German Journalist: "The Church is Caught in a Modern Trap"

The Church gropes in the Modern Trap

Edit: Matussek has suggested that the church tax, which is levied in Germany and managed by the government, is going away. It's been suggested in certain other quarters that this last vestige of confessional Europe has been used as a medium for the auto-destruction of the Church in Germany. We've tried to keep our intrusions on Matussek's blunt and awesome observations to a minimum.

Matthias Matussek

After the Council the Church was placed increasingly in the hands of Liturgical dilettantes and fussy hobby-thinkers, who presented themselves as an Avantgarde organized against volksreligion and Tradition.

(kreuz.net) Pope Benedict XVI knows "that the form of the Una Sancta [One Holy} with its Dogmas and Traditions must be protected against the hobbyists."

Matthias Matussek wrote this in the recent edition of the bitterly anti-Church German boulevard magazine 'Spiegel' [basically, it's Germany's Time Magazine]

The magazine was founded after the Second World War by a former Nazi journalist and a Lieutenant of the Wehrmach.

Matussek's article appeared under the title: "Rock in the storm -- why Catholicism could not be Protestant."

The Pope has to be a Rock Now More than Ever


For Matussek the Pope has to be a successor of Peter now more than ever -- "the rock, on which the Church was once founded."

Because: "He is not only responsible for the 1.2 Billion Catholics, but also for the Tradition, which Chesterton once called >>the Democracy of the Dead<<. Tradition may not be betrayed on behalf of the tiny, German parish, which constitutes no more than two percent of the World Church.

Not a Reformer, but a Resistance Fighter

Benedict XVI, for Matussek, didn't come to Germany as a reformer, rather as a "great figure of contradiction".

"The Catastrophe, which has to do with us, is the memory loss of Catholics."

Matussek traced the problem to the time following the Second Vatican Council.

Then the Church was placed "increasingly in the hands of dilettante Liturgists and fussy hobby-thinkers, who presented themselves as an Avantgarde organized against volksreligion and Tradition.

Already in 1968 Pope Paul VI wept over the "weighty and complex disruption, which no one had expected after the Council." [Not entirely so, Msgr Bandas returned from the Council in abject despair and did his best to prepare for what he foresaw.]


Discussion instead of Holiness

Matussek brought the problem to a point: "The Church has been caught in the modern trap."

He defined the modern trap as: "Much head, little heart." [Which brings to mind Mozart's comment that, "Protestantism is all in the head"]

One has lost the feeling for Holiness and Grace: "In place of that, discussions take place."

Link to kreuz.net...

Photo: © Melanie Feuerbacher, Wikipedia, CC