Zagreb (IKA) — The Croatian Catholic weekly newspaper Glas Koncila in its most recent issue presented an interview with one of the most influential contemporary German theologians, Johann Baptist Metz. In an article entitled “We Must Follow the Path of Lasting Confrontation with Suffering,” this distinguished German theologian presented his views on today’s Catholic Church and its future. At the beginning of the interview, among other things, he warned that the Church and society are suffering today from a crisis of loyalty. He also expressed the fear that the Church should not become a service, adding that it seems that the Church today has a great chance as “a concept of a framework for life rather than a concept for life’s fulfillment.”
In today’s world, notes Metz, a profound crisis of God prevails. “For a long time in our society, there has been a kind of Christian civil religion. Therefore, no one asks questions about God. However, we today have already been living for a long time in a world that understands itself as the world following the death of God. This world is completely peaceful, lacking pathos, and in the classical sense it is not even atheistic. However, no religion can bear such indifference. When the major atheisms still existed, Christianity still knew what it was about,” said the theologian Metz. In his opinion, the cause of the breakdown in Christian ecumenicism is because it does not concentrate on “God’s cross that involves and unites everyone.”

He further states that many things are changing in the Church but “somehow without a plan, so to speak passively, under the anonymous pressure of incomprehensible and undefined relations.” Therefore, he emphasizes that “formed changes and authentic reforms are needed.” Otherwise, the Church is threatened by a great danger that consists of the stabilization of the so-called “civil service Church.” Thus, in Metz’s opinion, there will be a decline in the numbers of people leaving the Church but indifference within the Church will increase. “In the diffuse and confused world, there is an increased need of frameworks for life. Therefore, the Church as a representative of one of the frameworks for life of this world continues to enjoy a reputation. However, what chance does it have as a representative for the formation of life?” asks the German theologian. He therefore emphasizes the importance of the “sensibility of the soul” of the Catholic Church from which it can obtain strength of orientation. The compass of this orientation and the sensibility of the soul, in his words, is “the Church of compassion, the Church that notices the suffering of others and participates in it, the Church of passionate compassion as an expression of God’s passion.” The essence of the Biblical message of God is the receptivity to the suffering of others, and ultimately to the suffering of enemies. Metz emphasizes that the Church, as well as Christianity in general, from the beginning had great difficulties with this basic feeling of suffering in Biblical messages. “A troubling question in the Biblical tradition of the righteousness of those who suffer innocently has been was transformed and reformulated very early and very quickly, actually too quickly, into the question of the salvation of the sinner. The Christian doctrine on salvation overly dramatized the question of guilt and makes the question of suffering excessively relative. Christianity has been transformed from the only religion that was primarily sensitive to suffering to a religion that is primarily sensitive to sin,” said Metz. “Therefore, we must follow the path of lasting compassion, be ready daringly to confront the suffering of the other and to live and celebrate the union and basic projects of compassion, that are not subject to today’s currents of cultivated indifference and apathy and which are opposed to living and which celebrate happiness and love exclusively as narcissistic self-initiative,” said the distinguished German theologian Johann Baptist Metz in his interview with Glas Koncila.