Can Catholicism in Europe inactive be saved? If we lock ourselves in our own EU planet – no. The cancer of progressiveism has eaten Europe besides much, including the Church. Catholicism in America looks better. possibly it is there that must come to aid the Church in Europe.
The crisis of the Western planet is visible and apparent to all. Among many of his symptoms, the most gross are two. The first is the low fertility, which prevents the continuation of societies without constant supply of migrants. The second is to reject spiritual tradition and fall into alleged non-denominationality. The first is mostly due to the second.
In both these respects, the European part of the West is in a worse position than the American part. In the European Union, the fertility rate is 1.46 and in the United States is 1.66. The difference is not large, but significant, the more that the increasing part of fertility in Europe is liable for the muslim inflow population from Africa and the mediate East, which, due to its spiritual identity, is full immunised to the West, which means that population growth with specified roots is not a origin building Western civilization, but on the contrary, weakens it. Latin communities have the highest fertility in the United States, which, due to spiritual and cultural reasons, are hard to admit as a body alien to the West.
The difference is even more clear erstwhile it comes to the approach to religion. In most European countries, at most 10% of Catholics attend Sunday Mass, and frequently even less. It is better not to talk about Protestants, in the case of Germany it is about 1% of believers. In the United States, too, it is not good, but it is better than in Europe as a whole: 30 percent of Catholics and 40 percent of Protestants go to church regularly. It is close to the percent of dominicantes in Poland.
If we were to halt at these statistics, we could conclude that, yes, America is in better form than Europe, but it is more or little like wondering which dead individual is more alive. 1 has a fresher skin and holds on to anything better at all; however, it does not change the crucial fact that it is as dead as the other. shortly the whitening bones of both will be indistinguishable.
But you gotta go a small deeper. I point out that I will make any simplification here, focusing solely on Catholicism. Western civilization, although it developed for many centuries as purely Catholic, has been, unfortunately, a spiritual deposit of Catholicism with Protestantism for respective 100 years. This has been actual especially since the emergence of the independent United States, founded on relativism and agnosticism, which was to warrant freedom from spiritual conflicts to the American public. However, I think that what can save Western civilization from the final collapse is only Catholicism – and if people or institutions connected with Protestantism play any affirmative creative function in this work, it is only due to what is inactive in them from the Catholic spirit. In another words, if the Western planet is to survive, then only by overcoming its identity as a deposit of Catholic and Protestant elements and returning to any degree to medieval Christianitas form – at least to make the Catholic Church the main cultural creative, dictating entity, or, if individual has a strong word, to propose the content of politics. This does not gotta mean any kind of elimination of Protestantism from social life, which would be completely unrealistic today; but even if the Catholic Church gained specified a position and strength that it was he who was treated by political players as a mention point.
So what is the American advantage over Europe? Unfortunately, looking around Europe – I do not see much signs of hope. The Catholic Church is highly weak here. There are almost no bishops who profess Catholic religion in a truly open way, without fear of confrontation with the liberal world. There may be a more eloquent hierarch here and there, but fundamentally the option of settlement with secular order is clearly dominant.
Bishops are no exception, for the same is actual among secular people: it is vain to search large and dynamic Catholic groups in Europe ready to fight for their religion and civilization. We have reached a point where holiness is completely desecrated in European churches, and protests are so unsettling that they do not persuade the authors of these profanations to change their minds: all these blasphemous figures and images placed in the temples of Italy and Austria are being destroyed by any faithful person, but in full it does not make much more social emotion.
This complete indifference is of large importance to politics. There is no truly large political formation in the most crucial European countries that would make a clear and consistent mention to Catholicism. Poland again seems to be an exception here, but let it not comfort us – the exception is not enough, it needs to be average and the norm is different. The political defence of Europe's identity begins to take place alongside the Church or even in opposition to it, which confirms the ideological improvement of specified formations as the National Unity in France or an alternate to Germany behind the Oder. It is not surprising: what is the European theological thought today? erstwhile you take into your hand the texts of contemporary authors from our continent can only break down. All they think about is free sex and the admission of migrants. It's hard to build a right-wing policy.
It's different in the United States. This can be illustrated by the example of dichotomy between Joe Biden and J. D. Vancem. The outgoing president of the United States is the face of liberal Catholicism. Face, let's not hide, truly unlikable: a man who receives holy communion in the morning and prays at the rosary, and in the afternoon signs pro-abortion decrees and fights for sex ideology. This complete divided personality is the essence of the progressive Church. It is besides an old face, not only due to the fact that Joe Biden is 81 years old. Liberal Catholicism simply dies: people with specified views no longer go to church; or even if they are inactive walking – like Biden – they are incapable to pass on religion to their children.
Therefore, those who will make Catholicism of the future in the United States will not be liberals. According to fresh studies, over 80 percent of young American priests are considered conservative. These conservative Catholic families are multi-children. Conservatives are curious in theology. They are the ones who build large intellectual centers, in the United States most frequently Tomistic. Young American Catholics are in the Church due to the fact that they are simply convinced: they truly want to be Catholics, it gives their lives meaning. That's what J. D. Vance seems like. A little than 40-year-old politician who decided to be baptized in the Catholic Church a fewer years ago – although it is not anything that could supply him with political benefits. He evidently converted truly due to the fact that he believed the Catholic Church’s truth. In J. D. Vance's politics, he has thus far presented a fundamentally Catholic position. I write: he presented due to the fact that in 2022 he compared abortion to slavery and advocated a nationwide ban on abortion; present his statements on this subject are unfortunately besides "pragmatic" and consistent with the communicative that Donald Trump imposed on the Republican Party. Either way, Vance announces the change: young American Catholicism has at least a conservative face, and frequently simply traditionalistic. In no another country is so popular with conventional Holy Mass, so many conventional theological works are not published anywhere. American politicians gotta deal with this. They see that American Catholicism is simply a vital intellectual phenomenon and has a circumstantial social offer that can be utilized and inspired.
W We frequently say to the Church that the future of Catholicism is Africa. This may be true, especially due to its demographic potential. most likely shortly that is where the top number of Catholics will live. However, I do not know if Africa is the future of Catholicism in Europe. After all, the population does not should be conditioned by the forces of cultural influence. Before Africans produce dynamic theological and political centres that can affect Europe, well, it may be besides late. American Catholicism seems to be a more realistic chance to revive Catholicism in Europe. Its improvement is very impressive, and cultural power cannot be denied.
All the more worrying are the German and French ideas of building a centralised European state that would gain the ability to be a local empire independent of the United States. If we close our Church within Europe, we will end badly. Maintaining a strong bond with Catholicism in the United States is, I think, a vital necessity. Political ties are besides needed to keep specified a bond. These must not be abandoned by claiming European – read EU – self-sufficiency. Western Civilization may last without European Catholics, but without American ones – most likely not.
Paweł Chmielewski
