“The de-Christianization of Europe is dramatic and accelerated…”
The four major Christian holidays on the Belgian school calendar have officially been renamed to reflect the yearly seasons, as reported by Le Soir (The Evening).
The French-speaking southern half of heavily Catholic Belgium has further distanced itself from Belgium’s Christian roots, and instead has embraced secularization.
As reported by the left-of-center Le Soir, school calendars within Belgium’s French speaking community have the following changes:
- Toussaint (All Saints Day) – d’Automne (Autumn)
- de Noël (Christmas) – d’Hiver (Winter)
- de Carnaval (Carnival/Lenten preparation) – de Détente (Break)
- de Pâques (Easter/Pasch) – de Printemps (Spring)
The Death Knell Of Christian Europe?
Ironically, French Catholic cleric Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, currently the President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue at the Vatican, was quoted in 2008 by the Catholic News Agency (CNA) stating that “t
he de-Christianization of Europe is dramatic and accelerated, but it is not irreversible.”
The Cardinal took note that “many sociologists and scholars take pleasure in describing the Christianity of tomorrow as elderly, divided and undermined by the loss of its identity, succumbing to the attacks of new religions or of new forms of unbelief and atheism.
In a 2005 study, the non-partisan Population Reference Bureau cited the percentage change in global Catholicism by 2050 is estimated to be a 45.8 percent increase, yet the change in Europe is predicted to see a drop of 5.5 percent.
