Pope Benedict XVI was born in the Christmas card perfect duchy of Bavaria in southern Germany.
Snowflakes falling onto onion-domed churches, candles burning in brightly decorated windows, Black Forest pine trees filling parlors with colorful branches and heady scents, toy wooden soldiers cracking walnuts for relatives and guests, and, of course, the ritual of midnight Mass with eager choir and filled pews – these were the elements of Pope Benedict’s youthful Christmases. Holy Week, Easter, Corpus Christi and the Marian feasts were no different. The seasons changed but the deep religious impulse of Catholic Bavaria filled the homes and the churches and spilled out into the streets of Germany’s southern-most province. The pious impression made on the youthful Joseph Ratzinger has endured throughout Pope Benedict’s eight decades. Popular piety is indeed a critical element in the religious life of our German shepherd.
In his recent letter to seminarians, the pope advises the church’s prospective priests on the need for parish devotions and pious exercises. “I urge you to retain an appreciation for popular piety, which is different in every culture yet always remains very similar, for the human heart is ultimately one and the same. Certainly, popular piety tends towards the irrational, and can at times be somewhat superficial. Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss it. Through that piety, the faith has entered human hearts and become part of the common patrimony of sentiments and customs, shaping the life and emotions of the community. Popular piety is thus one of the church’s great treasures. The faith has taken on flesh and blood. Certainly popular piety always needs to be purified and refocused, yet it is worthy of our love and it truly makes us into the ‘People of God’.”
The pontiff did not limit his advice to students. He urges the hierarchy of the church to be just as attentive to the simple religious practices of previous generations. “The bishop should encourage public devotions and festive expressions, often rooted in ancient traditions, on feast-days, whether those of the universal or diocesan calendar, or during local celebrations provided for by the norms and particularly loved by the people (e.g. Christmas, Easter, feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of patron saints). This should be done in such a way that the faithful can connect these public festivities with the joy inherent in the Christian mysteries.”
In a recent publication entitled, “The Death of Christian Britain,” Scottish professor and author Callum G. Brown identifies the inability of younger generations to converse nostalgically about religion as one of the causes of organized religion’s disappearance from British life. Former generations could speak fondly of Christmas crèches in the home, midnight Mass, Christmas carols, choir practices, bedtime prayers, serving Mass, dances in church halls, catechism classes, Catholic schools, as well as aunts who were nuns and uncles who were priests. Many young girls gathered flowers for May processions in their back yard and young boys played Mass in the family’s cellar. Children were called in from games to recite the family rosary and Saturday afternoon confessions were just as much a part of life as the movie matinee. And, of course, church on Sunday was taken for granted.
In Britain as well as in the United States, increasing secularization since the 1960s has almost put an end to this popular piety and consequently to the religious narrative that held families and parishes together in the past. When religion ceased being a matter of family routine and neighborhood custom, when interfaith marriages respectfully put religion on the back burner, when marriage attempted after divorce made religious practice seem hypocritical, when liberals and feminists began to define themselves by opposition to traditional religious teaching on abortion, homosexuality, and contraception, when talk of Eastern religions, witchcraft, and even atheism became more fashionable than biblical allusions, when children’s names were drawn more from the entertainment industry than from the Litany of Saints, the fate of the Christian West became evident. Well might the pope address himself to the need for folk religion in daily life. Popular piety testifies to a meaningful and appreciated Christianity.
