A few weeks ago, a preparatory festival for World Youth Days (WYD) brought together 1,200 young Catholics at Maredsous Abbey. An event, masterfully orchestrated by the youth ministry. Present at this meeting, a prelate of foreign origin confided to me: “I am impressed by all the efforts made”, immediately adding, “but I wonder why these are reaping so little fruit: decline in Sunday practice, distancing from Christian institutions, vertiginous drop in vocations to the consecrated life”.
The question needs to be asked. Why is the Catholic Church struggling to deploy itself in a country where it was once omnipresent? It would be unfair to accuse Belgian Catholics of lukewarmness. Lazy clergymen and apathetic parishioners come together, but there is also the heroic energy displayed by so many priests, deacons and lay pastoral workers, and the generous dedication of thousands of volunteers. Could this then be due to the positioning of the ecclesial institution? Several traditional and progressive ideologues like to play on this register. However, let us be lucid: is it the return to Latin and the cassock, or the generalization of a married clergy open to women, which will ensure that young people will turn to Christ? These questions are important, but they do not touch on the essential. The same goes for the scandals that have shaken the Church. If they undermine the credibility of the Catholic institution, the central issue lies elsewhere: how to ensure that our contemporaries discover in Christ their Savior and that they understand that His Gospel is good news?
The backlash of the Church is explained above all by a change in society. The materialism that shapes hearts and souls in our country of old Catholic tradition, distracts our contemporaries from spirituality. If some come late after failures and disappointments, others seek to fill their existential void, at best by consumption, at worst by an escape into alcohol or narco-paradise. The mental health of the population is at its lowest and the suicide rate at its highest, but few see a correlation with the emptiness of the churches… With the exception of the fundamentalists and their sectarian trappings. Our relationship to the spiritual life is quite similar to the approach to marriage: our grandparents entered it and remained there out of social conformity; today, it takes a bit of luck, more willpower and even more ideals for a couple to hold together. The same goes for spirituality in general and religion in particular. To compare a young person who attends his parish today with his grandfather is to compare two totally different worlds. The religious choice is now made against the current, following a personal spiritual experience. This engenders a different kind of Catholicism from the socially established religion of yesteryear. Which is neither better nor worse: it’s a new era, that’s all.
Should we therefore resign ourselves to the fact that the Church remains a marginal reality in society? Not at all. Let us contemplate nature in winter: it seems dead and yet, in silence, the blossoming of the new spring is preparing. So it is with the work of the Kingdom. At each crossroads in history, the ecclesial body patiently manufactures the antibodies it needs to regenerate the society in which it is implanted. In this respect, Belgium could turn out to be a laboratory where the Church of tomorrow matures. On condition of accepting to work for a harvest which will rise only in one or two generations. A swallow does not make spring, but the meeting of these young people in Maredsous could be a bud precursor of a summer to come.
Editorial title. Original title : “The Church in winter…”
The backlash of the Catholic Church is explained above all by a change in society