Take Back Our Church

A new organization has been founded to seek "ownership and citizenship in the people's Church envisioned at Vatican II, attended by accountable, listening servant-bishops."  (A rousing discussion of the campaign can be found over at the Commonweal blog.)  What drew my interest is the inaugural "Take Back Our Church" newsletter, in which the organizers embrace a new model for the Church founded on the "U.S. Constitution which sets up an enculturated American system of governance that makes absolute rule absolutely impossible."

I'm certainly amenable to reform movements, as I believe that ongoing reform is an essential part of the Christian vocation -- personal as well as institutional.  But I'm not enthusiastic about looking to our nation's constitutional framework as a model for a religious organization.  One key objective of the constitution, as I understand it, is to create space where divergent claims of ultimate truth can coexist in peace; this requires a certain degree of state agnosticism on those claims.  The whole point of religion is to proclaim these truths, an endeavor for which absolute rule (in the form of revealed truth) may be appropriate.  If the Church is pushed to replicate the liberal order, what's the point of the Church?

Rob