What is it like to be religious in Europe?

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If people took history a bit more seriously they’d know France isn’t going secular. France has been secular since the French Revolution starting on the 1780’s. So it’s been secular for about 220 years. During that time there have been periods when it actually persecuted the Church. Many Catholic clergy and religious fled to England during those times.

Of course people can evangelise in the UK. Only JWs, Mormons, and various protestant fundamentalists groups do so. I’ve never known Catholics, Anglicans or mainstream Protestants going door-to-door. Do Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and other mainstream Protestant churches go round doing door-to-door evangelisation in the USA?

The survey which started this thread, how does it collect its data? I’d be really interested to know that.

I think it also depends on what you’re looking at. Anglican churches, are they full? I don’t know because I’m a Catholic and I don’t go to CofE on Sundays. From what I can CofE and Anglicanism is tearing itself apart over issues such as the ordination of women and the ordination of homoesexuals. Catholic churches seem to be full although it’s always the older generation. Why are Catholics staying away? I suppose traditionalists will tell us its because of the post-Vatican II changes in the liturgy. I suspect it’s due to deeper sociological changes in society at large. If we’re not just considering Catholicism and Anglicanism many Protestant churches in this country are thriving. I blame this partly on our priests. All we seem to get from our priests are watered down wishy-washy versions of the faith. May be if they were to stand up and be counted and teach the true faith then perhaps more people would come back to Church. As it is now liturgical abuses are allowed to occur unchallenged, we’re not taught about sin, evil, the devil, and hell so who’s going to worry about their soul and go to confession we’ve all got a one-way first class ticket booked to heaven these days. If you use contraception we seem to have a policy if you don’t tell I won’t. I can’t recall the last time I heard a priest saying abortion = murder!

Many non-Christians are practising their faiths. So perhaps it’s the more reserved nature of British people that affects surveys on religion. We tend not to wear our religion on our sleeves. Plus our last government set a trend where “we don’t do God”. Even though the Prime Minister Tony Blair went to Mass every Sunday.

I’d like to see a survey done which perhaps asked people not whether they were atheist or not (I suspect more people in the UK might say yes than Americans) but which asked whether people regularly went to church Sunday after Sunday.
 
Kaninchen said:
I think Brits learned their lesson with ‘The Commonwealth’, so exported as many seriously religious people as possible to the Americas. 😃
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Yes, Lord Protector Cromwell wasn’t exactly a poster boy either for religious tolerance or just governance, was he?

And his breathtakingly arrogant declaration in my country that those who were Catholic (regardless of origins) were ‘Irish’ and those who were Protestant (regardless of origins) were ‘English’ left us with problems we’re still trying to deal with.
 
Yellow_Belle said:
Yes, Lord Protector Cromwell wasn’t exactly a poster boy either for religious tolerance or just governance, was he?

And his breathtakingly arrogant declaration in my country that those who were Catholic (regardless of origins) were ‘Irish’ and those who were Protestant (regardless of origins) were ‘English’ left us with problems we’re still trying to deal with.
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The peculiar thing about people like Cromwell is that the awful things they did often give an excuse for people to ignore the fact that the people they replaced were pretty awful as well - you get the same thing in Russia, where there are people who talk about Nicholas II as if he’d been something other than petty, cruel and pretty useless.

The strange thing is that, while Cromwell was an absolute monster in what he did in Ireland, for Jews he was something of a ‘good thing’ because he allowed Jews back into the country after we’d been expelled in the 13th Century (admittedly because he saw it as part of encouraging ‘The Second Coming’).
 
Happy_B said:
England - from my observation of a few years:)
  • There is a strange tradition in almost every catholic church in England, that there are daily masses at 10am - I’ve been always wondering for whom they are??? For students who are at school? For 9-5 workers who are at work? For whom then? For grandmas’ and grandpas’ perhaps. Well, why are we then wondering that the young generation in the Uk doesn’t want to go to church? 🤷 Maybe the church in the UK could re-think the plan and become more approachable…
  • Confessions available for half an hour on Saturday
  • PEOPLE DON’T REALLY GO FOR CONFESSION AND YET RECEIVE THE HOLY COMMUNION - I have been told this by many people who even laughed about it saying that people don’t go for confession anymore and that many people do it - this is quite shocking! When you go for a confession on Saturday there might be1-2 people waiting in the queue!!! And you see masses go for communion…
  • I counted 15 people present at the holy day of obligation mass (All saints) at one of the biggest churches in Brighton (city of 150.000) - I could not believe it with my own eyes when I compared it with my little town in Slovakia of 15.000 people where during this kind of a mass you can’t breath because there’s not much air left for everyone in the church and you’re happy that you stand on one toe:D
If there are any questions I will happily answer:)
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I don’t see that many people at confession in my little corner of the world. It seems this practice is not limited to England. Cafeteria Catholicism is hurting these people and they don’t see it and don’t want to hear about it either. Generally I see older folks going to confession in our parish. I went to another church because I missed our time and the same situation existed.
 
Kaninchen said:
The peculiar thing about people like Cromwell is that the awful things they did often give an excuse for people to ignore the fact that the people they replaced were pretty awful as well - you get the same thing in Russia, where there are people who talk about Nicholas II as if he’d been something other than petty, cruel and pretty useless.

The strange thing is that, while Cromwell was an absolute monster in what he did in Ireland, for Jews he was something of a ‘good thing’ because he allowed Jews back into the country after we’d been expelled in the 13th Century (admittedly because he saw it as part of encouraging ‘The Second Coming’).
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Thanks, Kaninchen. I didn’t know that about Cromwell and the Jews - very interesting point.
 
Kaninchen said:
I think Brits learned their lesson with ‘The Commonwealth’, so exported as many seriously religious people as possible to the Americas. 😃
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Yes. America got the religious ones while Australia got the criminals. Far be it from me to decide who got the better deal. 😃

rossum
 
rossum said:
Yes. America got the religious ones while Australia got the criminals. Far be it from me to decide who got the better deal. 😃

rossum
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😃

As an aside - the thing about the ‘criminals’ was that a high proportion of them were transported for things like stealing a loaf of bread. The idea of Australia being settled by criminals (ie large numbers of seriously naughty people) was a bit of a myth, wasn’t it?

More a case of settling a continent via forced labour.
 
Matthew_Holford said:
If people took history a bit more seriously they’d know France isn’t going secular. France has been secular since the French Revolution starting on the 1780’s. So it’s been secular for about 220 years. During that time there have been periods when it actually persecuted the Church. Many Catholic clergy and religious fled to England during those times.

Of course people can evangelise in the UK. Only JWs, Mormons, and various protestant fundamentalists groups do so. I’ve never known Catholics, Anglicans or mainstream Protestants going door-to-door. Do Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and other mainstream Protestant churches go round doing door-to-door evangelisation in the USA?

The survey which started this thread, how does it collect its data? I’d be really interested to know that.

I think it also depends on what you’re looking at. Anglican churches, are they full? I don’t know because I’m a Catholic and I don’t go to CofE on Sundays. From what I can CofE and Anglicanism is tearing itself apart over issues such as the ordination of women and the ordination of homoesexuals. Catholic churches seem to be full although it’s always the older generation. Why are Catholics staying away? I suppose traditionalists will tell us its because of the post-Vatican II changes in the liturgy. I suspect it’s due to deeper sociological changes in society at large. If we’re not just considering Catholicism and Anglicanism many Protestant churches in this country are thriving. I blame this partly on our priests. All we seem to get from our priests are watered down wishy-washy versions of the faith. May be if they were to stand up and be counted and teach the true faith then perhaps more people would come back to Church. As it is now liturgical abuses are allowed to occur unchallenged, we’re not taught about sin, evil, the devil, and hell so who’s going to worry about their soul and go to confession we’ve all got a one-way first class ticket booked to heaven these days. If you use contraception we seem to have a policy if you don’t tell I won’t. I can’t recall the last time I heard a priest saying abortion = murder!

Many non-Christians are practising their faiths. So perhaps it’s the more reserved nature of British people that affects surveys on religion. We tend not to wear our religion on our sleeves. Plus our last government set a trend where “we don’t do God”. Even though the Prime Minister Tony Blair went to Mass every Sunday.

I’d like to see a survey done which perhaps asked people not whether they were atheist or not (I suspect more people in the UK might say yes than Americans) but which asked whether people regularly went to church Sunday after Sunday.
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Agreed and I also dont feel any threat from Muslims ‘taking over’ Europe. Only they know what is in their hearts, but the ones I have met seem quite assimilated in the culture, or are at least respectful of it. I have never seen or felt a Muslim looking at me with disapproval because how I dress may not necessarily always be how a Muslim would dress. I can say with certainty however that it was an American evangelical who chose to comment patronisingly and even a bit creepily on my choice of dress.
 
It is good to hear other people’s responses to how Muslims are in European countries.

I saw a video last night of a group of those kind of Muslims protesting the Pope in England…as well as the regular anti-Catholic and atheistic Britishers…and they all had their behaviors fall back on them. I read various Muslim responses saying how these factions in Islam make the rest of them look bad and cause others to fear them.

I know the American IRS has those that are at Mass seeing if the priests will endorse a particular political candidate. I know that in South Africa, an Irish Roman Catholic priest told me the government was there at his Masses and he had to be careful.

When the clergy are bound like that, it is up to the lay people to continue. Reading the loss of faith in Europe, I can see why P Benedict is referring to small Christian communities being the norm…but it looks like Europe.

We have Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in parishes all over the country. And where the faith is small like here, those who are active make national impact. It seems unbelief can be turned into good and feed faith in places like this.

I am praying all the time for my country. I am praying for the restoration of faith in Europe. I think just having alot of babies in Europe to off set Muslim numbers is not going to do it. Those who are Catholic and/or Protestant need to build bridges of faith with the law abiding and reasonable Muslims.
 
The Australians come across to me as pretty happy and kind people…they were most hospitable to the American troops during WWII.
 
Kaninchen said:
😃

As an aside - the thing about the ‘criminals’ was that a high proportion of them were transported for things like stealing a loaf of bread. The idea of Australia being settled by criminals (ie large numbers of seriously naughty people) was a bit of a myth, wasn’t it?

More a case of settling a continent via forced labour.
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A ‘Criminal’ is anyone the government labels a criminal. I personally know many people who think the way you describe, as though everyone some King says is guilty of a crime must actually be a dangerous criminal. People tend to prefer to have someone else think for them, which is why they trust the government to tell them who to fear.

I just wonder what people in other countries think of the American claim of being the most ‘free’, along with the remark about Australia’s history and how it compares to America, when America happens to have the largest prison population per capita…
 
What about what goes on at Guantanamo Bay?

What is going on at Gitmo? Do you have a warped view of what is going on at gitmo?
 
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