The early Church found it's way because those first Christians had the passion that flowed from their own intimate experience of Christ. Without that passion, they never would have had the staying power to grow the movement.

The question for this generation is how do we sustain a church that has become unwieldy and, in some ways, detached from the passion of the first disciples. Some are looking for their passion in forms and traditions while others are seeking to recapture the original revolutionary spirit of the early Church. I'm skeptical that those two paths will ever merge.

Pope Francis seems convicted that the salvation of the Church lies in communion with the poor and that anything that gets in the way of that can be jettisoned. I think he's right. And the good news is that none of us needs to wait for somebody else, least of all the hierarchy, to take the lead.