Fr Anthony Paganoni, Scalabrinian, continues a series for The Record this week reflecting on what, if any, future the Church has in Europe and why this is important for us. This week: Across denominational and ethnic boundaries.
By Fr Anthony Paganoni CS
It is not only within the Catholic Church that a re-awakening is taking place. Some of the Catholic lay movements which have been already mentioned trace their origin to the charismatic movement which grew parallel with the Pentecostal and charismatic movements within Protestantism.
Outside the Roman Catholic Church, other Christian bodies have also offered imaginative responses to the grim forecasts about the Christian future. The growing revivalist movement in Germany is one such example. It is called Pro-Christ and it makes extensive use of electronic mediums.
It holds revivals at central locations which are then broadcast to thousands of local centres scattered across the European continent.
Most studies place Great Britain and the Netherlands at the leading edge of European secularisation. And yet some of Britain’s most flourishing evangelical congregations either are Anglicans or involve Anglican alliances with other traditions, such as non-conformist churches that were once so powerful a force in British politics and culture.
Reports on the collapse of Christianity neglect the growing number of immigrant churches, a gathering force for African, Asian and Latin American immigrants. In the face of the most alarmist view of the fate of Christianity among Europe’s old-stock white populations, these thriving new churches represent an exciting development. Some enthusiastic observers have called it a new evangelisation!
The story runs across denominational and ethnic boundaries in England, France, Belgium, Germany and other European countries. In Italy, during the last three decades, close to 1000 places of worship and fellowship have been set up and run by the Catholic Church for Catholic immigrants.
These stand alongside or are connected with the network of parish facilities. The same story is repeated in Spain and Portugal.
There have been some controversies surrounding the beginning of these new experiments in Catholic traditions, but the results are there for anyone to see.
If Australia has been born out of different waves of immigrants, so has the Catholic Church, which numbers close to half its members from ethnic origins other than the Anglo-Irish initial stock. Are these developments looked upon optimistically as an opportunity for growth or, adversely, considered a mild nuisance? In the Australian context, is the ground on which intercultural exchanges occur, even if at times marred by misunderstandings and mutual suspicion, to be viewed as holy ground or a minefield?
To be continued…