Published: September 26, 2011 by Caliifornia Daily Catholic
Freiburg, Germany (CNA/EWTN News) -- “The real crisis facing the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith,” Pope Benedict XVI told a gathering of lay Catholics on Sept. 24.
“We see that in our affluent Western world much is lacking. Many people lack experience of God’s goodness,” the pope said to the Central Committee of German Catholics on the third day of his state visit to Germany. “They no longer find any point of contact with the mainstream churches and their traditional structures.”...
Using Catholicism in Germany as an example, the pope said that, while the German Church was “superbly organized,” it was perhaps lacking in a “corresponding spiritual strength, the strength of faith in a living God.”
“We must honestly admit that we have more than enough by way of structure but not enough by way of Spirit,” the pope said. “I would add: the real crisis facing the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith.”...
This is observed, said the pope, “in the inconstancy and fragmentation of many people’s lives and in an exaggerated individualism,” such that many people “no longer seem capable of any form of self-denial or of making a sacrifice for others.”
Meanwhile others “are now quite incapable of committing themselves unreservedly to a single partner,” he said....
Hence the need for new places where those who lack experience of God’s goodness can encounter it, said the pope. He suggested that small communities could be one such path where “friendships are lived and deepened in regular communal adoration before God.” There, said the pope, “we find people who speak of these small faith experiences at their workplace and within their circle of family and friends, and in so doing bear witness to a new closeness between Church and society.”...
He concluded by praying that God “always point out to us how together we can be lights in the world and can show our fellow men the path to the source at which they can quench their profound thirst for life.”
Freiburg, Germany (CNA/EWTN News) -- “The real crisis facing the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith,” Pope Benedict XVI told a gathering of lay Catholics on Sept. 24.
“We see that in our affluent Western world much is lacking. Many people lack experience of God’s goodness,” the pope said to the Central Committee of German Catholics on the third day of his state visit to Germany. “They no longer find any point of contact with the mainstream churches and their traditional structures.”...
Using Catholicism in Germany as an example, the pope said that, while the German Church was “superbly organized,” it was perhaps lacking in a “corresponding spiritual strength, the strength of faith in a living God.”
“We must honestly admit that we have more than enough by way of structure but not enough by way of Spirit,” the pope said. “I would add: the real crisis facing the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith.”...
This is observed, said the pope, “in the inconstancy and fragmentation of many people’s lives and in an exaggerated individualism,” such that many people “no longer seem capable of any form of self-denial or of making a sacrifice for others.”
Meanwhile others “are now quite incapable of committing themselves unreservedly to a single partner,” he said....
Hence the need for new places where those who lack experience of God’s goodness can encounter it, said the pope. He suggested that small communities could be one such path where “friendships are lived and deepened in regular communal adoration before God.” There, said the pope, “we find people who speak of these small faith experiences at their workplace and within their circle of family and friends, and in so doing bear witness to a new closeness between Church and society.”...
He concluded by praying that God “always point out to us how together we can be lights in the world and can show our fellow men the path to the source at which they can quench their profound thirst for life.”
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