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Fr Joe Inguanez, director of the Church research institute Discern, speaks to Mark Wood in the aftermath of its latest census on church attendance, which shows a continuing downward trend. The Sunday Mass census painted a picture of falling attendance stretch‘Church needs a paradigm shift’ in order to reverse dropping attendance
Fr Joe Inguanez, director of the Church research institute Discern, speaks to Mark Wood in the aftermath of its latest census on church attendance, which shows a continuing downward trend. The Sunday Mass census painted a picture of falling attendance stretching into the future. In your introduction to the publication, you speak of the need for the Church to act immediately and not blame “the world”. What sort of action do you think the Church needs to take straightaway? There is no single action which can solve this problem. However, if I were to choose one solution, I think what we need is to change. What the Maltese Church needs is a paradigm shift in its pastoral ministry. However, change always meets resistance. Both individuals and institutions suffer from the law of inertia. There is an urgent need to start a number of processes of re-evangelisation, and in certain cases evangelisation. It is clear from the Gospel that evangelisation took place in a time of religious crisis. This first evangelisation was ushered by a man living in poverty, John the Baptist, who summoned his generation to a ‘metanoia’. This means no less than ‘a change of mind’. This is what repentance... Read more