The Church To-Day in Norway

Extract

The Scandinavian countries, and not least of them Norway, have long remained strongholds of Lutheranism. That is, in outward appearance, for the Norwegian State Church counts among its members an unusually large proportion of formal adherents, people who are baptised and ‘confirmed’ in the Lutheran State Church, but who remain for the rest of their lives totally indifferent in religious matters, never attending Church services, or otherwise manifesting any interest whatsoever.

This general apathy has now begun to react on the State Church in a marked degree. Methodists and other Free Church sects have steadily increased their influence and numbers, and have drawn over a large proportion of members, who are recruited from the same classes as in England, namely from among prosperous tradesmen and the best section of the working class population.

Catholicism, on the other hand, here as elsewhere, makes her primary appeal to the intellectual section of the community, but as the first movement broadens and deepens, she sweeps with her people of all ranks and conditions.

The first establishment of the Catholic Church in Norway was made in 1856, in Oslo, then Christiania, under the patronage of St. Olaf, the saint who brought Christianity to the heathen Norsemen. Since then Churches and chapels have sprung up in the larger towns throughout the country, and Norway numbers at present nineteen Catholic churches and twenty chapels.