Diversity in Unity and the Extraordinary

Diversity, or at least diversity in unity, seems to be a problem for Catholics of a certain generation, I don't think it is just writers of the Tablet who want paint everything in the dullest of beige hues, it extends to most Catholics, we want to make the Church in our own image and likeness. Traddies want the Church of the 1950s and Liberals the Church of 1970s.

Both are golden calves, and both rather dishonest, both are betrayal of the present. The Church has always been diverse, the East has always had a different expression of the One faith of from that of the West. Even in the West we have always had different schools of theology, Thomism and Scotism are obvious examples, we have had different schools of sprituality, marked by different devotions and formed by different "Rites" of different religious orders and localities, before Trent these were even more marked and often quite spectacular and the local Gallican rites that lasted until the French revolution contained various odd peculiarities. Such differences formed a strong local Church that was obviously part of the Catholic Church.
The danger today is that the theology of the local Church can so easily develop its own momentum, as we see in Ireland and Austria.

Christianity, Catholicism, depends on legitimate tensions, unity in diversity; in the past these tensions depended for a large part on religious orders; yet their own numbers and distinct charisms have diminished greatly since the Vatican Council. The parish was always supposed to provide the bread and butter of religious life, religious communities added something extra, specialising in particular works  and ministries, as diverse as caring for lepers or teaching in universities, giving retreats or missions or evangelising nations.

 Today the "new movements" offer what the religious orders previously offered. Under Bishops like Dominique Rey in Frejus Toulon were such groups have been welcomed the Church has flourished the Church grows. Indeed where there is legitimate diversity the Church seems healthy. In England we seem quite suspicious of such "new movements", and to those who are members of the them there seems to be an impression that those in authority seem to want to suppress or drag them into ordinary diocesan life. Rome, or at least the Pope, wants to encourage them, the whole point of establishing the Roman Rite under two forms is part of this, so too the founding of the Ordinariate.

These are not for everyone but they exist for a particular function within the Church, not just serving the needs "of those that like or want that sort of thing".  They have a prophetic role,  to challenge the blandness of ordinary parish life, to force us to be open to the extraodinary, to expand our sense of what is truly Catholic. The absence of this diversity, invariably means an absence of self-evaluation and criticism and a self-perpetuation of magic-circalism.