The Francis Factor and the People of God: New Life for the Church

A timely resource for the many institutions in the Catholic Church facing diminishment or seeking rebirth and renewal. Arbuckle develops a cultural-anthropological model of change based on the assumption that individual and collective grief, if not expressed in mourning rituals, suffocates creativity. He then applies this model to what has been happening in the Church since Vatican II, particularly in those institutions and religious expressions that found flower after the Council but have faced different realities in the decades since. Over the past two years, the emergence of Pope Francis as the ritual leader in the Church has allowed suppressed grief to be articulated in a variety of mourning expressions. Consequently, the Church is now experiencing new energy, and opening up to new methods of rebirth and renewal.