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This article will mainly deal with mission ad intra, i.e. the question of Europe as a ‘mission continent’, not mission ad extra, i.e. missionary activities of European churches or Christians outside Europe. And because mission in Europe is still controversial, developments in the understanding of mission and a reading of church documents from a European missionary perspective will be presented.

Changes in Europe 1910-2010

Comparing maps of Europe from 1910 and 2010 indicates significant changes in the continent. Some countries or empires disappeared, others evolved, borders were moved. The twentieth century was the time of two world wars, both started in Europe, and the rise and fall of Nazism and communism. Political systems and nations have changed as well as worldviews and ways of thinking. The twentieth century also marks the end of European colonialism.

Europe is a diverse and multicultural continent flowing out of several very distinct traditions, resulting in a complex weave of political, social and religious currents. Latin, Orthodox and Protestant Christianity are part of Europe, as are Judaism and Islam, both historically and in the contemporary setting. In addition to these elements we find the secular humanism that was a direct result of the Enlightenment. While its achievements are somewhat haltingly acknowledged, it still remains the object of great suspicion for the church, as it is accused of having ‘weakened the faith and often, tragically, led to its complete abandonment’ (EE:47). As Europe becomes more pluralistic, it is becoming increasingly difficult to speak in precise terms of religion in Europe – though it is impossible to deny a decline in religious adherence and the rise of ‘the spirit of an immanentist humanism’ (EE:47). Even where church membership may be high, practice can be low. As a result, the Catholic Church in Europe has become aware that there are ‘missionary situations’ in the continent today.

Religious affiliations in Europe have changed significantly over the past 100 years. In 1910 almost 95% of Europeans were Christians; by 2010 this figure has fallen to about 80%. The number of agnostics and atheists together increased from about 0.5% in 1910 to more than 13% today. In 1910 there were about 10 million Muslims in Europe. Today they are more than 41 million. Due to the Holocaust and emigration the number of Jews

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declined from 2.4% to 0.3%. There is, however, a new increase of the number of Jews in Western Europe because of recent immigration of Eastern European Jews to Germany. The numbers of Hindus and Buddhists in Europe are also increasing (see Johnson and Ross, ed. 2009: 156).

Immigration has had a strong influence on the Christian community. There are Christians from Africa, Asia and Latin America in today’s Europe – both in traditional Catholic parishes and in special national groups. The future of European Christianity seems to be largely in the hands of immigrants.

Missiology

The development of the understanding of mission is related to a number of developments in Europe over the past 100 years. Joseph Schmidlin (1876- 1944) the ‘father’ of Catholic missiology was influenced by developments in mission in the nineteenth century and by Gustav Warneck, the inaugural holder of the first chair in Protestant missiology that was established in 1896. Mission, for Schmidlin, was an activity of the church in the non- Christian world (the world outside Europe), aimed at the conversion of non-Christians (culminating in their baptism and the establishment of local churches). Catholic missionaries were mainly members of European religious congregations that were founded for the purpose of mission ad

extra and supported by the Catholic population in Europe. The nineteenth

century was considered the ‘missionary century’ (Schmidlin 1931: 114), because during that period a large number of Protestant as well as Catholic missionary societies emerged. In addition, different lay movements in support of the ‘missions’ came into being.

Contemporary concept of mission

According to Warneck, Protestants used the term mission in various ways in his day. It could mean (1) mission among Catholics or other (rival) Protestant groups; (2) ‘innere Mission’ (in German), that is, social service for the needy; (3) pastoral work among German Protestants who had migrated to countries outside Europe; and, finally, (4) mission among non- Christians (Ommerborn 2008: 242-43).

Among Catholics the situation was similar. There were the so-called ‘Northern Missions’, that is to say the predominantly Protestant Scandinavian countries and the territories in Northern Germany, with their very sparse Catholic populations – no more than 10,000 in all in the nineteenth century. They were subject to the central missionary organization of the Catholic Church, the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide in Rome. The parishes in this territory – which fluctuated in the course of time – were called missions or mission stations and the priests serving there, mostly religious, were styled missionaries. In Germany their support

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during the nineteenth century was primarily assured by the St Boniface Association, founded in 1849. Then there is the mission among non-

Catholics, since Catholics were convinced they had the right to convert

non-Catholic Christians to the Catholic faith. Home mission aims at renewal and revitalization of the Catholic flock. There was the mission

among migrants, especially in America, which was considered a mission

territory not only by mission societies, but also the propaganda, to whom the United States were subject until the curial reform of 1908. And finally there was the mission among non-Christians or foreign mission (Ommerborn 2008: 242-43).

Although the term ‘mission’ was thus sometimes used in a wider sense, mission proper meant Christian activity among ‘pagans’.

With special interest Schmidlin observed whatever happened in the field of support for the missions in Germany at the beginning of the twentieth century. The reports ‘Aus dem heimatlichen Missionswesen’ that were regularly published in his Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft (ZM) give a lot of information about developments in that area. Schmidlin writes about his lectures at Münster University, and informs his readers about diverse mission-relevant topics (see Üffing 1994: 117ff).

Such articles are important, because they give some insight into mission thinking and ideas of that time. In addition, we see the new interest in mission that in the course of the twentieth century grew into an important force in Germany. While the main focus of mission and of missiology was

ad extra, there have already been some who started thinking about the need

of mission also ad intra, i.e., inside Europe. There was a – still controversial – development considering the re-Christianization of formerly Christian areas as a challenge also to missiological thinking. In 1935 Schmidlin published an article on ‘Heidenmission und Neuheidentum’ (pagan mission and neo-paganism) in the ZM. He developed the idea of mission in Europe on the basis of what he calls ‘neo-paganism’, looking at the increasing number of former Christians who had lost their faith and were not Christians anymore.

Mission in Europe for centuries was understood as concluded, an affair of the distant past. There were some exceptions, for example in looking at Germany in a missionary perspective since the end of the First World War. The Catholic home missions started with laypeople, who worked in pastoral care and care for families to support the growing demands in parishes that were caused by urbanization and industrialization. The use of the term ‘mission’ here and elsewhere was influenced by Protestant vocabulary, as, for instance, in ‘city mission’. Two female religious congregations, understanding their charism as social apostolate, evolved from this: in 1921 the ‘Sisters of Catholic Home Missions of Our Lady’, and in 1922 the ‘Catholic Home Mission Munich’. Areas of special mission developed, in the sense of social apostolate or apostolate among certain

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groups of people, like city mission, mission at train stations (Bahnhofsmission) or mission among seamen.

Mission in Europe

Before Vatican II

Since the 1930s, and especially immediately before and after World War II, there have been a number of church thinkers who spoke about mission in Europe, saying that in the center of Christian Europe there were two mission countries: Germany and France. For Germany, the philosopher Josef Pieper as well as the Jesuits Alfred Delp and Ivo Zeiger need to be mentioned. For France, there is Etienne Gilson, who in 1935 wrote that France has turned into a ‘mission country’ again, and the well-known book by Yves Daniel and Henry Godin La France pays de mission of 1943. Although their ideas were not generally accepted, we need to take a look at them.

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was at the forefront of the Neo-Thomistic wave in twentieth-century Catholic philosophy. Reflections about the need for a modern Catholic mission in Germany started in the mid-1930s, in relation to the challenge of a new self-understanding of church and Christianity in Nazi Germany. Pieper takes position and uses the term mission. He relates his reflections to an article about Etienne Gilson’s book, in which challenges Catholics in France to relate in a new way to the world around them (see Bünker 2004: 229-30). The task of the church in France, he says, is to find ways for a re-Christianization. Pieper takes up the idea and sees similar challenges in Germany. ‘The mission of the Church for the German people is far from being finished, the process of the Christianization of the German people is not yet concluded; the situation of the Church in Germany is the situation of mission’ (Pieper 2000: 1). Mission for Pieper is a basic task of the church sent to all peoples with the goal to win them for Christ. Because of the situation of the 1930s, he sees Germany again in such a missionary situation.

The German Jesuit Alfred Delp spoke in 1941 about the missionary challenges for Germany (see Bünker 2004: 235ff). His urgent call for ‘a missionary dialogue with the time’ is related to the accusation that the church is using a foreign language in her contact with the people of her own time. Delp says: ‘We have become a mission country. The environment and the factors determining all life are not Christian anymore. A mission country can only be entered with a truly missionary will, that is, the determination to approach the other person to win him for God, who is the Lord …’ (Bünker 2004: 235ff). Delp talks about real dialogue of the church with the people of the time as an important first missionary step. This has to happen in a context (Nazi Germany) that is clearly opposed to Christianity and church.

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Ivo Zeiger, another German Jesuit, claimed in 1948 that ‘Germany lies in front of us as a mission country calling out to us’ (see Bünker 244ff). The basis for this statement is the post-war situation in Germany – the end of clearly defined Catholic or Protestant milieus, the population being mixed with refugees from former Eastern parts of Germany, the difficult material and the weak inner situation of church communities. Ziegler understands mission in a clearly geographic sense, often related to the minority situation of Catholics (‘Diaspora’). This new situation becomes a clear challenge to individual Catholics – each responsible for mission in their own context.

Finally, France, pays de mission? (France, a mission country?) – the book by Daniel and Godin of 1943, in which they describe France as a country with large regions without religion. Such a statement shattered the geographical understanding of mission and Christianity. How was the traditional ‘sender’ of mission to become a ‘receiver’? (Bevans and Schroeder 2004: 248-49). The book presents a basic and differentiated new understanding of mission for a European context. Their perspective is sociological, mission for them is not related to a certain territory, but to clearly defined groups in society, in this case the proletariat, which is compared with the ‘pagan indigenous people’ of the classical mission territories. Daniel and Godin understand mission as the building up of an incarnated Christianity. They stress that it cannot be the task of a missionary to make the Chinese French or German, but to make them Christian. It is his task, rather, to build a Chinese Church in China. And it is not only about making individuals Christians, but to Christianize the whole environment, institutions, customs, and habits. Mission for them is not the renewal of Catholicism, but building Christianity (Bünker 2004: 254).

We must also mention Madeleine Delbrêl, who since 1941 served as a lay advisor of the French bishops’ Mission de France, a seminary whose main apostolate was to re-evangelize the country. In 1943 Cardinal Suhard founded the Mission de Paris, an effort to form bonds of lay and clerical solidarity with the urban working class (‘worker priests’). These activities fueled M. Delbrêls conviction that Christians today are called to be ‘missionaries without a boat’ (see Delbrêl 2000).

Vatican II and Evangelii Nuntiandi

These insights and reflections, however, remained isolated and were not widely accepted, until the church started looking from a new theological and global perspective at its situation and task including in Europe. The foundation for a new understanding of mission was laid by the Second Vatican Council. Ad Gentes (AG 1965), the Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity, represents a milestone in the formulation of the modern concept of mission. The document offers a new theological foundation of mission and is to be understood in relation to the Council’s

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ecclesiology (see Lumen Gentium LG 1964), to the pastoral constitution on the church in the modern world Gaudium et Spes (GS 1965), and other documents, like Nostra Aetate (on the relation of the church to non- Christian religions NA 1965), Dei Verbum (on divine revelation DV 1965) or Dignitatis Humanae (on religious liberty DH 1965).

The Council is the point of departure and background of the new evangelization of Europe. Mission now is no longer understood in a merely geographic sense as proclamation outside Europe, but was brought back into the heart of theology and the church. The classical statement of this understanding can be found in AG 2: ‘The Church on earth is by its very nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, it has its origin in the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit …’ This statement was the beginning of a paradigm shift in mission theology: mission is not an appendix to the church that is delegated to one Roman congregation in charge of the church’s missionary activities. Neither is it an activity that concerns only some specialists (missionaries, mainly members of religious congregations), who are sent by the ‘real church’ (mainly existing in ‘Christian’ Europe) to the ‘missions’ (mission countries or territories), mainly outside Europe (and North America). Mission is essential, the church is missionary by nature, the church itself is already the result of the mission that originates in God the Father. Therefore, the church as a whole, wherever it exists, participates in the mission of God and is responsible for mission. It was also recognized that mission has to take place as inculturation (as it was called later) and dialogue (see also Paul VI’s

Ecclesiam Suam ES 1964) within modern culture (see AG 10, GS 53-62).

In Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN 1975) Paul VI deepens the terminological, theological and strategic basis for the mission of the church in the modern world, based on the insights of Vatican II, using the term evangelization. The essence of evangelization is the transmission of the all-embracing and Christocentric salvation that starts with personal conversion (EN 10) and leads, through the evangelization of cultures (EN 20), to the eschatological fulfillment (EN 27). Jesus Christ is the center of the message. Evangelization is addressed to the ‘world of today’, to today’s humanity (EN 18): atheists, non-practicing Catholics, simple people and intellectuals, members of non-Christian religions, the faithful and those who are not living in full communion with the Catholic Church (EN 52-54). EN 19 states: ‘Strata of humanity which are transformed: for the Church it is a question not only of preaching the Gospel in ever wider geographic areas or to ever greater numbers of people, but also of affecting and as it were upsetting, through the power of the Gospel, mankind’s criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God and the plan of salvation.’ This statement, and the challenge to ‘evangelize cultures … in a vital way, in depth and to their very roots …’ gives up a geographic definition of the evangelizing mission of the church and can be

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applied as a challenge to the church in Europe. EN becomes the most important theological basis for the concept of new evangelization of John Paul II as well as for the understanding of mission in Europe.

After Vatican II

After Vatican II, local churches worldwide started reflecting on their identity and their responsibility for mission in their respective continents. For Europe, the collaboration of bishops in the CCEE (Council of Catholic Episcopal Conferences in Europe) was an important step for the development of the concept of new evangelization. As early as 1965 questions about collaboration in Europe were raised and Europe was identified as a special context for church action. The reality of an increasing alienation from Catholic (Christian) faith and the growing presence of other religions in Europe were understood as special challenges (Walldorf 2002: 42). After symposia in 1967 and 1969, the CCEE was founded in Rome in March 1971. The main documents of the symposia up to 1989 are available in a publication entitled ‘The Bishops of Europe and new Evangelization’ (CCEE 1991). Questions of new evangelization and mission in Europe were of utmost importance for the CCEE since its beginnings. The third symposium of the European bishops in 1975 dealt with missionary questions explicitly under the topic ‘Mission of the Bishop in the Service of Faith’. In his presentation, the Archbishop of Krakow and future Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Wojtyla, stressed the missionary priority of the proclamation of the gospel. ‘The kerygma has a missionary task, with which the bishops together with their priests and deacons bring new disciples to Jesus by calling people to the faith or by strengthening their faith’ (Walldorf 2002: 44). Wojtyla stresses that the content of the proclamation must be the gospel – the message with the mystery of Jesus Christ as its center, with the goal of showing people the ways of salvation and the fulfillment of the God’s salvific plan in Christ. ‘Proclamation must make faith relevant and fruitful for the listeners … by giving due space to human experiences and the authentic questions of people of today’ (Walldorf 2002: 44). In a way, the meeting of 1975 was the origin of the future – controversial – program of Europe’s new evangelization. While today many talk about mission in Europe (although not all would agree, as stated at the beginning), the concept of new or re-evangelization as a response to missionary challenges remains controversial. Pastoral theologian Ottmar Fuchs states: ‘The term new evangelization of Europe presupposes a relationship of Church on the one hand and society, culture and world on the other, that since Vatican II has to be rejected … Talking about the new evangelization of Europe suggests an evangelized Church that should lead the terribly secularized Europe back to the faith, with the Church possessing what Europe is lacking’ (quoted in Walldorf 2002: 46). For Fuchs ‘the challenge of evangelization in Europe is not that those who are distant should come back to the Church, but that they, wherever they