THE Age of Ministries is ending… but something more beautiful is going to arise. It will be a new beginning, a restored Church in a new era. In fact, it was Pope Benedict XVI who hinted at this very thing while he was still a cardinal:
The Church will be reduced in its dimensions, it will be necessary to start again. However, from this test a Church would emerge that will have been strengthened by the process of simplification it experienced, by its renewed capacity to look within itself… the Church will be numerically reduced. —Cardinal Ratzinger (POPE BENEDICT XVI), God and the World, 2001; interview with Peter Seewald