Future goal for the European Protestant Church

The goal must obviously not be to create a new theocracy. Europe will still remain predominantly secular. However, the Churches primary role will be to contribute to unity by offering cultural and spiritual opportunities. The Church will once again be allowed to do what it was intended to do; to propagate and maintain cultural unity through pre defined rituals and celebrations. Christendom is after all the primary factor that unites all Europeans. We should therefore strive to create a united Church through reforming it, which ends up as a Church worthy of our respect.

To quote a Protestant convert to Catholicism:

“When asked what attracted me to Catholicism, I cannot say, for it wasn't something it was everything. The art, the architecture, its antiquity, the nativity scenes, the role of the mass, the beauty of the liturgy...the social conscience of the Church, its prophetic role in our modern world, the lives of the saints, the mystery, the presence of Christ, the sheer universality -- I was falling in love -- and perfect love casts out all fear, if not all apprehension.

Explanations

Liturgy: The word, which especially among Protestants is sometimes rendered by its English translation "service", refers to an elaborate formal ritual such as the Catholic Mass/Eucharist.

Eucharist: The Eucharist, also called Holy Communion, Sacrament of the Table, the Blessed Sacrament, or The Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance, generally considered to be a commemoration of the Last Supper, the final meal that Jesus Christ shared with his disciples before his arrest and eventual crucifixion. The consecration of bread and a cup within the rite recalls the moment at the Last Supper when Jesus gave his disciples bread, saying, "This is my body", and wine, saying, "This is my blood"

Mass: Mass is the usual English-language name for the Eucharistic celebration in the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church. The term is used also of similar celebrations in Old Catholic Churches (a German schism from the 19th Century), in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of Anglicanism, in many Lutheran churches, and in a small number of High Church Methodist parishes.

The Mass and the Eucharist really can't be separated since the latter is the central act -- the climax -- of the former.

Nativity scenes: A nativity scene is a depiction of the birth of Jesus as described in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Living nativity scenes, in which real people and animals participate, exhibit (at the minimum) figures representing the infant Jesus, his mother Mary, and Mary's husband, Joseph. Some nativity scenes include other characters from the Biblical story such as shepherds, the Magi, and angels.

Some features of the dramas became part of both Catholic and Protestant Christmas services with children often taking the parts of characters in the nativity story. Nativity plays and pageants, culminating in living nativity scenes, eventually entered public schools. Today, such exhibitions are challenged on the grounds of separation of church and state.

Further reading - books:

1. New Catholics, 2. Where Peter Is

Sources:

1. Ibid., pp. 9, 56, 59, 82, 128, 131.

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