ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on individuals, some distance, and on the total Church as an organization. It deals with the border, as a membrane surrounding the entire Church. The chapter talks about the permeability of that membrane, about its closedness or openness at various hierarchical levels to influence from the outside. It shows how porous the border has been in the past, how porous it is now, and what we can expect of it in the future. The Church can be depicted organizationally as a triangle, the apex representing the pope and the base all of the laity. In between the two are various levels of the hierarchy, bishops higher in rank than clergy and religious. The perimeter of this triangle, which stands for the border of the organization, is drawn as a solid line to show that, in the period before Vatican II, little influence from outside the Church was entering in.
