A growing “inside story”? 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.
By Fr Anthony Paganoni CS
I can see some people raising their eyebrows and, in a rather perplexed mood, saying “not again, please!”, as they suspect they are about to be fed with the same old pious, boring, sanctimonious information. Let’s keep our temper under control. All stories should be worth reporting, but not all stories receive the same amount of reporting even in the Catholic press.
I often ask myself: “Are we staring at a similar process that globalisation has meant for the world in the Christian churches?” Unlike the immediate past, Christian churches in Europe (and the Catholic Church is no exception), stand no chance now of incorporating all members of a society. From either a Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox majority we are moving towards minority religious groupings. These will, by necessity, be more focused and more rigorously committed to personal holiness and transformation; and less reliant and dependent upon civil governments’ approval and financial support, as they demand more commitment and involvement in some areas of life and exhibit greater flexibility in others.
This historical transformation is particularly evident in the Catholic Church. At the moment its momentum is increasing, to the dismay and shock of many in the Church. Abandoning well-established alliances with State powers, a public image of immensely well-oiled charitable organisations, notably Caritas, Missio or Misereor in Germany, has been traumatic for some people to the extent of shutting out of their consciousness even the possibility that there could be emerging new and welcome realities.
The Catholic political map in Europe is in a state of flux: disappearing is the idealistic vision of an-all embracing Catholic society and emerging are new and fresh options.
Pope Benedict XVI has asked how one could speak of a Christian society if “in a city like Magdeburg, Christians are only eight per cent of the total population, including all Christian denominations?” Gone forever are the days when people and Church could be identified.
Statistical data shows irrefutable tendencies. And the same statistical trends are also formidably compelling and predicting the same evolution for Christian churches in Australia.
Since the 1970s Popes have strongly encouraged the development of new religious organisations. Among the most successful, the Cursillo, Neo-Catecumentate, the Focolare, Communione and Liberazione, the Community of St Egidio, L’Arche, the Emmaus movement and a host of others, more or less widely known. In the mid-1980s, Pope John Paul II publicly acknowledged “the great promising flowering of ecclesial movements, and I have singled them out as a cause for hope in the entire Church and for all mankind”. In 1988 he welcomed representatives of these movements at a vast gathering in Rome, on Pentecost. In the same city, in 2006, at another Pentecost, Pope Benedict addressed 300,000 members gathered in St Peter’s Square.
When will a convocation of lay movements and centres of spirituality (not a few on the Australian landscape), which have been imported or sprung up in Australia, be given the same opportunity, without of course having to travel to Rome?
To be continued…