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For my money, the most striking part of @austeni interview with @Pontifex is on institutions, in response to Ivereigh's question: "Does he see emerging from this a church that is more missionary, more creative, less attached to institutions?"
The Pope responds with tremendous balance:
"Less attached to institutions? I’d say less attached to certain ways of thinking. Because the church is institution.
"Less attached to institutions? I’d say less attached to certain ways of thinking. Because the church is institution.
"The temptation is to dream of a deinstitutionalized church, a gnostic church without institutions, or one that is subject to fixed institutions, which would be a Pelagian church. The one who makes the church is the Holy Spirit, who is neither gnostic nor Pelagian.
"It is the Holy Spirit who institutionalizes the church, in an alternative, complementary way, because the Holy Spirit provokes disorder through the charisms, but then out of that disorder creates harmony.
"A church that is free is not an anarchic church, because freedom is God’s gift. An institutional church means a church institutionalized by the Holy Spirit.
"A tension between disorder and harmony: this is the church that must come out of the crisis. We have to learn to live in a church that exists in the tension between harmony and disorder provoked by the Holy Spirit.
"If you ask me which book of theology can best help you understand this, it would be the Acts of the Apostles. There you will see how the Holy Spirit deinstitutionalizes what is no longer of use, and institutionalizes the future of the church.
"That is the church that needs to come out of the crisis."
