Church at the crossroads

At least three matters of global consequence are shaping the pre-conclave discussions among key cardinal-electors.

Collapsing Catholicism in Europe. Europe is committing demographic suicide, as no Western European state has a replacement level birth rate. At the same time, Catholic practice in Western Europe is at historical lows. Churchmen believe these two hard facts of European Catholic life are related: Europe is heading for demographic disaster because it is in a severe crisis of cultural morale. That crisis is one result of a radical secularization that dissolves a people’s sense of responsibility for the future. Not even a pope as devoted to pan-European culture as John Paul II has been able to jump-start the Catholic Church into renewed institutional vitality in “Old Europe.” What the next pontificate can do about the collapse of Catholicism in Catholicism’s historic cultural homeland is a large, urgent and unsettled issue for the next conclave — and for the future of the West.