Church Crisis Shakes Faith of German Town, Nicholas Kulish, Herald-Tribune , May 15, 2010

Church Crisis Shakes Faith of German Town

By Nicholas Kulish
Herald-Tribune
May 15, 2010

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20100515/ZNYT03/5153005/2055/NEWS?tc=ar

OBERAMMERGAU, Germany — The residents of this Bavarian village have connected with the Roman Catholic Church in a particular and persistent way: every 10 years since 1634, they have brought the crucifixion of Jesus Christ to life in a Passion play that has earned them worldwide renown but no small amount of criticism.

A painting of the crucifixion of Jesus on a building in Oberammergau offers a hint about the village's religious enthusiasm.

There have been complaints from women, Jewish groups and purists who say it has become overcommercialized. This year though, as the play opened again here on Saturday, a decade after its last performance, it was the players who were registering the criticism — against the church itself.

Villagers were shaken by revelations of past sexual and physical abuse of more than 100 students by some 15 monks at the school of the Ettal Benedictine Monastery, just a few miles down the road. Many, too, are feeling alienated from and angry at the church not only for what some see as an inadequate response to the most recent sexual-abuse crisis, but also for a broader failure to connect with Catholics living in modern Europe.

The play’s iconoclastic director, Christian Stuckl, who attended the school as a boy for three years, spoke out publicly about the need for reform in the church barely a week before the debut, telling the German weekly newsmagazine Focus: “I hardly go to Mass. It’s not about the actual message of Jesus there. The church has to get away from its dogmas and laws.”

The enduring ritual of Oberammergau’s Passion play was born out of a desperate promise during the 30 Years War to perform the play in perpetuity if the village was spared the ravages of the encroaching Black Plague. The village has kept alive the nearly 400-year-old tradition with few interruptions.

Today the villagers’ mixture of disappointment and dedication shows how the roots of the church crisis go back further than the German church’s sexual-abuse scandal, which began in Berlin in January, but also why the stream of people leaving the church has not yet turned into a flood of departures. The villagers harbor a combination of tradition and faith, but also a belief that the crisis is an opportunity to strengthen the hand of reformers.

“I can’t just change my faith like I’m changing a pair of underwear,” Mr. Stuckl said in an interview on Thursday, in his rapid-fire, irreverent manner as his cellphone rang constantly, an unavoidable consequence of trying to organize the 2,100 villagers performing in the dress rehearsal, not to mention the donkeys, doves and camels that add to the spectacle.

The play has weathered its share of controversies over the years. Hitler was enthusiastic about the 1934 production, on the occasion of the 300th anniversary. American Jewish organizations boycotted the play in 1970 over the portrayal of Jews. Women sued to overturn a rule that said married women and those over 35 years old were not allowed to perform, and they first took the stage in 1990. And the play has been dogged for years by criticism that the business interests had overtaken spiritual ones.

Town officials estimate that the play will bring in at least 20 million euros, about $25 million. But organizers said that roughly 60,000 package trips to see the performance and visit the village this year were either returned or unsold, out of roughly 500,000 tickets for the play, which runs until October.

Mayor Arno Nunn blamed the global financial crisis for the shortfall, but experts said the church scandal also played a role.

“With what’s going on in the Ettal monastery and elsewhere, they’re losing their base,” said James Shapiro, a literature professor at Columbia University who wrote a book about the Oberammergau play. “They’re losing the people for whom this has been a pilgrimage.”

“Many, many Catholics are disenchanted,” he said.

Among those disenchanted Catholics is Frederik Mayet, 30, one of the two villagers portraying Jesus in this year’s play, who said rehearsals were rife with discussions of what happened in Ettal. Mr. Mayet said that he already had researched the bureaucratic steps needed to leave the church officially last year, after Pope Benedict XVI reinstated four excommunicated bishops, including Richard Williamson, who denied the Holocaust.

“I didn’t want to be a member of a church that welcomed Holocaust deniers with open arms,” said Mr. Mayet, who with his sad eyes, beard and lank blond hair resembled Renaissance depictions of Jesus even in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, adding that hearing church leaders condemn condoms and abortion while at the same time they were covering up child abuse was “personally disappointing.”

“The leaders should think less about hierarchies and institutions and more about Jesus and how to reach the people again,” Mr. Mayet said. Yet, like Mr. Stuckl, Mr. Mayet said that he could not bring himself to leave the church and that he hoped instead that it would change.

“There’s a feeling that many taboo subjects are out in the open now,” said Reinhold Zwick, professor of Catholic theology at the University of Munster, who brought a group of theology students to see the play. “The pressure of the crisis has forced a new climate of openness,” he said, pointing to Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg, who last week publicly questioned the celibacy of priests.

“The scandals are a catastrophe, but a lot of people I know say they won’t just leave because it would feel somehow cheap,” Mr. Zwick said.

In Oberammergau, as in many German communities, the numbers paint a mixed and incomplete picture just a few months after the scandal broke into the open. According to the parish priest, the Rev. Peter Lederer, 10 people left the church in March, compared with 7 people in all of 2009, out of a total population of 5,200.

Of those 5,200 people, some 2,500 were either working on or acting in the play.

“It’s a production of the community, the entire community, and not the church,” said Mr. Nunn, the mayor. Unfortunately, he cannot take part, because he has lived in Oberammergau for only 13 years. For those who are not born here, the wait is 20 years, unless they marry a native, in which case it is cut to 10.

The dedication is clear from the rehearsal schedule, which requires actors to show up almost every evening for six months. The involvement is visible in the shaggy men walking the village streets during the day. All the men in the play stopped shaving and cutting their hair, starting on Ash Wednesday last year.

To keep the play alive for the next generation, Mr. Stuckl emphasized casting as many young people as he could. “I go to the skateboarding half-pipe and say: ‘You’re an angel. You’re an apostle.’ ” he said. “And they all say yes immediately.”

“There’s an entire generation that has very little connection to the church,” said Mr. Stuckl, who as a boy wanted to be a priest. “The people need this moral foothold, even if they aren’t getting it from the church.”