September 2, 2004
The Faith in Europe
You hear it over and over, repeated with either a shaking of the head or a sickening Americanist Schadenfreude: The Catholic Faith is dead in EUROPE.
Certainly, the faith is ailing in PARTS of Europe, as it is in PARTS of America. I would figure that there is not much of a pulse in the faith of the Danes, or the Dutch or the Irish, once Catholicism ceased to be the cause du jour of anti-Englischism. France, well, they have been the root and cause of the Liberalism that is the enemy of faith, but there are some tenacious Frenchmen out there who remember that France is the "Eldest Daughter of the Faith."
What amazes me with these reports is that they are repeated often, yet just as often shown to be not that true. For instance, Barbara Nicolosi has returned from Spain and reports that there is an active faith there. Not in the Libertarian Tax Dodge Principality of Andorra, nor in what she observed in France, but in Spain.
This certainly runs contrary to what I have heard from people who love to point out that the Faith is dead over there.
Two years ago we went back to Italy after an extended absence. I was warned that the churches were empty, that Italians had finally gotten with the program and become Americans, etc. Well, I was pleased to see a number of McDonald's gone, and found Sunday masses to be standing-room-only (except in one small town in Tuscany where, it turned out, everyone had gone to mass in the neighboring town where there was a festa).
The miracle of it is how generally lousy the preaching was. Italy needs some of the great firebrands of the past to revive the old art of preaching, but listening to Don Monotoni does not seem to keep the people away from mass. We went to towns where churches three or four blocks from each other were full at the same time.
Does Italy have some problems in following the faith? Yes, and she always has. Italians have followed the Liberal Tide and seemed intent on aborting and contracepting themselves into oblivion, but the thing that I noticed was that it was a discussed issue. There are a whole lot of elderly Italians who are seeing their chances of becoming Nonne getting slim, and they are hopping mad. There are a lot of younger Italians who see the writing on the wall in regards to their own retirement.
Furthermore, it is about time for a Guelph wave. Sure there is resentment that the Holy Father is not Italian, but there is a lot of love for him as well (including a lot of folks who love the Holy Father, but gripe about all the Poles who come on pilgrimages now and clog the restaurants with no real appreciation of what they are eating, no understanding of Italian manners, etc.).
Posted by erik at September 2, 2004 11:28 PM | TrackBackI agree. I think that just as some Europeans stereotype Americans (we're all a bunch of gun-toting, uneducated hicks who handle snakes at our churches and like to bomb other countries cause we don't know where they are) some Americans stereotype Europeans (they're a bunch of nihlistic, cowardly leftists, who are ever-so-willing to let jihading Mohammedans kill them because they themselves don't stand for anything anymore). Now obviously, neither of these are true. I think that really, Europe is more like us than you'd think. Big cities are more liberal, rural areas and small towns are conservative. In a village in Co. Mayo, probably most people go to mass frequently. I think the same is probably true of villages in many parts of Europe. Perhaps we need to make up a map of red Europe and blue Europe :). Not that the "red parts" would support Bush (as European conservatives seem to be more paleocon-ish) but they would be analogous to our red states: conservative, religious, and more sparsely populated.
Posted by: Ard Ri at September 8, 2004 1:35 PMWe have friends who have a small place in Bellac, France. They report SRO crowds in church every Sunday they are there.
The "death" of faith is limited, IHMO, to the crowd of folks writing about it in the newspapers.
Posted by: MamaT at September 7, 2004 6:03 PMArd Ri,
I am very glad to hear this. I suspect that the situtation might not be so grim in other lands as well. You see, I was simply reporting what I have heard second and third hand.
I would be curious to hear from folks who have spent time in the other countries of Europe. I suspect that the standard "Catholicism is dead in Europe" stuff is nothing more than ignorance coupled with a desire to pat ourselves on the back.
Posted by: Erik Keilholtz at September 6, 2004 12:11 AM"I would figure that there is not much of a pulse in the faith of the Danes, or the Dutch or the Irish, once Catholicism ceased to be the cause du jour of anti-Englischism."
I don't know about the Danes nor the Dutch, but I can say that when I was in Ireland last summer, the faith did not quite seem dead. Perhaps in Dublin, but even there I heard the tiny Catholic proto-Cathedral gets a rather large attendance (the two huge Anglican cathedrals get very few). I went to the shrine of Our Lady of Knock, where the Catholic faith doesn't seem to be at all dead. I visited some relatives near there (in Kilkelly) who were quite Catholic.
Also, Ireland still bans abortion, and has higher birthrates than the rest of Europe (though still too low). Also, though I didn't get a chance to talk about many random Irish people about religion, there seemed to be a prevailing social conservatism that would imply some adherence to Catholicism. Ireland is obviously no Catholic Utopia, but to say that the Faith is dead there would seem quite an exageration.
Posted by: Ard Ri at September 4, 2004 1:37 PM