Ecclesia semper reformanda and purificanda. The Church is always in need of being reformed and purified, because all the baptized - starting with me - are always in need of constant conversion from sin and a deeper conformity to Christ crucified and Risen. But what does this process look like?
Our long history, I believe, reveals at least four characteristics that are found in all authentically Catholic reform of the Church, and if any of these is missing, then the effort to reform the Church usually ends up deforming the Church instead. All authentic reform of the Church is 1) christocentric, 2) scriptural, 3) liturgical and sacramental, and 4) ecclesial.
When we perceive that the Church is need of reform, our attention is naturally focused on the Church and her structures, but that is the wrong place to look. Authentic reformation is always christocentric rather than ecclesiocentric because the form of the Church is given by the Lord Jesus Christ and no other. Drawing nearer to Christ crucified and Risen is how the Church is reformed because God “gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:11-16)
Authentic reform must also always be grounded in and proceed from Holy Scripture not in the conclusions drawn from human experience or philosophy. The Gospel is the supernatural gift of divine revelation, and “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17) No human wisdom can be a norming norm for what has been revealed in the Word of God written in Holy Scripture, and anyone who claims an insight into human nature or the life of grace that contradicts what is revealed in Holy Scripture thereby excludes himself from continuing participation in authentically Catholic reform of the Church. German Synodal Path, I’m looking at you.
Authentic reform must also be liturgical and sacramental because the eternal plan of salvation is a sacramental economy which is made present to people of every time and place in the public prayer of the Church. Every step in the Protestant Reformation since the 16th century has diminished the place of the sacraments in Christian faith and life and has replaced the sacred liturgy with various substitutes meant to fill the gap left by the repudiation of the objective reality of Christ in the sacraments. And that is among the reasons why most of the reform movements of the 16th century deformed rather than reformed the Church. That same misguided approach to ecclesial renewal, however, has found wide purchase in the Catholic Church in the past half century, and the liturgical life of too many parishes is now a preview of purgatory rather than a foretaste of the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. That is also why so many Catholics (even among the minority who still attend Mass) no longer believe in the real presence of the Lord Jesus in the Most Holy Eucharist.
Finally, authentic reform must be genuinely ecclesial rather than individual or eccentric. The Church is the mystical body of Christ, not a social club or NGO, and so all reform in the Church must be in harmony with the entire Church across time and space. The Fathers of the early Church and the saints of all ages have as much a voice in all current deliberations about reforming the Church as do those Christians who happen to be alive right now. The Church is not our property, and we cannot change it, reshape it, reimagine it, or sing it into being as anything other than what it always has been and will be since the Lord Jesus called the Church into being and sent it forth with the Great Commission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and celebrate the sacraments of the New and Eternal Covenant until the end of days.