The ebbing of Christian, especially Roman Catholic, influence on European society is a huge social and moral change in European culture. Now the Catholic Church is responding with tactics like "urban missions" aimed at young people.
Now that it is often treated like a maligned minority, the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe has decided to start acting like one, too.Posted by Alan at November 27, 2004 09:55 AMTaking a page from pressure-group tactics, the church is increasingly staging "Catholic pride" events in public, and it's training members to stand up for their faith on the world's most secularized continent.
This new self-confidence marks a sharp departure from the defensive stand the once-powerful church had taken since the 1960s in Europe, where religious practice has collapsed and Catholicism is often the butt of cruel jokes.
With such vital signs as baptisms, Sunday Mass attendance and new priestly vocations having fallen so low, some in the church think the only way it can go now is up.
"Something is changing," Brussels Cardinal Godfried Danneels told Reuters at a weeklong conference in Paris aimed at rekindling the faith in the not-very-religious French capital.
"The church had descended into the catacombs and was afraid of public manifestations. Now Catholics are a minority and, like all minorities, they don't have complexes. They are much less afraid of professing their faith than they were 20 years ago."
Europe's younger generation also has changed, Danneels said during the "urban mission" drive attended by Catholics from around Europe in late October.
"They are completely ignorant of most things about the Christian faith, but they are open to listen," he said.
The Paris "urban mission" effort — conferences and concerts attracting Catholics from around Europe — was part of a five-year drive launched in 2003 in Vienna and due to continue in coming years in Lisbon, Portugal; Brussels, Belgium; and Budapest, Hungary.
This campaign to strengthen Catholicism in Europe is a telling turnaround for a region once so solidly Christian that it sent missionaries around the world.