Being Christian in Western Europe at the beginning of the 21st century #1

Today we do find a lot of people, in our regions, who say they are Christian and with that mostly mean Roman Catholic, but nearly never go to worship services like mass.

The majority of Europe’s Christians are non-practicing, but they differ from religiously unaffiliated people in their views on God, attitudes toward Muslims and immigrants, and opinions about religion’s role in society.

Western Europe, where Protestant Christianity originated and Catholicism has been based for most of its history, has become one of the world’s most secular regions. Although the vast majority of adults say they were baptized, today many do not describe themselves as Christians. Some say they gradually drifted away from religion, stopped believing in religious teachings, or were alienated by scandals or church positions on social issues, according to a major new Pew Research Center survey of religious beliefs and practices in Western Europe.

Yet most adults surveyed still do consider themselves Christians, even if they seldom go to church. Indeed, the survey shows that non-practicing Christians (defined, for the purposes of this report, as people who identify as Christians, but attend church services no more than a few times per year) make up the biggest share of the population across the region. In every country except Italy, they are more numerous than church-attending Christians (those who go to religious services at least once a month). In the United Kingdom, for example, there are roughly three times as many non-practicing Christians (55%) as there are church-attending Christians (18%) defined this way.

Non-practicing Christians also outnumber the religiously unaffiliated population (people who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” sometimes called the “nones”) in most of the countries surveyed.¹ And, even after a recent surge in immigration from the Middle East and North Africa, there are many more non-practicing Christians in Western Europe than people of all other religions combined (Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.).

The 10% for Belgium is more 8%, where the Roman Catholic Churches are less filled and of the protestant churches the Pentecostals get most people in  their church-services. Where we can find most people going to a religious service is by the Islamic community where the garage mosques and official mosques may count on a very good attendance on Friday night.

Different assessment criteria and a new language to be found for communicating the faith

Inside of the Roman Catholic Church in Újkér (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After some questions put to him by the Synod fathers regarding the working method of the meetings, Tuesday the 6th of October 2015, Pope Francis delivered a spontaneous, last-minute speech to the Synod on the family which began meeting on Monday, clarifying that the question of remarried divorcees is not the only issue the assembly is dealing with.

Last year the cardinals had already a extraordinary gathering which was fairly rare in the 50 years of synodal history.  His two speeches at that Extraordinary Synod last year, along with the relation finale, are the official documents that this assembly delivered to this year’s assembly, which will be working in continuity with the previous one.

The cardinals had time enough to hear how the public and the press reacted, though some are much convinced nothing shall change, and certainly not in the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church which they considered to be a Church guided by the Holy Spirit.

The daily Vatican press is not afraid to let us know that some differences in opinion emerged between those who are more concerned about preserving Catholic teaching and those who underline the need for dialogue with the world.

For years it has been known that there were also many homosexuals under the clergy and that they too took on a negative position towards other sexual oriented people in their community. Though the last few years we have seen many more priests openly coming out for their feelings and publicly presenting their gay partner. Otherwise also priest who felt for the opposite sex and did not like to live in celibacy dared to come out and show their female partner and some even their kids they brought forth in a state of marriage, though not being officially being married.

Strangely enough those priests themselves seemed to work with two different weight measures.

The transition from the 20th into the 21st century, for many - believers, parishioners but also priests - requires a new language with which to communicate the Gospel and the possibility of coming up with local rather than universal solutions to controversial questions such as communion for remarried divorcees.

Mgr. Claudio Maria Celli, one of the Synod Fathers invited to the press briefing, said

“The concluding document of last year’s Extraordinary Synod and the Pope’s opening and closing speeches ensure the Church keeps an open outlook and encourage a pastoral attitude. The fact remains that the Pope himself underlined that communion for remarried divorcees is not the only subject being discussed at the Synod. But participants’ outlook remains open in pastoral terms. If all had ended with yesterday’s relatio, what would we be doing here?” 

Some Synod Fathers have placed a greater emphasis on Catholic teaching, others on the importance of improving communication with the outside world. Over the last twenty years this communication got very low, the same as we can see that communication is missing in a lot of families, resulting in divorce, many Catholics have left the ir church and many have become fed up with relgiion havingseen how the Catholic Church tried to cover up the many sex scandals under their clergy.

Many Catholics have seen priests in offering marriage guidance themselves not living according to their celibacy rules nor holding the same ethics normal people would profess. Older priests having sex with young children and than trying to cover this up or to escape civil judgement made many furious about that double-sided attitude of the Catholic Church.

Once more we may hear how the clergy is looking for finding a new “language of mercy” ahead of the next Jubilee of Mercy, to be used with “gay people” in particular.
More than once we may hear from Catholic clergy that

“They are brothers and children who should never be treated as outsiders; they deserve respect,” 

but often no respect is shown in parishes to such people who have other feelings than the mainstream.

As so often with the Catholic Church some of the proposed methods, like for addressing the issue of communion for remarried divorcees, was for a series of “reflection groups” to be created “on a local, national and continental basis” seeing as solutions may vary from culture to culture rather than there being “universal” answers. In past times the Catholic Church has always been very good in adapting her rules of play according the place where it was based. That way masses celebrated in Africa look totally different than those in Europe. And actions done in South America would be consider non acceptable Voodoo in the Northern part of the hemisphere.

Biggest problem for the Catholic Church is  that she has done away with all the modernisations of Pope John XXIII and has not taken in account enough how society has changed and a new language needs to be found for communicating the faith.

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Find also:

• Two synods and life in the church community
• A synod not leading to doctrinal changes because it is about pastoral attention
• October month of witches and spirits

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History of Christianity

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch - one of the world's leading historians - reveals the origins of Christianity and explores what it means to be a Christian on BBC 4 and Last broadcast on Saturday on BBC Two.

When Diarmaid MacCulloch was a small boy, his parents used to drive him round historic churches. Little did they know that they had created a monster, with the history of the Christian Church becoming his life's work.
In a series sweeping across four continents, Professor MacCulloch goes in search of Christianity's forgotten origins. He overturns the familiar story that it all began when the apostle Paul took Christianity from Jerusalem to Rome. Instead, he shows that the true origins of Christianity lie further east, and that at one point it was poised to triumph in Asia, maybe even in China.
The headquarters of Christianity might well have been Baghdad not Rome, and if that had happened then Western Christianity would have been very different.

2. Catholicism: The Unpredictable Rise of Rome
Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's grandfather was a devout pillar of the local Anglican church and felt that any dabbling in Catholicism was liable to pollute the English way of life. But now Professor's grandfather isn't around to stop him exploring the extraordinary and unpredictable rise of the Roman Catholic Church.
Over one billion Christians look to Rome, more than half of all Christians on the planet. But how did a small Jewish sect from the backwoods of 1st-century Palestine, which preached humility and the virtue of poverty, become the established religion of western Europe - wealthy, powerful and expecting unfailing obedience from the faithful?
Amongst the surprising revelations, MacCulloch tells how confession was invented by monks on a remote island off the coast of Ireland, and how the Crusades gave Britain the university system.
Above all, it is a story of what can be achieved when you have friends in high places.

3. Orthodoxy - From Empire to Empire
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia, with over 150 million members worldwide. It is unlike Catholicism or Protestantism - worship is carefully choreographed, icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere there is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird, the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us?
In the third part of his journey into the history of Christianity, Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory days in the eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet communism.
MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of Orthodoxy's endurance.

1. Sat 30 Jan 2010:18:30 bij ons 19.30
   BBC Two (England, Northern Ireland only)
2. Sun 31 Jan 2010
   02:30
   BBC Two (Wales only)

- BBC


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+ > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C_05Ej9BNI