A couple of weeks ago I read an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine about the growing fear from within the Roman Catholic Church that they were losing Europe to secularism. It discussed Bavaria in detail, since that is where Pope Benedict XVI was born, calling it the heartland of Catholicism--a place where every event is marked by the Church. Or, at least it used to be. The turning point of this discussion within the Catholic Church came a few years ago when the European Union was drafting a constitution and then Pope John Paul II and other Roman Catholics strongly recommended that the preamble to this document include a section on the religious history of Europe (and that is one that is predominantly Roman Catholic).
Now, I have only spent a few weeks of my life in Europe but I was able to make several observations while I was there that may be harbingers of things to come in America. I first went to Europe in 2001, shortly before September 11. It was a wonderful time to travel--barely anyone even looked at my passport. I spent nine days in Italy criss-crossing the country from Rome to Assisi to Florence to Venice and onto Milan with a group of predominantly Catholic music directors. If you have ever been to Italy, you get the impression that Roman Catholicism is very important to these people, and it is. But our tour guide, a woman whose family had lived in Rome for generations, made an astounding observation. She said that the Church was still important, but that it had been relegated to a religion of the significant events of our lives: birth (baptism), marriage, and death (last rites). It really did not mean much more to people, other than fulfilling their days of obligation to the Church, but even these were becoming less and less obligatory among the younger generations of Italians.
In 2004 I took a second honeymoon with my wife to Paris for a few days. We are museum people and so we stayed at a little nineteenth-century hotel a block from the Louvre. I know, it was very touristy of us to stay in the 1st Arrondisement, but it was our first trip and we loved it. We did go to the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay and the museum of the Middle Ages in the Latin Quarter, but probably the saddest museum we visited was the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It was stunning. Hardly a person in the place was there for worship. Now in Italy, at least while I was there, the cathedrals were filled with pilgrims, though few of them were Italians. I mean I stood in line to touch the tomb of Saint Anthony in Padua with all the other pilgrims and paid to see the golden altar piece in Saint Mark's in Venice, but at least there were folks there for religious purposes--they were looking for a touch of the divine. But in France I never felt even a subtle nudge of the Holy Spirit in this place. It was beautiful, but it did not seem to mean anything to the people there other than as a museum of what we once believed. I read later that there are about five times as many practicing Muslims in France as there are practicing Catholics. My numbers may be off, but the point is that there are not many practicing Catholics in France. And many Protestant denominations are considered cults by the French government, so most evangelistic efforts are not very fruitful.
I think it is significant that even the Pope is commenting on the loss of Europe and it is lost for all intents and purposes. The Pope is calling for a renewed vigor in re-evangelizing the European continent, asking for missionaries from Africa and Latin America where Catholicism (and Pentecostalism) is growing by leaps and bounds. What is significant to me is that, like most people, the Pope is worried about something when the signs have been obvious for centuries. Since the Age of Enlightenment, the Church has been in a dire situation in Europe.
Now, America likes to talk about how Christian it is and most people here believe in God and many more attend church here than in Europe. But my question is: Has the Church become just a place for our significant events (marriage, baptism, and funerals), but has failed to penetrate our everyday lives? Are we coming to a point where being a Christian is a political label we place on ourselves but the message of Christ does not infiltrate our lives? Are we past the point where the church in America is concerned that mainline denominations are hemorrhaging people every year? Or are we so Pharisaical in our outlook and completely believe these churches are in sin and are receiving their just desserts? Again, most evangelical churches should beware that they are walking similar paths that mainlines churches walked a hundred years ago. We like to pretend that we are different, but these differences are ones of degree rather than of species. Having served in both an evangelical/Pentecostal church and a "mainline" denomination, I can say that the people are not different. All churches are at the heart looking for the best way to bring Jesus to their people, but that may be the problem. Churches tend to want to bring Christ to "their people" but do not have a vision for anyone past themselves.
Maybe it is time for us to address the fact that we are trying to reach the people of the 21st century with the tools of the 19th and 20th. Maybe it is time to stop planning new programs and begin to look within us and make some hard decisions. Maybe it is time for us, like the Church in Europe, to admit that we are a Christian nation in name only and we need to reevaluate what it means to be Christian in this new millennium. Maybe it is time to admit that we have more questions now than we can possibly answer. I believe if we can admit this, then there may be hope for the Church.
1 comment:
Wow. I wonder if they’re also aware of the protestant wing of the church? Talk about denial. “Losing” Europe? Europe waved bye bye in the 50’s.
While statistics still suggest that a large number of Italians still consider themselves to be Christian, they also suggest that an extremely low number of them actually attend mass on at least a monthly basis. What’s more, (and this is something that Americans don’t really understand or relate to), outside of America, your culture is tied to your religion. So when asked, somebody might say that they are Christian simply to make it clear that they are not Jewish, or Muslim. They’re simply identifying their culture rather than any deeply held religious convictions. So, with that in mind, the Vatican barely has a foothold in its home “country”, let alone across Europe. Here in the UK we have cities full of beautifully grand but empty cathedrals.
This is one of my passions, so I could go on and on, but I’ll just say that, like so many things, America seems content to learn this the hard way rather than looking around at the empires that came before them and learning from their mistakes.
And, on a side note, I’m also beginning to understand that even those of us who believe ourselves to be outside the box, are really just working out of a different box. Very few of us have been able to break free from our preconceived and parrot like expressions of church to truly be able to see and understand what church needs to look like if it is going to relate to today’s and future cultures. And, while I don’t completely understand it myself, I do believe that it will involve shaving off some of the fluff and getting back to the basics.
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