Leading Cardinal blames apostate Catholics for decline of Christian Europe

Christian Europe is in decline amid the rise of secularism and Islam – and apostate Catholics are partly to blame for the situation by abandoning their faith, a senior cardinal has said.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, told a French Catholic magazine that the rejection of Christianity combined with a low indigenous birth rate and mass immigration from Muslim countries was changing the continent beyond recognition.

“If Catholics have left the Church, we should not be surprised that they are in the minority,” the cardinal said in an interview with Famille Chrétienne.

“We must accept the decline of Europe,” he said. “We tend to gaze at our ecclesiastical navel, but it is an undeniable continental movement.”

He said: “In 20 years, the European population will not be the same as it is today, and it is already not the same as it was 50 years ago.

“This is inevitable, above all due to the decline in the birth rate in Europe but also due to immigration and the increasing presence of Islam.

“This poses new challenges for us Christians. We must also not forget that the Lord is at work in his Church.”

Despite such trends, Cardinal Schönborn, a close adviser to Pope Francis and famously also a key author of the Catechism of the Catholic Church under Pope St John Paul II, rejected as “absurd” the suggestion that France had ceased to be a Christian country because of surging militant atheistic secularism and the phenomenal rise of Islam.

“Just think of the 12,000 baptisms of adults and young people in France this year,” he said, but added that lapsed “Catholics should return to the Church” if the historical identity of Europe was to survive.

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Catholics must remain true to their faith and “trust in the work of grace” more deeply because the Church “has not yet breathed its last”, the cardinal said.

“The Church is alive and will always be, albeit under different circumstances.”

He explained: “Despite secularisation, the great questions of men and women remain the same as before – birth, growth, education, illness, economic worries.

“And then there is the family, marriage, and death…There is a lot of talk about change, but too little attention is paid to the constants of society. The Church must remember that it is an expert in humanity, as Paul VI said.”

Given that Europe is now home to tens of millions of Muslims, many with large families, Cardinal Schönborn said the Church must seek a “fraternal rapprochement” with Islam, citing the observation of Pope Francis that Christians “do not take up arms but trust in the work of grace”.

He said: “Both our religions have an absolute appeal. For Muslims, God has demanded that the whole world be subjected to him and the Koran.

“As for Christ, he has entrusted us with a universal mission: ‘Make disciples of all nations.’ Neither of them can therefore renounce their mission.

“But the Christians’ way of acting is not that of the Koran but the following of Christ in all dimensions of our lives.”

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Photo: Cardinal Christoph Schönborn gives a press conference at the Vatican relating to new post-synodal guidelines on a range of issues related to the family, Vatican City State, 8 April 2016. (Photo by ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images.)

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