Catholic and Protestant in Western Germany

Extract

Observers surveying the political scene in Western Germany immediately after the Second World War were apt to agree that the good understanding between Catholics and Protestants was one of the few positive results of the ghastly experience of Nazism, war and defeat. Everything seemed to point to the permanence of this new harmony. Catholic and Protestant Christians had both suffered for the same reason, both had learned to understand one another faced as they were by the totalitarian menace—first Nazi and later Communist. And both had reason to regard themselves as the ‘saving remnant’ that had redeemed the soul of Germany. The temporary disappearance of a German state had led finally to the emergence of the two Churches as the only remaining pillars of native authority which could give guidance and solace to a despairing and bewildered people.

The situation is unfortunately radically different today. As long as the majority of Germans remained stunned by defeat and preoccupied with the burden of day-to-day existence, old feuds and rivalries seemed meaningless. The stabilisation of their currency, however, with its almost magical effect on the living standard, together with the re-emergence of German statehood—even though with limited sovereignty—have once more led to conditions in which echoes of the past can be heard with increasing and alarming clarity.