GERMANY: Catastrophic! USA next? @USCCB bishops meeting and YOU. ACTION ITEM!

An image to consider.

Two rays extending from the same point get farther and father apart the longer they extend.   If the one ray is the trajectory of Christ’s true Church, then the other ray, that departs from it, get’s farther and father away with every moment of its “progress”.

This comes from Focus.de:

According to a media report, the Evangelical and Catholic Church in Germany will be missing around 14,000 pastors by 2030.
The Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) expects that by then about 7,000 of the current 13,500 clerical posts can no longer be filled, writes the “Focus”. This development is “catastrophic,” said ZDK President Thomas Sternberg the news magazine. “We will not be able to keep the usual structures. Lay people have to be able to take on much more tasks in the future. ”

The Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) have similar problems, writes the “Focus” on. The pastor’s association assumes that the number of currently about 21,000 pastors will reduce by about one third. According to this, around 7,000 jobs could not be filled by 2030. “This leads each pastor to its limit – and beyond,” said the chairman of the pastor’s association, Andreas Kahnt.

Catastrophe.  Catastrophic.  That’s the situation in Germany.

To paraphrase Card. “Accompany” Kasper to the world about African bishops, I don’t think Germans should be telling us what to do.  Everything they do is wrong, it seems.  German bishops and theologians seem to be the caput malorum omnium.

“But Vater! But Vater!”, some of you libs are hooting, “You don’t understand anything about what’s going on.  This is the time of change and innovation.  Surely it is clear even to someone as backward as you that you have to break eggs to make omelets.  So the Church in Germany is broken.  So the Churches in Europe are demographically diminishing.  It’s quality we want, not quantity!  We are living the dream of the new Vatican II springtime!  We are forward looking visionaries blue-skying and singing a new church into being!   But you…. YOUUUUU…. don’t get that because YOU HATE VATICAN II!”

What I get is this.

According to one smart German speaking, one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

It is at least stupid, if not insane.

We have serious choices to make.  How conscious I am of the poignancy of reading that piece and writing these words I am, since we are on the brink of another plenary meeting of the USCCB.   One meeting of bishops can’t solve The Present Crisis.  However, one meeting can suggest to us who watch from the outside just what our bishops are made of.

Will they stand upright and set their jaw and take their hands out of their pockets?  (Perhaps I should say “take their hands out of our pockets”?)

Or will they produce the same old same old.

On the other hand, perhaps the “same old same old”… the real “same old same old” is exactly what we need.  We need a recovery of Tradition in order to produce a revitalization of our Catholic identity.

Folks, before the bishops meet, may I make a couple suggestions about what YOU can do?

  1. Go to confession.
  2. Make a good Holy Communion and offer it to God with your petition that the Holy Spirit prompt the bishops to true pastoral care, the kind that shepherds summon when the wolves are circling.
  3. Pray to your Guardian Angel and the Guardian Angels of your own local bishop to protect him, during the meeting, from the influence of The Enemy, the attacks of the demonic through their attachments to the place they are in, the food they may eat, even the oppressors of their brother bishops if they are in that sorry state.
  4. Find out the times that the bishops are meeting next week and prayer a Rosary for them during that time or stop at church and pray before the Blessed Sacrament for them.
  5. Take on some penance, some mortification during their meeting and offer it that the Holy Spirit increase in them, through the sacrament of confirmation and through orders, their strengthened sense of vocation and of the Four Last Things.

Tolkien wrote about the eucatastrophe, the catastrophe that has to happen so that greater good can result.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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7 Comments

  1. Malta says:

    I you scroll-down in this article: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/catholics-attending-mass-gallup-study_us_5acd082ae4b06a6aac8c7506

    Only 22% of Catholics in the US are weekly mass attendees, and it will only get worse.

    If you really think about it, Vatican II was the result of the modernist mindset already fomenting, not the cause of it; but it did give license to the modernist, Tradition-breaking liberals to do their witches brew of reforms on the Church, which has been nothing less than catastrophic on the Church Christ founded 2000 years ago. On you Peter I will build my Church, Christ said. For 2000 it has been built, and the modern liberals are dismantling it, brick-by-brick.

    But at least the USCCB is concerned about climate change.

  2. LeeGilbert says:

    One might ask, “Can anything good come out of Baltimore?” The answer, emphatically, is YES.

    Take a look at the History section of the Wikipedia page on the Baltimore Catechism. The last two sentences of that section read, “The Baltimore Catechism became the standard text for Catholic education in the United States for the next four generations.[4] Since the 1960s, many Catholic churches and schools have moved away from catechism-based education.”

    That last sentence does not explain our entire situation, of course, but that move is responsible for a Catholic population that is largely ignorant of its own treasures.

    One thing they could do is 1) over-ride their own catechetical establishment and suggest that bishops see to it that pastors mail a copy of the Baltimore Catechism to every registered family of their parish; 2) suggest that fathers go over it with their families little by little; 3) that priests preach on it, briefly, one question a week, before getting into their usual homily.

    Given the current theological/pastoral/ educational climate such a proposal is absurd, but reality is absurd to madmen, and we clearly have been out of touch with reality for the better part of fifty years.

    It is one thing to have a protest, but why not ask for the moon, lest Our Lord say, “You receive not becuase you do not ask.”

    Of course, even if undertaken, this does not solve everything, but it is a step in the right direction.

  3. scotus says:

    Although I don’t live in Germany I have some experience of the Church in Germany as a result of taking holidays in that country. I usually go for between three and four weeks at a time and have been attending Mass in Germany every year since 2009 apart from two. That comes to quite a lot of Masses. Moreover, these Masses have been all over Germany from the Danish border in the north to the Austrian border in the south; from Trier in the west to the Czech border in the east. On the basis of that experience I offer the following comments.
    Quite a few of the priests who have said Masses I have attended have been Asian or African.
    “Lay people have to be able to take on much more tasks in the future.” Well, at one Mass I attended the priest was Asian. After he had read the Gospel he sat down and a woman then gave a talk. As my German is not brilliant I could not tell you what she said. She might have been talking about her holiday plans for all I know. But, then again, she might have been attempting to give the homily.
    The churches are not empty but the congregations tend to be mainly older people. (So this suggestion is particularly interesting: “It’s quality we want, not quantity!” Well, maybe, although that’s not what Jesus said, but if it’s ‘quality’ and not ‘quantity’ then they must think that there is very little quality in young people, as they are not attracting them.)

  4. LatinMan says:

    If you remember that the Germans are wrong, the French surrender, and Canada is to America as generic to brandname, you understand the world.

    Just kidding. One wonders though how so many bishops, in light of so much evidence even in the temporal realm that liberalism won’t save the Church (nevermind, eternity), still wish to go to down the road of liberalism. I think, unfortunately, we must say, “an enemy hath done this” (Matt. 13:28).

  5. HvonBlumenthal says:

    Can I take the opportunity to promote the wonderful Institut St Philipp Neri in Berlin, which was granted permission to celebrate the Tridentine Rite exclusively by JPII, ie even before Summorum Pontificum!

    The occupy the former Convent of St Afra. They have a resident blind hermitess.

    Here is the link:

    http://www.institut-philipp-neri.de/index.php

  6. HvonBlumenthal says:

    The German Problem is caused by the fact that by law you have to pay tax to the Church if you belong to a parish. This has two dire consequences: the sums of money are bery large and result in complacent bishops and priests; and the tax is a disincentive to the young or curious.

    The financial arrangements which derive from the Napoleonic concordat are a blight on the Church in Western Europe

  7. jaykay says:

    HvonBlumenthal: “The financial arrangements which derive from the Napoleonic concordat are a blight on the Church in Western Europe”

    Not all of Western Europe, obviously. It’s a big place and the whole (horrible) Church tax thing is by no means universal. Although those of us in the Anglospheric bit of Western Europe, whose ancestors fought, successfully, the pint-sized “Emperor” – and his spiritual successors (hi, Fürst Otto von B) – do seem to have let the guard down over the last couple of generations. Probably the most unworthy generations in our long history.

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