Is Christianity REALLY Dead In Europe?

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interesting article. Some good news in it certainly, and some bad news (Catholics leaving the Church to become fundamentalists). However the article didn’t coincide at all with my experiences in Rome in the fall of 2001. The churches on Sunday were empty, except for a few old people and tourists (the Vatican was an exception). most Italians my age struck me as even more secular and materialistic than American 20-somethings. The culture reflected an appalling lack of Christian values - rampant sexual harrassment of women, extremely immodest dress (especially by the men!!), soft-core porn on TV and displayed in newstands, obsession with appearnece and thinness, and overall objectification of women. Obviously we have these problems in the US but they were much more pronounced in Italy.
 
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Minerva:
interesting article. Some good news in it certainly, and some bad news (Catholics leaving the Church to become fundamentalists). However the article didn’t coincide at all with my experiences in Rome in the fall of 2001. The churches on Sunday were empty, except for a few old people and tourists (the Vatican was an exception). most Italians my age struck me as even more secular and materialistic than American 20-somethings. The culture reflected an appalling lack of Christian values - rampant sexual harrassment of women, extremely immodest dress (especially by the men!!), soft-core porn on TV and displayed in newstands, obsession with appearnece and thinness, and overall objectification of women. Obviously we have these problems in the US but they were much more pronounced in Italy.
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I agree. I was there on 9/11/2001. The next day in Rome there were thousands of signs supporting the US, but the churches were empty on Sunday. I had the feeling the signs were a ‘feel good’ thing for us tourist but we did not get many prayers. Just my feeling.
 
My grandparents lived in a small town, which was growing steadily smaller. Some one remarked that the town was dying. My father replied that it died 50 years before when the cheese factory closed. What we were seeing was the onset of rigor mortis.
 
I’ve found Ireland to be a nice bastion of Catholicism. Outside of that mess called Dublin, the churches were well attended on Sunday.

There is a decided lack of vocations there I understand.

Poland is doing a great job in picking up the ‘slack’ on that though. Taking Ireland’s place as the world’s leading exporter of clergy.
 
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Minerva:
The churches on Sunday were empty, except for a few old people and tourists (the Vatican was an exception).
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This is one of the points the article was making. You are not finding these new believers in their churches–they are going to retreat centers, on traditional pilgrimages, and involved in lay spirituality groups like Focolare and the Neo-catechumenal Way. omething in their parishes is not meeting their needs.
 
Hi Lance,

That’s really neat that we were both in Rome on the same day, albeit such a horrific one. Did you happen to see the Pope’s address in St Peter’s square the next morning? (I was there)

re: Poland,

indeed it is one of the few places in the West were Catholicism is really flourishing. My husband was actually inspired to convert to Catholicism while in Poland from observing the piety of the people, especially the young. He joined the Church on April Fools Day 2001 and about a year later met me! God is good!
 
I was actually pleasantly surprised by how crowded the churches I visited in France were. I was in Lyon for a couple of months in 1998 and visited a number of churches. I would say that on Sundays they were “moderately full”. I concur that the congregations seemed to be mostly old people, although there was one church that seemed to have more younger people and families.

I was also in southern Germany a couple of years ago, and visited a church in a small town in Bavaria on a Sunday. It was totally full, again with mostly older people (interestingly, they self-segregated with women on the left and men on the right, which I didn’t realize until after Mass started and I was on the wrong side!)

Some things generally struck me as strange though… In Barcelona, I can recall being just outside of a beautiful old church, and there was a newsstand selling pornographic magazines and postcards. I generally observed porn to be much more commonplace and “out in the open” than in the U.S., which is a shame.

It sounds to me like a lot of this began following World War I and II, with a lot of people feeling that God was either irrelevant or had abandoned them during those terrible times. And thus people didn’t pass on the faith to their children. Some of the youths today rediscover it for themselves, which is good. For many of the others, I think it is just like a cultural background noise.
 
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Fidelis:
This is one of the points the article was making. You are not finding these new believers in their churches–they are going to retreat centers, on traditional pilgrimages, and involved in lay spirituality groups like Focolare and the Neo-catechumenal Way. omething in their parishes is not meeting their needs.
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All of these non-practicing Catholics who nonetheless are active in other devotions may legitimately feel that their parishes are failing to meet one or the other spiritual need. HOWEVER, they are ignoring their need for the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist. They are trying to live a Christian life while distancing themselves from its source and summit.
 
Since I posted on a similar topic, I’ll try not to repeat too much. The chief thing to remember is that Europe has undergone the same social upheaval and been affected by the same pernicious secularism as we have here in the United States, so it should not be surprising that Christianity in Europe has faced some problems. Also, we must remember that most European countries were monarchies for the greatest part of their existence and therefore always had an official state religion until recently (for all I know, some still do). The principle of church/state separation that is one of the very foundations of American government was an alien concept in most of Europe even after the monarchies fell. Therefore, what we perceive as a general attitude against religion is more accurately anti-clericalism or anti-elitism, since the hierarchy of Christianity in Europe was often closely aligned with the state or the governing elite and resented for the same reasons.

We also must remember that it wasn’t so long ago that we American Catholics were attracted to all sorts of new religious expressions and threw out many of our traditions by the barrelful. We were also subjected and sometimes susceptible to the prosletyzing of the fundamentalist Protestants (the Mormons & Jehovah’s Witnesses still creep around my predominantly Catholic neighborhood). We have already experienced the most diversity in terms of non-Catholic and non-Christian immigration and that is only just starting to happen in Europe to a much lesser degree. So, if all of these things happened here and our religion still thrives, why do we expect it to be different in Europe? The “new springtime” may only be just beginning there, but don’t underestimate the Europeans. They want the Truth as much as anybody, but they will get to it in a different way.

As for the reports of wholesale Protestant conversions in Europe and Latin America, I would be highly suspicious of statistics. My family in Rome knows of Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons and they report that most Italians just laugh at them and consider them outcasts. If you look closely enough, you will find that the success of prosletyzing in Latin America is illusory: it’s considered the social equivalent of a green card, and once they emigrate to the U.S., they give it up.

Also, for the record I am a single female and the worst harassment I ever experienced in Italy was one very lame pinch on the subway a few years ago. Italian men are generally a lot more courteous than Americans.
 
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Brendan:
I’ve found Ireland to be a nice bastion of Catholicism. Outside of that mess called Dublin, the churches were well attended on Sunday.

There is a decided lack of vocations there I understand. .
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There is a decided lack of vocations both here in Scotland and in Ireland. The Church in Ireland is still reeling from the child abuse scandals - as one priest here put it ‘The Church in Ireland is in its tenth year of deep crisis, I’m surprised things aren’t worse.’

Daily mass has been well attended at those I’ve gone to across there but the age profile is at the higher end. Like most places, the future looks uncertain.
 
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JGC:
There is a decided lack of vocations both here in Scotland and in Ireland. The Church in Ireland is still reeling from the child abuse scandals - as one priest here put it ‘The Church in Ireland is in its tenth year of deep crisis, I’m surprised things aren’t worse.’
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I am really feeling out of it, but I didn’t know there was a child abuse scandal in Ireland and Scotland? I guess I was so focused on what was happening here that I never read about anything out of the country.
 
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Fitz:
I am really feeling out of it, but I didn’t know there was a child abuse scandal in Ireland and Scotland? I guess I was so focused on what was happening here that I never read about anything out of the country.
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Just to clarify, the scandal crisis is in Ireland. We don’t have a big problem here, historically this has been a predominately presbyterian country since the reformation . In Ireland the schools there historically, in the main, were run by various orders.
 
Bobby Jim:
I was also in southern Germany a couple of years ago, and visited a church in a small town in Bavaria on a Sunday. It was totally full, again with mostly older people (interestingly, they self-segregated with women on the left and men on the right, which I didn’t realize until after Mass started and I was on the wrong side!)
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That’s quite true. Men and women used to always sit separated in church in German parishes, it’s a custom that goes waaaaaaaay back to the early days of the Church even to the Synagogue. You seldom see it any more, perhaps in rural areas…Bavaria is VERY conservative. Germans even brought the custom to this country. My first parish in Virginia still had the men and women seat separated…they didn’t know why they just still did it becausethey always had…
 
In much of Europe I would have to say that Christianity no longer plays a prominent role in the lives of many there. The sacraments are the life blood of the Church, and if the parishes are empty every sunday you know there must be a problem. And when there are only 8 seminary students in Ireland expected to be ordained in 2004 compared to 193 only in 1990, there is definitely a crisis. iht.com/articles/528918.htm

And here is another article which highlights a true lack of faith among many Europeans and their attitudes toward Christianity, including in Italy. evolvefish.com/freewrite/EuropeRises.html
 
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Steph700:
Why would they need prayers specifically b/c they joined the European Union? :confused:
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The Holy Father said, “As Malta takes its rightful place in the European Union, it has a vital role to play in upholding the profoundly Christian identity of this continent.” That is quite a challenge. I for one pray that the Maltese people be up to it. They may seem like David before Goliath. May they be as faithful.

I have relatives there, whose communication with me by letter and e-mail express their strong and beautiful faith. What I’ve recently read of Europe’s diminishing Catholicity saddens me. Needless to say, there is much to pray for. I hope that saints like St. Therese of Lisieux, St.Joan of Arc, St.John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Margaret of Clitherow, St. Thomas a Becket, St.Thomas More, St. Patrick, et al, shake the heavens with their intercession and rain down a resurgence of the Faith.

I still remember the crowded churches in the Philippines. In 1994 at a conference on the family in Manila, I heard their cardinals and bishops plead for prayer, especially the Rosary, as the told of the attacks their society was under, especially in the areas of life and the family. They committed their nation to the Two Hearts. I would tuck the whole of humanity under the mantles of Jesus King of All Nations and Mary Mother and Queen of All Nations.

The feast of the Queenship of Mary will be here on August 22, a great time to pray.
 
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