German Christianity: The Downfall.

Christianity’s way in Germany.

 

 

“Christianity in Germany is ideologically bankrupt”.

“More people between Flensburg [in the extreme north] and Oberammergau [in the extreme south] believe in UFO’s than in the Last Judgement. Welcome to Diaspora Germany”.

“…the last socialized and actively Christian generation will soon be exiting the workforce, and dead within three decades. Then the facade of the Church, too, will crumble. Behind it, a minority will become visible – a minority not much larger than the community of Jehova’s Witnesses”.

“…Wherever the Church does not base herself upon timeless, incontrovertible truth, she reveals herself to be purely man-made. Political programs should be “relevant to the times,” entertainment programming, too; but a religion must take command of absolute truths – or it is no religion at all”.

“Faith requires a pinch of naivete, the readiness to give up control and open oneself to the Incomprehensible. Groping and hoping. No wonder that many find this increasingly difficult in a world which is set upon industrially reorganizing the last untouched domains of being: sexuality, love, birth, death. Total control, complete autocracy over one’s own life is in trend. A more inhospitable breeding ground for faith is barely conceivable”.

 

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A reader has signaled that there would be an interesting blog post on “The Radical Catholic”, but without indication of the exact topic of said post.

Doesn’t matter, as I clicked my way there and found a pearl called “Church in Crisis: Diaspora Germany”.

The original article, a longish piece appeared on the prestigious (if often anti-Catholic) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, was entirely translated into English by the blog author. You have read some of its paragraphs above.

The article is a beautifully pained (and painful) description of an issue often touched on this blog: the progressive disappearance of Christian (and specifically: Catholic) thinking under a varnish of Christianity that is still there, but is more and more relegated to social custom and cultural tradition rather than being, well, faith, or what one believes.

Some of the figures mentioned there are shocking (mass attendance has apparently decreased 10% in only one year. 2013-2014 were the years of the “scandal” in the diocese of Limburg, but again this says a lot about the mentality of many churchgoers), and some people mentioned in the article are also shocking (though the shocking events narrated happened, it must be said, a long time ago).

The picture is, though, clear: a country on the way to exiting Christianity, as the last generation of Christians was replaced by a generation of my-own-way Christians and now rapidly giving way to a generation of I-am-my-own-god non-Christians. The Chancellor, the immortal culona inchiavabile Angela Merkel (no, I will not translate this), has the gut to call herself Christian and support civil partnerships for perverts, though she tries to save some face with the few Christians really left by, say, denying the same perverts some tax advantages, as in: it’s not sin, provided it doesn’t cost me money. This, at least, the last time I looked. Merkel would be a rather good weathervane, if the size of her backside would not stand in the way.

I invite you to follow the link, or directly duckduckgo the article. Your time will be well spent. Not only will you find there a tragic description of what is happening in Germany, but you will – minus the Kirchensteuer – easily be able to make a parallel with your own Country.

I disagree with the author on only one point: the difficulty to cope with elaborate liturgy for the man not culturally prepared to it. I do not know about Lutherans, but Catholic liturgy has, when it was properly made, never failed to inspire poor miners, humble factory workers, or even illiterate peasants. It is, in case, purely the arrogance of our time that compels everyone to abandon every pursuit which does not promise immediate satisfaction. But if a man has such a reaction the issue is his own thinking, not the liturgy. 

Still, a stellar article, and it deserves some praise that the FAZ has decided to publish it.

A prayer for both the author of the article and the translator are certainly in order.

M