Archbishop: Church Must Proselytize Germany, The Local, January 1, 2011

Archbishop: Church Must Proselytize Germany

The Local
January 1, 2011

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110101-32155.html

Rocked by scandal and seeing its flock shrink, the Catholic Church should actively begin proselytizing in Germany, according to the Archbishop of Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx.

In his traditional New Year’s sermon, Marx said the Church needed to spread the Christian faith by actively attempting to convert Germans.

“A new evangelization is the mission of the coming age,” he said on Friday in the Munich Cathedral.

The Church must also keep more Germans from turning away from Christianity, Marx said.

“We aren’t dreaming of bygone times, we want to have an impact on this society,” he said, adding he was “disturbed as a bishop” by the growing number of people deciding to leave the Church.

Marx called 2010 an extremely difficult year for the German Catholic Church following revelations of widespread child abuse at Church institutions.

“We will have to continue to address such sexual abuse in the future,” the archbishop said. “We will have to look the truth in the eye, but we must not allow that there is an air of general suspicion.”

Though the Church had to face up to its responsibility, Marx said German society as a whole needed to be aware of the suffering of children.