Ecclesia semper reformanda est


Ecclesia semper reformanda est is a phrase first greatly popularized by Karl Barth in 1947, allegedly deriving from a saying of St. Augustine. It refers to the conviction of certain Reformed Protestant theologians that the church must continually re-examine itself in order to maintain its purity of doctrine and practice. An early example is Jodocus van Lodenstein, Beschouwinge van Zion , Amsterdam, 1674–78, who claims the "truth… that also in the Church there is always much to reform".
A variation of the term, Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda, also used by Karl Barth, refers to the desire of an "erudite man" cited by Jodocus van Lodenstein that the Church should not be called "Reformata", but "Reformanda". It is widely but informally used in Reformed and Presbyterian churches today.
The first term was used by Hans Küng and other ecclesiastical reformers of the Roman Catholic Church who were caught up in the spirit of Vatican II of the 1960s.
The Catholic Church used the idea in the document Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council, nr. 8: "Dum vero Christus, "sanctus, innocens, impollutus", peccatum non novit, sed sola delicta populi repropitiare venit, Ecclesia in proprio sinu peccatores complectens, sancta simul et semper purificanda, poenitentiam et renovationem continuo prosequitur": "While Christ, holy, innocent and undefiled knew nothing of sin, but came to expiate only the sins of the people, the Church, embracing in its bosom sinners, at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, always follows the way of penance and renewal."
This latter usage appears in a 2009 pastoral letter by the US bishop R. Walker Nickless that encourages a hermeneutic of continuity in Catholic teaching and practice.
The phrase is also put into the mouth of the fictional Pope Gelasius III in Mary Doria Russell's 1998 novel Children of God.