http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1464759,00.html
"Atheists should welcome the election of Pope Benedict XVI. For this aged, scholarly, conservative, uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely hasten precisely the de-Christianisation of Europe that he aims to reverse. At the end of his papacy, Europe may again be as un-Christian as it was when St Benedict, one of the patron saints of Europe, founded his pioneering monastic order, the Benedictines, 15 centuries ago. Christian Europe: from Benedict to Benedict. RIP.
Europe is now the most secular continent on earth. The phenomenon of the last pope masked the underlying trend. We saw the great crowds of enthusiastic young people on St Peter's Square, or at open-air masses on his many journeys, and half-forgot the plummeting figures for church attendance and the recruitment of priests. An American Baptist missionary website puts things in perspective. "Western Europe," it states, "is ... one of the world's most difficult mission fields. Most missiologists compare it to the Muslim-held Middle East when it comes to responsiveness to the gospel." Voltaire would be proud of us.
This used to be less true in eastern Europe, where the pressure of communism helped to keep the churches strong. But an irony of John Paul II's pontificate was that, by hastening the end of communism, he helped unleash those forces of capitalist modernisation that contributed to secularisation in western Europe. Meanwhile, both immigration and the prospective enlargement of the EU are making Islam the most dynamic, growing faith in Europe. In Berlin, for example, Muslims are already the second-largest active denomination, after Protestants but before Catholics."
...
"They are already calling the 265th pope a "transitional" figure. But so far as we know he has none of the serious health problems of John Paul II and, with the best of modern, scientific medical care, he could well survive another 10 years. That means he could live to see the European Union in 2015. This Europe would probably be more Islamic than now in its poorer parts, and more secular than ever in its richer ones. "
-- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth
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