abraham, to Moses and the prophets, to the Lord Jesus and to the first followers of Jesus.  Abraham’s situation at the beginning of biblical history is so clearly an instance of this future movement … he is promised that the Lord will take him to a land ‘I will show you’ – a touch vague!!  He is called to faith, to trust.

The first disciples were very unclear about the resurrection – they kept wanting a good and proper kingdom like those of this world to come out of Jesus’ life and work.  In all the resurrection accounts, they are portrayed as still wondering what all this was about and they have their doubts … all of which John loads onto Thomas.

3.  Nostalgia is not a Christian attitude.  Oh, it can be fun!  But it is not on the agenda of a Christian spirituality but it can of course be a temptation.

4.  There is no golden era in the life of the Church.  There are times and people from which and from whom we can learn.  Each time has its own troubles and its own advantages.

No era is simply God-given; each era arises out of its own particular circumstances; it arises as part of its own context.  Even with the Scriptures, our aim is not to go back to their times – we cannot; it is past and past it remains.  Our aim is to inspired by them.  And notice! they were not perfect, they had their problems, their oppositions, their troubles and their advantages and benefits.

5.  We are not called to be a closed shop!

We are not a museum.

We are a group of human beings living in our own times but living in the times and living out of lives in those times in relationship to Jesus Christ.

We are called to be open to our times, to be part of them and to be aware of their deficiencies in the light of Christ’s gospel.

A challenge to us (Pope Francis) to be open or to be closed-in upon ourselves.  Closed-in leads to irrelevance.

The Long 19^th century tended to close us in in many ways – newly arisen oppositions: Rationalism and the French Revolution.

6.  Into the Future

Part I:    Called into the future

Moving into the Future

What do we leave behind?

What will the future hold?

Part II:   Acts 2,42:

Faithful to the Teaching of the Apostles (Gospels etc.)

… to the Fellowship (the Church)

… to the Breaking of the Bread (Eucharist)

… to Prayer (Prayer)

7.  A Model: RCIA

Conclusion

We are being called into a new era.  This has happened to the followers of Jesus in the past and we need to learn from those other times of change and use them as a source of light for our present time of change.  We also need to look at what is different about the changes we are experiencing in the present.  As with our forebearers in the faith, we need to be open to what is coming and to be attentively listening to the gospel in order to make our way into the future.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin

Introduction by Fr Brendan Reed

Published: 13 September 2024