Religion Digital
There is an uncomfortable question that is increasingly asked with less fear and more realism: is the Church alive, dying, or, in a certain way, exhausted in its current form? It is not a provocation, but an observation that arises from what we see. And what we see is clear: an institution that, for many, has become a foreign body in society, marked by detachment, growing irrelevance, and a sense of isolation that can no longer be hidden.
But while one form of Church seems to be fading, something different is taking shape. As if, in the midst of the crisis, Christianity were trying to free itself from what has been constraining it.
What is at stake is not faith, but a model. The model of an excessively hierarchical Church, centralized, with traits of almost monarchical power, where a few decide, delimit, and control. A system where too many questions remain untouchable, where the margin for real participation is narrow, and where the fear of losing control weighs more than trust in the believing people.
It is not merely an organizational matter. It is a way of understanding the Church. That of a hierarchy that frequently skillfully manipulates institutional mechanisms to maintain internal balance, determining what can be thought, what can be questioned, and how far one can go. And all of this, often, wrapped in sacred language that ends up shielding what are actually human decisions.
But the Gospel does not go that way.
Jesus was clear and direct: “Do not call anyone on earth your ‘master’, for you have one Master, and you are all brothers” (cf. Mt 23,8-10). There is no room in his project for a community structured around domination or privilege, but for real fraternity, where authority is understood only as service.
And yet, the distance between that ideal and reality is, at times, all too evident.
This is why the growing distance comes as no surprise. Not because the message has lost its value, but because the way it is lived institutionally has ceased to be credible for many. And when the form fails, the substance is obscured.
However, in the midst of this crisis, a profound yearning emerges with force: to return to what is essential. To recover that Church of the first communities, where there were no honors, no titles, no artificial distances. Where faith was lived in the key of fraternity, simplicity, commitment.
A Church without worldly honors, without need for prestige, without structures that separate it from real life. A Church where no one stands above anyone else, because all recognize themselves as children of the same Father. As the Gospel reminds us: “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mk 9,35).
That is the model! And it is radical!
Because it implies dismantling many inertias. It implies ceasing to understand the Church as a space of power to live it as a community of equals, where the center is not occupied by those who command, but by those who serve.
Today, that desire is not theoretical. It is perceived in many believers who, far from the noise, live their faith from commitment, simplicity, and co-responsibility. Lay people who do not wait for permission to be Church, who exercise their common priesthood, though they are not always recognized. Who sustain communities, accompany, serve… while, in general, they continue to be considered secondary.
And there appears one of the great current contradictions: lay involvement is requested, but their leading role is feared. They are invited to collaborate, but not to decide. They are shown the door, but with conditions. Because fundamentally the fear persists: the fear that the reins might slip from the hands of those who have too much identified the Church with their own position.
But the Gospel dismantles that approach once again.
Jesus does not organize a structure to control it, but a community to share it. He washes his disciples’ feet and says: “I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you” (Jn 13,15). There is no gesture more clear: Christian authority is not imposed, it kneels.
For this reason, perhaps the moment has come to accept an uncomfortable truth: if a certain form of Church is dying, it is not necessarily a loss. It can actually be a new birth.
Because what is dying is not the Gospel. What is exhausted is religion, which sidelines the Gospel and makes it unrecognizable.
And what can be born—if space is allowed—is something closer to its origin: a poor Church, simple, fraternal, without “sects” to protect itself in, without discourses that justify everything, without that attitude of those who are never scandalized because they have learned to normalize everything.
A Church that does not convert the sacred into routine or into business. That remembers that gesture of Jesus: “Do not make my Father’s house a marketplace” (Jn 2,16). That understands that the sign is part of the message.
A Church that does not fear losing power, because it knows that its strength is not in rituals. That does not fear becoming small, because the Gospel was never a matter of size, but of truth.
“Whoever wants to save their life will lose it” (Mt 16,25). That word remains today a warning and an opportunity. Clinging to structures, privileges, and securities can be the quickest way to lose what is essential.
In contrast, stripping away—as Christ did—opens the door to something new.
In the end, the question is not whether the Church loses influence, but whether it recovers its soul. Not whether it maintains its form, but whether it becomes faithful to its origin again.
Because the Church is not of the hierarchs. The Church is the people of God. And in that people—in the simple, in those who seek, in those who serve without fanfare—another way of being Church is already beating with life.
Perhaps smaller. Perhaps more fragile. But also, much closer to the Gospel.