Dublin, Ireland – “I don’t go to church, and I don’t know one person who does,” says Brian Kenny, 39, who is studying psychotherapy and counseling at Dublin Business School. “Fifteen years ago, I didn’t know one person who didn’t.”
Church attendance in Ireland, though still among the highest in Western Europe, has fallen from about 85 percent to 60 percent from 1975 to 2004, according to the Dublin Archdiocese.
While it is still illegal for a woman to have an abortion in this mostly Roman Catholic country, Health Minister Mary Harney made front-page news in July when she said birth- control pills should be available for girls as young as 11 in some circumstances. And for the first time, according to church records, not one priest will be ordained this year in Dublin.
Mary Haugh, who has gone to Mass here seven days a week for almost all of her 79 years, is saddened by these changes.
“It’s a Godless society,” she says.
Ireland is not an exception. Every major religion except Islam is declining in Western Europe, according to the Center for the Study on Global Christianity at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass. The drop is most evident in France, Sweden and the Netherlands, where church attendance is less than 10 percent in some areas.
Last month, Pope Benedict XVI lamented the weakening of churches in Europe, Australia and the U.S.
“There’s no longer evidence for a need of God, even less of Christ,” he told a meeting of Italian priests. “The so-called traditional churches look like they are dying.”
The forces driving the decline include Europe’s turbulent history, an increasing separation between the church and government – and perhaps most of all, the continent’s unprecedented affluence.
“For most of history, people have been on the borderline of survival,” says Ronald Inglehart, director of the World Values Survey, a Swedish-based group that tracks church attendance. “That’s changed dramatically. Survival is certain for almost everyone (in the West). So one of the reasons people are drawn to religion has eroded.”
Although many Europeans say they consider themselves Christians, far fewer actually attend services.
One need only see the overwhelming number of gray- haired heads in church pews to know attendance will keep falling if something doesn’t change dramatically.
The desire to revive the Roman Catholic Church in Europe was among the main reasons Benedict, a German cardinal, was chosen to succeed Pope John Paul II.
“Nobody is better informed than Pope Benedict on the European scene and the secularism of Europe,” British Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor told The Associated Press shortly after Benedict was named pope. “I think all of us … are concerned about this question.”
Among the most striking consequences of the decline of religion has been fewer children. The birth rate throughout much of Western Europe has fallen so drastically that the population in many countries is shrinking, indicating that women throughout Europe now routinely use artificial birth control in defiance of the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings.
“The biggest single consequence of the declining role of the church is the huge decline of fertility rates,” Inglehart says.
With fewer people entering the workforce, countries such as Italy, Germany and France won’t be able to maintain the generous welfare programs that have given most workers a lifetime of economic security.
The waning influence of religion also has brought a change in attitudes and laws on issues such as divorce, abortion, gay marriage and stem-cell research.
In June, for example, Spain became the fourth country in the world to legalize gay marriage, after the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada. The measure was supported by more than 60 percent of Spaniards, according to a poll in December by the Center for Sociological Investigation.
In the U.S., where religion and church attendance are comparatively stronger, 11 states voted last year to amend their constitutions to ban gay marriage.
Europeans debate whether these changes are positive or negative for society. But it is evident people feel freer to make decisions within their own moral framework.
“The declining (church) attendance is really dramatic, but what is even more important is that the churches are losing the ability to dictate to people how to live their lives,” Inglehart says.
