Mosques are thriving.
Mosques are analogous to churches, not monasteries. Even as a Muslim, I'm not sure what the Islamic equivalent for a monastery is, since monasticism it is discouraged in Islam.
Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
101–110 of 171 posts
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#102I guess it's difficult to manage church finances when it doesn't control government(s) anymore.
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#103Great article, but I think it misses one key aspect of why monasteries are dying out: the lack of lively church communities which used to encourage dedicated people to join the monastic life. Monasteries don't exist in a vacuum, they have an intricate interdependency with normal parishes of families and, more generally, people "in the world." It should not really be the responsibility of monastics to do public relati…
Wasn't it the case that a lot of second sons became monks because they weren't going to inherit the family title/land/business/farm, and they had to find some way to survive? For the upper classes, monasteries were replaced by militaries, when second sons could go off and have adventures, and perhaps win a fortune of their own. For everyone else, the advent of wage economies did the job.
And in some cases, the only path to literacy.
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#104As membership declines, just wondering what happens to all the cash the Churches are sitting on, from property, to art, to chuch tax collections. Going to be interesting to see what the next (younger) gen of church leaders do with it...maybe they need an innovation center to modernize the useful aspects of religion.
I hope at least all their physical properties (artworks, churches, monasteries, land) goes to the state and is used for social good.
I’m curious - who, in this model, gets to define the “social good”?
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#105> Religious orders in Germany are disappearing because so few people want to dedicate their entire lives to God anymore Is there anything weird about this? Entire life is a pretty hefty price to pay, what needs to be changed is religion itself, if it wants to find more new believers to keep itself from disappearing.
>religion needs less restrictions
lukewarm religions are dying out. It's atheism or a religion that makes demands -- and the atheists are not reproducing.
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#106The village I live in has a "Kloster", with nuns making up about 15% of our population. The article is accurate in that the number of practicing nuns is sinking and certainly not sustainable. Here they have diversified in a number of directions. There is a school, an old folks home, and a hotel. The picturesque location, combined with the historic buildings makes all these quite competitive, and successful. I'd go so…
Keep in mind that in Germany these "church operated" services are heavily subsidised by the German state via regular taxes (not the "church tax" registered church members pay directly to their church via the tax office). In some cases this can be as much as 100% of the operating costs and salaries (although the business is operated in accordance with church labor laws rather than secular laws, allowing e.g. certain f…
This description is a bit misleading:
- School: Germany mostly has public schools. If you have operated a private school for a few years, you can apply for subsidy. You will receive roughly the amount per pupil that would otherwise be needed to fund the pupil's place at a public school. So this is more or less a zero-sum game for the state. All schools have to obey public school regulations (e.g., on curriculum and exams) regardless who operates them.
- Elderly home: there is no direct subsidy by the state. Germany has established a mandatory insurance ("Pflegeversicherung", nursing care insurance). This insurance will pay for nursing care, regardless who operates the elderly home.
- Hotel: no subsidy by the state at all.
Summarized, there exists no special deal by the state for church operated services, with respect to funding/subsidy.
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#107Thanks God ! /s
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not bad, but the Alexandrian tradition was not the only way to interpret Christianity. The idea that Christianity's understanding of God's oneness was merely borrowed from Neoplatonism is an old cliche, but it leaves too much out. Without going into this too much, I would say that the early Christian thinkers accepted the Platonic and Neoplatonic problem of trying to answer how the one related to the many, or how it…
Right, definitely not claiming this is the only way to interpret christianity. But, the design constraints are: how to interpret christianity in a manner that is commensurable with modern science and ancient traditions? Hence... Note that there is no need to find the original interpretation (impossible), only an early, valid, and widespread interpretation. And whatever it is, it should provide spiritual meaning AND n…
I agree with your assessment that people are missing out when they don't consider the Neoplatonic influence on Christianity, especially when stating it this way is the only way of getting people to look at it from a different perspective.
"Eastern Christian philosophy," or simply "Eastern Theology" really came into its own, and while it is absolutely valid to study Church writers in contrast and relationship to Neoplatonic philosophy, they developed their own tradition. Thus, parsing the logos tradition as if Origen, the Cappadocians, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, etc., were "philosophers" in their own right is actually quite a fruitful endeavor.
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#109Great article, but I think it misses one key aspect of why monasteries are dying out: the lack of lively church communities which used to encourage dedicated people to join the monastic life. Monasteries don't exist in a vacuum, they have an intricate interdependency with normal parishes of families and, more generally, people "in the world." It should not really be the responsibility of monastics to do public relati…
Wasn't it the case that a lot of second sons became monks because they weren't going to inherit the family title/land/business/farm, and they had to find some way to survive? For the upper classes, monasteries were replaced by militaries, when second sons could go off and have adventures, and perhaps win a fortune of their own. For everyone else, the advent of wage economies did the job.
The impression that I always got was that the church, in some role or another, was it's own high quality occupation.
It was a good option that provided education, stability, potentially a source of power, and was a prestigious path to go.
I think in modern times we sometimes see the church as this side organization, but in the past it was its own industry of sorts and central to life, economics, education, prestige, potentially power.
Re: Germany's Vanishing Monasteries
#110Great article, but I think it misses one key aspect of why monasteries are dying out: the lack of lively church communities which used to encourage dedicated people to join the monastic life. Monasteries don't exist in a vacuum, they have an intricate interdependency with normal parishes of families and, more generally, people "in the world." It should not really be the responsibility of monastics to do public relati…
Wasn't it the case that a lot of second sons became monks because they weren't going to inherit the family title/land/business/farm, and they had to find some way to survive? For the upper classes, monasteries were replaced by militaries, when second sons could go off and have adventures, and perhaps win a fortune of their own. For everyone else, the advent of wage economies did the job.
There were and are many reasons why people became monastics. But to think that the only reasons were inheritance and property laws shows that someone only knows about monasticism from the perspective of modern medieval histories, which tend to present it this way. Not to deny that these reasons existed and made many consider monastic life as an option, but it can't be the whole story.
Think about it, monastic life really was and is monastic. It included many hours of prayers and other contemplative practices (and other minor inconveniences like celibacy). Yes, there was great variance in different orders, but many people (if not most) chose this life because they were true believers. The only way to prepare them for this life was that the church as a whole was universally present so that monasticism became just one option between many different ones within the church, albeit a quite intense one.