The Church is not and cannot be about numbers. As few as two will do. The Church cannot become a slave to trendiness and human whims.
I agree about numbers, but there is another aspect to consider. If the Faith is not passed to the young, the number shall pass to zero (0).
I have attended Novus Order parishes, and Traditional Trident Mass parishes.
The percentage of young people in Novus Order parishes appears to me to be much smaller than that of Latin Mass parishes.
As your worship, so will you believe.
I agree with your statement, however, we do not educate our young as well as we ought. We are not living up to our duty of spreading The Word — even amongst ourselves.
Absolutely! It's the pathetic attempts at trendiness that caused most of the modern problems, IMO. As long as the Church is faithful, it can't do trendy well; the hallmarks of trendiness are whimsical, fleeting, unpredictable, arbitrary,fundamentally unserious. All things foreign to the nature of the Church.
A "trendy" Church is like those parents who'd rather be a "pal" to their kids than parents -- they make crummy pals and that leaves no one being the parent.
Or like those Republicans who aim at being fake Democrats.
People like the real thing!
I agree that it’s not about numbers; however, to have a living Christian culture, you have to have enough people who believe the religion.
I go to Spain a lot, and of course Spain was famously Catholic until Vatican II. Big families, many public displays of faith, etc. The watering down and politicizing of the faith after Vatican II seriously affected the faithful. Why bother if the Church was just a fancy Sunday version of the State?
The destruction of traditional religious practices (devotions, processions, etc.) had a major impact on this, and of course it was really finished off by the complete change of the liturgy from something with its roots not only in later Western culture, but in its earliest Eastern beginnings, to a 1970s committee-made production with no roots in anything. Spain went from having the highest birthrate to having one of the very, very lowest, and the entire Spanish family and Church-based social structure collapsed.
The question in any traditionally Christian country is whether it’s possible to build that up again. Whether that culture was destroyed from the inside (as Catholic culture was destroyed by the “reformers” of Vatican II) or from the outside (as traditional Orthodox culture was destroyed by the Communists in many countries), I think it’s not too late.
I have seen good bishops in Spain revive the faith in their dioceses, and I think a revival is going on in Orthodox countries, too. It’s a struggle, but it can be done, often by going back to the old practices that nurtured these cultures, publicly living them, and proclaiming their values unashamedly. People are looking for something, and if the Church (Eastern or Western) can dump the trendiness and dig down to that ever-running stream of tradition starting from the foot of the Cross, Christianity will come back in these countries.
It’s true that “wherever two or more are gathered in My Name, there I am in the midst of you.” However, when there are only a few, that means that millions more are going unchurched and unsaved. The Great Commission urges us to find people to join the Kingdom. So empty churches are a very serious problem. It speaks to the millions who do not know God and/or ignore Him.
- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 5 Sep 2003Raymond: … in such a powerful way, when they interact. Talk for a moment about the New Springtime. The Pope has talked a great deal about the New Springtime and you, yourself have laid out your own ideas. Your vision is a little different from some. Some see the numbers growing and everybody believing and dancing hand-in-hand (the Cardinal chuckles) into the millennium. You see a different picture. Tell us what that picture involves. How do you see this Springtime evolving?
Cardinal: As I do not exclude even this dancing hand-in-hand, but this is only one moment. And my idea is that really the springtime of the Church will not say that we will have in a near time buses of conversions, that all peoples of the world will be converted to Catholicism. This is not the way of God. The essential things in history begin always with the small, more convinced communities. So, the Church begins with the 12 Apostles. And even the Church of St. Paul diffused in the Mediterranean are little communities, but this community in itself is the future of the world, because we have the truth and the force of conviction. So, I think also today it should be an error to think now or in 10 years with the new springtime, all people will be Catholic. This is not our future, nor our expectation. But we will have really convinced communities with élan of the faith, no? This is springtime — a new life in very convinced persons with joy of the faith.
Raymond: But, smaller numbers? In the macro?
Cardinal: Smaller numbers, I think. But from these small numbers we will have a radiation of joy in the world. And so, it’s an attraction, as it was in the old Church. Even when Constantine made Christianity the public religion, there were a small number of percentage at this time; but it was clear, this is the future. So we can live in the future, just give us a way in a different future. And so, I would say, if we have young people really with the joy of the faith and this radiation of this joy of the faith, this will show to the world, “Even if I cannot share it, even if I cannot convert it at this moment, here is the way to live for tomorrow.”