Germany’s Confession of Nihilism

Every now and then I’m invited to an early-eighteenth-century castle in the German countryside, with high baroque ceilings and a moat. The estate was previously home to a medieval castle and has been passed down through the generations for 850 years. One half of the castle is occupied by tenants, the other by its noble Catholic Westphalian owners. The oldest member of the family, a ninety-eight-year-old baroness with the charm of a young lady, is very pious. She prays up to three rosaries a day and occasionally refers—with due discretion—to her intimate relationship with the souls in purgatory. Once a month, family and friends celebrate a private Mass and go to confession. When someone is about to embark on a long journey, his or her car is blessed in the presence of residents and employees. Imagine scenes from the novels of Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Theodor Fontane. A holy home such as this, showering grace on all its residents, is a rare and precious thing indeed. 

The intense faith found at this castle could not be more different from the lax modern liturgy in the village church nearby, which tends to replace beauty with kitsch. The residents are also politically conservative, rejecting government overreach, censorship, and the growing disregard for human life—evoking the example of the Westphalian Cardinal Graf von Galen, the “Lion of Münster,” who courageously preached against the National Socialists’ euthanasia program. Many of today’s German Catholic aristocrats continue to engage in the pro-life movement, promote religious education, or provide medical services through the Order of Malta, the last remaining spiritual order of knights.

Another significant distinction is that the baroness was almost twenty years old when World War II ended. She knows hardships that younger generations cannot imagine. Recently, she had the old mechanical water pump at the house repaired as a precaution. It saddens her that the wooden mill wheel is rotting while electricity prices continue to rise. She considers it naive that modern people have become so accustomed to the seemingly endless stream of essential goods, as if they were living in a hospital emergency room. What if, in the words of E. M. Forster, “the machine stops”? 

For the baroness, faith is a matter of course, but bread and butter are not. For most people, it is just the other way around. Likewise for the state and for parts of the German Church—although crises are increasing, as well as a sense of urgency. The new state debts alone, which amount to trillions, will burden every German household with at least another €100 per month for the next thirty years. Protection against growing Islamism can hardly be guaranteed. Large public gatherings, easy targets for terrorism, are being canceled due to safety concerns. Nevertheless, the Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg recently defended continued immigration by rejecting the Thomistic hierarchy of charity.

This is how the German elite reacts when Vice President JD Vance warns them against committing national suicide through mass immigration. In a homily, Bishop Feige said that the “equality of all people . . . has recently been questioned, and increasingly differentiated and graded.” Indeed, all people are equal in the eyes of God. But when it comes to immigration, there is no “equal” treatment. There is, by necessity, a selection process; NGOs select refugees, and sometimes the German embassy then flies them out. And since these refugees come from Muslim-majority countries, they are mostly Muslim. Our Christian brothers and sisters are often neglected as a result, as showing them favor is deemed discriminatory. Thus here, ensuring the “equality of all people” ultimately means setting aside one’s duty to family, neighbor, and fellow Christian. The hard work of helping refugees amounts to more than just pretty words, and it cannot be done at the cost of one’s countrymen. Reality dictates that things must change. 

What the state and churches are doing is bad, but what they are not doing is worse: caring for their flock, fostering faith and resilience, encouraging strategies for subsidiarity and self-sufficiency, strengthening families and neighborhoods, giving tax breaks to horticulture, crafts, and agriculture, making the country culturally and economically less dependent on imports, improving education, challenging people intellectually and spiritually—through good sermons and the sacrament of confession—instead of spreading indifference. 

The problem is that all of those measures, which strengthen mental and spiritual health, would lower the quota of the state and weaken the welfare system on which the churches’ large social services depend. The country’s failure to tackle inflation and energy prices and prepare for economic contingencies is more than irresponsible. It is a confession of nihilism, indicating a severe lack of patriotism and belief in the country’s past and future. 

What could help against the double nihilism of state and church? For the time being, the cure can only come from civil self-assertion, which, like a grassroots movement, exists only in isolated cases, in small circles, initiatives, and associations. Of course, these small movements won’t be able to save an entire country from collapse. It would take decades of change. But from a Christian point of view, salvation is not a question of quantity. Neither is it a question of physical survival, like the old baroness knows. Even when bread and butter are scarce, faith is never in short supply.