I tidsskriftet First Things augustnummer omtales biskop Erik Varden igjen når hans bok Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses omtales. Artikkeen begynner slik:
In March 2022, the Nordic Bishops’ Conference sent an open letter to the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg. The Nordic bishops began by mentioning their historic debt of gratitude to the German Church: In Norway, for instance, the nineteenth-century Catholic revival owed much to German missionaries, and to this day the Bonifatiuswerk charity funds Norwegian church buildings. Yet the Nordic bishops wrote that in the “German Synodal Way” they saw the threat of a “capitulation to the Zeitgeist,” rather than an answer to the challenges of the present out of the riches of Scripture and tradition. “True reforms in the Church,” they note, “have set out from Catholic teaching founded on divine Revelation and authentic Tradition, to defend it, expound it, and translate it credibly into lived life.”
One year later, in March 2023, the Nordic Bishops illustrated the point by issuing a pastoral letter on human sexuality. The document is full of sensitivity to the aspirations of those who pursue sexual liberation of various kinds, and of merciful love toward those dissatisfied with their sexual nature, but it challenges those aspirations and dissatisfactions with an attractive presentation of a theological view of our embodied being. Now, one of the letter’s signatories, Erik Varden, bishop of Trondheim and Cistercian of the Strict Observance (Trappist), has written a full-length treatment of the subject.
Bishop Varden’s book acknowledges that the scandal of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and religious has contributed to a general discrediting of the ideals of celibacy and chastity. …
Hele artikkelen/bokanmeldelsen kan leses her: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/08/immortal-diamond
Og etter bokomtalen ser forfatteren igjen på hvor den katolske kirke har utviklet seg så forskjellig i Tyskland og i Norge/Norden, og skriver.
What explains the contrast between Norway and Germany? The two churches are historically close, and the Norwegians owe so much to the Germans. Why are their theological visions so different?
One important factor is the way academic theology developed in Germany. As Karl-Heinz Menke has argued, one key event was the seizure of large Catholic territories by Protestant Prussia after the Napoleonic Wars. The Prussian state established faculties of Catholic theology alongside Protestant faculties at state universities. …
… Today, German Catholicism seems in nearly irreversible decline: The most recent figures, for 2022, showed that 522,821 Germans had left the Church in a single year. In Norway, meanwhile, a much, much smaller Church is slowly growing—partly through immigration, and partly through a small stream of native Norwegian converts. Though no one expects a mass conversion of Norwegian society, the atmosphere among Catholics is hopeful. A second spring seems to be in the air.
Norway, of course, never had a large Catholic population for the state to integrate: Post-Reformation Norway had very few Catholics indeed, and the Catholic hierarchy was restored only in 1953. As a result, Norway’s Catholic theologians have never relied on the patronage and influence of liberal Protestantism. Paradoxically, one could say that the Church in Norway is healthier than Germany’s in 2024 because, in Norway, the Reformation was more successful.
