Church as People of God: Conflicting Catholic Views about Who Owns the Church

Michael Sean Winters writes (and see here), 

Democracy inculcates values that are antithetical to those the Church proclaims.

And Irish priest Fr. Michael Commane writes on the following day,

Every baptised person is a member of the church and each one of us has a role to play in the church community. The mission of the church is to make God present in the world and surely that can only be done in the style and the language of the time.

Different groupings within the church might complain and fear that the church might be hijacked. But there is also always the worry that the church could so easily be hijacked by its own clerical class. As Christians we believe that the Spirit of God works in our church. Don't ever forget, the Spirit works in and through all of us. And we owe our loyalty to that Spirit of truth.

Two Catholics, two hot-off-the-press commentaries on what it means to be church, to be the people of God on pilgrimage in the world.  Two radically different implications for what it means to be Catholic today, at this point in history, and, above all, two radically different sets of implications for how the people of God ought to regard their hierarchical leaders and the role those leaders play in representing and claiming ownership of the church.