This month’s issue of Position Papers leads with Michael Kirke’s In Passing column retrospective on 2025, as well as reviews of two books by Tim O’Sullivan and James Bradshaw: Enquête sur ces jeunes qui veulent devenir chrétiens (A Study on These Young People Who Wish to Become Christian) and After Secularisation: The Present and Future of British Catholicism, respectively. All three deal with the unanticipated influx of young people into the Church in many countries, most notably in France, over the past year. Besides the startling 45% increase in adult baptisms in France this year, reports of a noticeable uptick in church attendance—especially among young men—are coming from the United States, England, Australia, and, to some degree, Spain and even here in Ireland.
Both books reviewed here lead to the conclusion that, while such an influx will not reverse the general numerical trend towards secularisation in countries like England and France—given the sheer size of the numbers disaffiliating or not raising their children in the Catholic Faith—those young people who are turning to the Faith bring a fervour and dedication previously sorely missing. As the authors of After Secularisation: The Present and Future of British Catholicism observe, “The young Catholics remaining in the pews might be smaller in number, but they are stronger in energy, commitment and zeal.” Moreover, these new, previously unchurched Catholics have the advantage of not having been “immunised” against deep faith by the “weak or dead strains of Christianity” to which existing Catholics are constantly exposed. They have not been subject to the jaded, minimalistic, and spiritless practice of the Faith that is the norm in so many traditionally Catholic countries. Interestingly, the French upsurge in conversions is partly the result of the example set by unashamed religious practice among young Muslim believers. Regardless of the tenets of Islam, one must admire their dedication to the practice of their religion, from which we can learn.
While it is still very early days, and forecasting the future is always a risky business, what is happening very much resembles the “prophecy” made by the then Fr. Joseph Ratzinger in a Christmas Day radio address in 1969:
From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much. It will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. It will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices it built in its palmy days. As the number of its adherents diminishes, so will it lose many of its social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of its individual members…. lt may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that it was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming, and be seen as man’s home where he will find life and hope beyond death.
There is nothing random about Ratzinger’s “prophecy” (which can be found in the article entitled “What Will the Church Look Like in 2000?”, available at www.benedictusxvi.com). Rather, it is based on careful calculation. As Ratzinger himself notes in that article, “The theologian is no soothsayer, nor is he a futurologist, who makes a calculation of the future based on the measurable factors of the present.”
To make his calculation, Ratzinger examined the period of Church history most similar to the present (remembering he was writing in the late 1960s) and considered how the Church fared at the end of that period. He identifies the Church of the Enlightenment (roughly 1650–1750) as most comparable to our own. While much of that period proved disastrous for the Church, with its rationalist suspicion of the supernatural, abandonment of tradition and authority, and obsession with simplicity, it nonetheless produced “a Church reduced in size, diminished in social prestige, but fruitful from a new interior power, which released new formative and social forces—manifested in great lay movements and new religious congregations.”
The young Fr. Ratzinger’s analysis was informed by this previous crisis, but he did not overlook the incalculable dimension of the Church and of faith, which always produces surprises. As he explains: “Because faith and the Church reach down into those depths from which creative newness, the unexpected and the unplanned are constantly coming forth, their future remains hidden to us, even in an age of futurology.” It seems, thankfully, that that same “creative newness” is at work today in the lives of many young people against all the odds.