February 14, 2013
the failed evangelizer
Ratzinger has long spoken in stark terms about the dire implications of Europe's shrinking faith. In a much-quoted interview in 2001—when he already wielded enormous influence within the Vatican of John Paul II—Ratzinger posed radical questions about the sustainability of Europe’s Christian identity, citing the German city of Magdeburg, where only 8 percent of the population claimed affiliation to any Christian denomination whatsoever. Beyond force of habit, he asked, what sense did it make to continue claiming that Europe, was still a Christian society? And what implications did that weakening have for the Church as a whole? But he did not advocate despair. Yes, he said, “the mass Church may be something lovely, but it is not necessarily the Church's only way of being.” Europe’s future church “will be reduced in its dimensions,” he admitted—but the rise of humanism, relativism, and atheism, he added, ought to be seen as a reason for Christianity on the continent “to start again.” It was imperative that Christianity not be abandoned, though it did need to be re-booted.more from Philip Jenkins at TNR here.
Posted by Morgan Meis at 08:03 AM | Permalink
Comments
Perhaps your post concerning assholes included evangelizers (I didn't read it), but if not, it should have. There is no other word for someone who gets on a bus or train I am riding and harangues me and the rest of the inmates at great length about how much better our lives would be if we accepted Christ as our personal (not generic) savior.
I don't need a personal savior, I'm perfectly fine without one, and what I need right at that moment is a little peace and quiet. I'm sure a lot of Europeans feel that way about His Holiness, and certainly a lot of Americans feel that way about his colleagues in this country. As the benediction of the hippie era put it, "May the Baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind."
Posted by: JonJ | Feb 14, 2013 10:59:46 PM
Rat-Nazi didn't do anything to help his dwindling flock. His words and his policies only inflamed more people to abandon the Catholic Church...And shielding all his Pedophile Priests, from prosecution for their crimes, only accellerated the process. I just hope I live long enough to withness the taring down of the churches...
Posted by: Curmudgeon | Feb 15, 2013 6:33:13 AM
The decline of faith is only in Western Europe and Eastern Europe and Russia, after many decades of forced atheism, is returning to religion. Of course, excepting Poland, it is the Orthodox Church (and not the Catholic Church)that is having a renaissance.
The Catholic Church, even before capitalism, was global; the Church is losing the war in the Western Europe, it is persecuted in the Muslim countries, but it is winning in Africa, South America. USA is -even in the multitude of cults - a religious country. The next Pope could be an african.
In the same time the new generations of Muslims of the secular Western Europe are now much more religious than the previous generations of their parents.
The Muslim countries are very religious or even theocracies.
If a Jacobin from an atheist of the French Revolution would be happy in this world? I believe that he will be not; the world is still painted/tainted by religion.
“Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
― Jon Stewart
Posted by: mirel | Feb 15, 2013 1:15:53 PM
@JonJ: I've always liked that quote, and cannot find who first said it. Anyone know?
Posted by: Alice de Tocqueville | Feb 15, 2013 1:43:24 PM
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