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Is Europe losing tis religion
by John O Sullivan UPI
Things may not be what they seem, however. Europe simply may be further along the road of modernist "disenchantment" with religion than either the United States or Canada. From the 1930s to the 1950s, European church-going imperceptibly became a matter of social respectability rather than a desire to worship God. From the 1960s, when everyone suddenly realized that his neighbor would prefer to sleep in on Sunday as well, church attendance progressively collapsed. Over time society became increasingly secular in law, custom, social atmosphere--and eventually in religion, too.
This is producing a religious paradox worthy of G.K. Chesterton. Paul M. Zulehner, dean of the theology department at Vienna Catholic University, sees what is happening in Europe not as irreligion but as a frustrated religious impulse: "We are observing a boom in religious yearning and at the same time a shrinking process of the churches." Why so? Because, Zulehner says, "The churches have secularized themselves."
How true is this? The shrinking of the secularized churches is obvious enough. In Western Europe it often is hard to distinguish the local church from a social-service agency; bishops reserve their prophetic fire to denounce cuts in public spending rather than private sins.
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