In addition to Ken Woodward’s fine piece on the reporting of the Church scandals, there comes Philip Jenkins’ fascinating relating of demographics to the reaction in Europe:
Most evidence suggests that the Church will endure and even enjoy a historic boom—just not in places it has flourished historically. For years, its core has been migrating away from Europe, heading southward into Africa and Latin America. Some Church observers have remarked that the Vatican is now in the wrong location: It’s 2,000 miles too far north of its emerging homelands.
The New Republic seems to have corrected now its earlier online tag for the article—and good thing, for when I saw that Philip was proclaiming “The End of the European Church,” I nearly fell off my chair. The more accurate tag now reads “How the Scandal Will Remake the Catholic Church.”
April 29th, 2010 | 1:49 pm
As a young man living in Dublin Ireland with probably an unhealthy obsession in news coverage of the Church throughout Europe over the last few years I can say that Philip Jenkins really doesn’t understand Europe. Those around my own age are actually very much interested in the institution of the Catholic Church for a variety of reasons, the strongest of these is that of a great interest in the paranormal and supernatural which is widespread here and has been for the last few years in particular and it is because of this that a number of my own friends have ended up immersing themselves in subject matters that previously would have embarrassed them but not anymore. When you actually get people reading Chesterton, Ratzinger and Von Balthasar it really does make people stand up and wonder where they’ve been up till then. In an interview in last week’s Catholic Herald, the Irish journalist John Waters made a similar point. Trust me, Europe is on the verge of sobering up. I also reckon that the next Pope will not actually be from South America or Africa, it’ll either be Cardinal Schönborn or Archbishop Thomas Collins.
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/features/f0000558.shtml
April 30th, 2010 | 11:17 am
Speaking of demographics, we’re at a very weird point worldwide – overall, the world’s population is nearing a deceptive peak – a peak built on the many fertile women who have produced 0, 1 or 2 children, yet not yet died. Over the long term, averaging 0, 1 or even 2 children per fertile woman is a formula for collapse, which is being seen in the native populations of the industrialized world, and is cued up to happen sometimes in the next 60-70 years pretty much everywhere else.
BUT: this collapse is by no means evenly spread – the tendency to have few if any children is a characteristic largely of what might be loosely called ‘liberals’ or ‘secularists’. Among religious people, the birth rate is higher, sometimes much higher. (Thus the point mentioned somewhere on FT a while ago: liberalism is fundamentally parasitic on conservatism (both terms very loosely used), most vividly where the kids being born need to be ‘converted’ if secularism is to keep its numbers up).
So, say, for hypothetical example, only 2% of the French are orthodox Catholics, and say that those Catholics are much more likely to produce 3, 4, 5 or more children. It’s not going to happen over night, but, failing a mass conversion of those children to secularism, France would gradually become more and more Catholic. Ignoring immigration for the moment, of course.
In the long run demographic race, secularism is not the winning horse. The real question: is the winning horse Christian or Muslim?
April 30th, 2010 | 9:56 pm
John Allen’s book “The Future Church” has a fascinating chapter on demographics. His prediction is that what he calls the “global south” will triumph, from sheer numbers. The topics dear to Catholic liberals, he says, won’t be able to withstand the much bigger (and more traditional) south. What the numbers indicate for the West are sobering. China? Catastrophic.
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