Christian Europe's Vital Signs

Posted by Tom McFeely

Monday, June 15, 2009 3:18 PM

Focolare's 'Genfest' at WYD 2000 in Rome: Evidence of Europe's Catholic vitality. (movimento-dei-focolari)

Reports of the “death” of Christian Europe are greatly exaggerated.

That’s the opinion of Philip Jenkins, in this article in the June 2007 issue of Foreign Policy.

Jenkins has given the matter considerable thought; the Penn State University professor of history and religious studies is author of the 2007 book,  God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis.

Writes Jenkins in his Foreign Policy piece,

…Any traveler to the continent has seen Christianity’s abandoned and secularized churches, many now transformed into little more than museums. But this does not mean that European Christianity is nearing extinction. Rather, among the ruins of faith, European Christianity is adapting to a world in which its convinced adherents represent a small but vigorous minority.

In fact, the rapid decline in the continent’s church attendance over the past 40 years may have done Europe a favor. It has freed churches of trying to operate as national entities that attempt to serve all members of society. Today, no church stands a realistic chance of incorporating everyone. Smaller, more focused bodies, however, can be more passionate, enthusiastic, and rigorously committed to personal holiness. To use a scientific analogy, when a star collapses, it becomes a white dwarf—smaller in size than it once was, but burning much more intensely. Across Europe, white-dwarf faith communities are growing within the remnants of the old mass church.

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than within European Catholicism, where new religious currents have become a potent force. Examples include movements such as the Focolare, the Emmanuel Community, and the Neocatechumenate Way, all of which are committed to a re-evangelization of Europe. These movements use charismatic styles of worship and devotion that would seem more at home in an American Pentecostal church, but at the same time they are thoroughly Catholic. Though most of these movements originated in Spain and Italy, they have subsequently spread throughout Europe and across the Catholic world. Their influence over the younger clergy and lay leaders who will shape the church in the next generation is surprisingly strong.

Permalink | Filed under europe