The Bishop of Regensburg, Rudolf Voderholzer, has issued a serious warning about the profound crisis of faith affecting Germany and has criticized the drift of a Church that, according to him, has become the universal Church “in which everything is problematized and everything is questioned.” In an extensive interview given to the Catholic channel K-TV, the German prelate defended the need to place Christ once again at the center of preaching and warned of the spiritual emptiness caused by decades of secularization.
The interview begins with a particularly worrying statistic: according to a survey by the Allensbach Institute cited during the conversation, only 28% of Germans currently believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. For Voderholzer, this situation reflects something deeper than a simple loss of religious practice.
The bishop directly linked this decline in faith to the process of secularization that has affected Western Europe for decades.
“It is a consequence of secularization and it should concern us enormously in all ecclesial circles,” he stated.
In his view, the Church should focus primarily on restoring the centrality of the Christian proclamation, rather than dispersing itself in secondary debates.
“The first and most important thing should be to ask ourselves how to place once again at the center of our preaching what constitutes Christianity,” he noted.
Voderholzer summarized the essence of the Christian faith by drawing on a famous formula from Bishop Johann Michael Sailer: “God in Christ, salvation for the sinful world.” According to him, when this truth ceases to occupy the center, all other expressions of Christianity are weakened, including the Church’s social action.
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