The pain of the times of change
“So whoever truly wants to follow God must free himself from the bonds of passionate attachment to this life; but this happens through complete separation and forgetting of old habits. "
(Basil of Caesarea, "55 detailed rules in questions and answers")
„With religious men - to start with - we have to record a decrease of 50 percent compared to 1977. It is much more dramatic for women. For example, while there were 100,000 women religious in 1965, today there are exactly 18,000 or just under 18,000.“
Engel has been dealing with the history of the German orders for many years. The Dominican priest from Berlin describes the latest development as a "historical break with tradition".
“If we look at the number of novices, that is, the beginners in the contemplative women's communities, then we have to realize that there has been a drop of no less than 98 percent from 3500 novices in 1955 to 62 novices for all women's communities in Germany this Year."
The numbers he gives speak for themselves: The spiritual communities are currently in a crisis - therefore Pope Francis only proclaimed a “Year of Orders” at the end of 2014.
At the same time, Engel warns the Catholic Church not to panic. Doomsday scenarios are inappropriate and not helpful. Rather, it is important to soberly analyze the shrinking process of numerous orders:
„It’s difficult because we - at least in the German Church - are very institutional believers. And that also includes religious institutions. We are giving up institutions at this point. Ultimately, the orders are not needed for the coming of the kingdom of God; as it naturally does not need the whole church structures. That is, they are always superfluous in a certain way. And in this respect, of course, the dying of religious orders is actually a completely normal process.“
To describe the dying of religious orders as a “completely normal process” may seem risky. Still, if this analysis is correct, what are the reasons? Jesuit Father Franz Meures, who heads the education department within the German Conference of Superiors of the Order in Bonn, sees the overall church trend as one of the reasons for the shrinking of the orders:
“The bond with the church as a whole has waned. The national church with all its manifestations is no longer sustainable in this way. You can also see this in the fact that, for example, the seminarians, the candidates for priests in the dioceses have also sunk very sharply to a low level that we haven't had for a very long time. "
Second, Meures mentions a more psychological cause: the bond for life, which is essential for religious life, he says, is putting more and more young people off.
“You can see it from the fact that for thirty or forty years more younger religious have left because they noticed that it wasn't working. But this element of making a promise for life makes people hesitate. "
"After passing judgment, we must have prepared and willing minds to obey in everything the true Bride of Christ our Lord, who is our holy mother, the hierarchical Church."
(Ignatius von Loyola: "Spiritual Exercises")
“There a male order had a retreat and seminar house. At that time he still had five priests on site. The percentage of seminars continued to decline, so that the house was in deficit. As usual with monasteries, there was a large garden behind the house. So, first of all, we worked with the city of Mainz to develop a development plan for the area behind the monastery. We then discussed with the Fathers that we would build a new building for them on the site. A modern building, multifunctional. So that it can later be converted into apartment buildings, but is already used as a monastery with a chapel, a refectory, with everything you need in a monastery. And then we were very lucky that the retreat house was actually bought by the Caritas Association, because at the time they were looking for a central location to bring together different offices from the city of Mainz. "
No matter which way the shrinking convents take, the number of medals in Germany is likely to continue to decline for the foreseeable future. In addition, the way they are housed will change. Because for the Dominican Ulrich Engel, who researches the history of orders, one thing is already clear:
“We know big abbeys, that is, buildings where you can imagine hundreds of people in them. These representative buildings, whatever they have always been, will no longer exist. "
At the moment, however, there are still these large representative buildings. Some of them are still inhabited by intact communities, but many others are already empty. And here is another difficulty in the current crisis of the order. What should happen to the traditional, old buildings? Should they be sold and then possibly misused?
After all, the monastery buildings were the living space of women and men who put their lives in the service of their faith. Many were also important cultural centers for centuries - such as the Bavarian monasteries Wessobrunn or Benediktbeuern. And this is how Jesuit Father Franz Meures emphasizes:
“It hurts, of course, when the monks or sisters then have to decide: It won't work anymore, we'll leave here. And in this respect, a great deal of care is increasingly being taken to discuss the subsequent use well and to take your time with it. This is not just a question of 'This monastery is running out of breath', but it is then a social question, a church and social question: What will become of this place? "
Arnulf Salmen sees it similarly. The step to give up an old, ancestral monastery location, according to the spokesman for the Conference of Superiors, is by no means just the result of cold considerations. Above all, the emotional component of such a decision should not be underestimated ...
“... which often encounters a great shock even among the people who live in the vicinity of the monastery when they hear that this monastery, which has been animated by religious for hundreds of years, is now suddenly of the people is robbed, who just shaped life there. It is all the more important that a decision is made not only as a religious community, but also to look together with the actors who can play a role in this context to see what re-use could look like. "
Today the retreat house and the church belonging to it are used by the Caritas Association. The religious still live there and now have new neighbors. Because the settlement agency built single-family houses on the monastery grounds. In this case, says Ralf Olbrück, all sides would have benefited. But that's not always the case.
"Renewing religious life means: constant return to the sources of every Christian life and to the spirit of the origin of the individual institutes, but at the same time their adaptation to the changed conditions of the times."
“Our main task is the religious orders, which still have between 20 and 100 members, because there I can and must also approach the future in this direction - money and real estate - at the moment. I can already set the course for the point today, when the number of members will decline more. Above all, I have the time to plan. Many communities that simply wait too long lack that. "
In the past few years, Ralf Olbrück and his employees have sold at least two dozen monasteries - including some culturally and historically significant monasteries such as Pilenhofen in Upper Palatinate or Altenhohenau in Upper Bavaria. Despite these successes - Olbrück does not want to downplay the problems:
“It is and will remain a special property. And it is difficult because these monasteries are actually always built on the fact that they were originally always too small. In fact, we have already placed nursing homes in monasteries. In Bavaria we have a school in a monastery with a boarding school. And with the secular solution, it is usually the case that property developers and / or people who have specialized in listed buildings actually think about building high-quality condominiums there. "
The aim of the sale of monasteries is - if possible - to find an amicable solution in which the affected order is involved as well as the village, the city, the region that are connected to this monastery. It can take a while for a solution to be found - sometimes three years as in Mainz-Bretzenheim.
“There a male order had a retreat and seminar house. At that time he still had five priests on site. The percentage of seminars continued to decline, so that the house was in deficit. As usual with monasteries, there was a large garden behind the house. So, first of all, we worked with the city of Mainz to develop a development plan for the area behind the monastery. We then discussed with the Fathers that we would build a new building for them on the site. A modern building, multifunctional. So that it can later be converted into apartment buildings, but is already used as a monastery with a chapel, a refectory, with everything you need in a monastery. And then we were very lucky that the retreat house was actually bought by the Caritas Association, because at the time they were looking for a central location to bring together different offices from the city of Mainz. "
Today the retreat house and the church belonging to it are used by the Caritas Association. The religious still live there and now have new neighbors. Because the settlement agency built single-family houses on the monastery grounds. In this case, says Ralf Olbrück, all sides would have benefited. But that's not always the case.
"Renewing religious life means: constant return to the sources of every Christian life and to the spirit of the origin of the individual institutes, but at the same time their adaptation to the changed conditions of the times."