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Il vaut la peine de reprendre à nouveau frais la problématique du remaniement pastoral et de l’aborder du point de vue des motivations théologiques profondes qui l’animent. Car il ne s’agit pas seulement d’une question de planification ou d’organisation, mais bien d’une réforme en acte des modalités de présence de l’Église parmi les hommes. La mission de l’Église ne peut se réduire à une sorte de service bureaucratique : l’objectif des planifications pastorales, quelque visage qu’elles revêtent, doit consister à aider les paroisses à demeurer des communautés chrétiennes vivantes, des lieux réels d’Église.

It is worth taking a fresh look at the problem of pastoral reorganisation and to see it from the perspective of the profound theological motivations that underlie it. For it is not simply a matter of planning or organisation, but rather of a true reform in the ways in which the Church is present among people.A reform such as this engages the question of the “representations” of the Church as an institution, since pastoral units bring with them a certain “rupture” with the traditional images of the geographical network of parishes and present themselves as a “laboratory of innovations” for new representations that can speak to our contemporaries.The mission of the Church cannot be reduced to a sort of bureaucratic service (the “service counter” mentality): the objective of pastoral planning, whatever form it takes, must be to help parishes to remain vital Christian communities, places that are truly Church.