CrossingOver - Rainer Bucher on The Parish of Tomorrow

Can anyone predict where things are going?  The only thing that is predictable is unpredictability.  So started the keynote by Dr. Rainer Bucher (Chair of Pastoral Theology at the University of Graz).  Dr. Bucher named the changes and challenges ahead for the church in German, vis-vis the parish.  Here are some ideas from my notes - again please appreciate the challenge of listening to a simultaneous translation.

1. Trust in traditional 'steering' instruments such as Canon Law to set the course is declining. And people are trying to regain sovereignty.  The importance of the hierarchy seems to be declining.
2. Following Vatican II the church is finding and understanding itself in context (not lost there) and it is not clear what will happen.  People now have choices and the church needs to understand this.
3. Despite Vatican skepticism, the German church maintians unique structures even as numbers decline.
4. Germany has a strong and independent lay Catholicism. What was a  'ceremonial church.'  is now more of a social church that is well staffed and moving toward church as a net of intensive communities.
5. Due to the decision not to change the rules for ordination, the small personal parish is becoming a thing of the past. One consequence is the change in the role of the ordained who are working at a 'higher' level along with lay ecclesial ministers.  One of the challenges is the liturgy. (Here the translater seemed to be really struggling with the nuances.)  We say the church is the People of God, but the presence of the laity can be seen as a threat.  Who does liturgy?
6. We need to rethink management thinking, hierarchy, mission.  The challenge is to rethink social forms.  We cannot continue forms that are not working.  Can we move toward a pastoral vision that is not clericalized but includes the people of God? 

If we are to keep church in place, Bucher concluded, can we rethink it based on grace?  For Germany this is territorial parishes focused on liturgy as a source of God's gift of grace to us? What is not given to the parish should not be done by the parish.  How do we read the signs of the times?  Challanges?  Rediscover our mission: parish as centered in liturgy, based in charism and the sign of the times... this can be a sign of God's grace.

Bucher pointed at some of the underlying similarities and differences of parish between our two countries. We both face the same decline in numbers and the movement toward clustered or mega-parishes. He said, however, in Germany religion is about power whereas in American it is about religious freedom.  All of this makes sense when read in the context of the history of our seperate countries.