The future of the Church lies with modernising it and snapping out of the old mentality that it has some "privileged position", Archbishop Paul Cremona stressed yesterday.

While statistics show falling numbers of churchgoers, people should not be disheartened. The Church, he said, is concentrating on small communities rather than on the masses.

Mgr Cremona was speaking at a press conference on his arrival from the three-week Synod of Bishops held in Rome on the theme The Word Of God In The Life And Mission Of The Church.

During his address to the General Assembly, he described the fact that many Maltese Catholics were nostalgic about how the Church used to operate in the past as "a stumbling block" for the programme of new evangelisation.

"Many of our faithful still live with a sense of nostalgia and compare the present situation to the model of the Church of some 30 to 40 years ago. Since the Catholic Church has not retained the privileged position it had then, they live in an atmosphere of shock when the Church, or its pastors, are challenged. Many times they stand in fear of speaking openly before this often hostile culture.

"We need to come out of this traumatic experience to enter into a new evangelisation. We have to help the faithful recognise that this kind of Church does not exist anymore and it cannot be proposed again in this changed world. We cannot continue comparing our reality to that reality," he said.

Asked about this part of his speech, Mgr Cremona said the fact that the number of churchgoers was falling was undeniable, so a change in mentality was needed. He said the Church had to concentrate on small communities in each parish and use people to bring the message of the Lord closer to the people.

"We have to propose a new model of the Church and the model which corresponds most to today's reality is the primitive Christian community as described in chapters two and four of the Acts of the Apostles and brought to life in the other writings of the New Testament. We have to compare the Church today to, and shape it on, that community."

He said that, just like a person who had a specific football team at heart and unleashed this passion when this team was playing, the same had to happen with one's faith.

The model of the Church to be proposed should be made up of small communities where the Word of the Lord and the Breaking of the Bread could be shared through the personal experiences of those who had encountered the Lord.

"This is where the future of the Church lies," he said.

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