I couldn't help reflecting that when we were ordained Spain, Portugal, Belgium and especially Ireland were profoundly Catholic and in Eastern Europe the Church was persecuted, you could be imprisoned and have your children taken away in Albania just for making the sign of the Cross. Russia was executing and imprisoning priests and trying to eradicate the faith, the gulags had only just closed.
Today things have changed Western Europe is shrugging off the faith and the East is embracing it. In Russia especially politicians seem to see the Christianity as the answer to Russias many problems, including of course its population decrease.
Such is Divine Providence!
There is an interesting article by Marco Tosatti about the present state of the Russian Church today.
5 comments:
Which particular branch of Christianity is having the most influence?
Do they have tele-evangelists etc.?
The photo on the link suggests it is the Orthodox but is this attracting back the older generations or are the youth returning?
The youth!. To answer your question Mark.
I have thought the same thing Father. We used to have May processions in the streets and Corpus Christi processions too. There were Irish priests everywhere and nuns too.
What a turn around!
Couldn't work out what that article was saying except in a general way - the translation was so bad.
However, we Catholics can still manage a good turn-out, for example when the relic of St Teresa came. 5000 usually attend the bi-annual gathering in secular Sweden. After mass in the castle courtyard, the day concludes with a Blessed Sacrament procession and benediction, completely filing the huge abbey church where the relic of St Birgitta lies.
I cannot help feeling, however that the Orthodox church benefits from having a liturgy with more content than the Novus Ordo.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.
Fr. Ray,
Have you had an opportunity to read Bishop Athansius Schneider's book, Dominus Est? He was born in 1961. In the beginning he describes life behind the Iron Curtain as a boy and what they had to go through just for a periodic Mass (sometimes months or longer in between, and then celebrated in secrecy). We take for granted Catholic burials with Mass and weddings. I can't imagine some of the things he describes in his book. Yet, it seems like history is bound to repeat itself.
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