Through Force or Faith? — Page 99
Chapter 1 — Analysis of the Papal Lecture 99 aforementioned treatise himself in A. D. 398 and its first German translation was done in 1990. Prior to it, the rest of the books of Augustine had been translated, but this book had not been brought into the public view. Since Christian doctrines do not appeal to man’s rational- ism, and the Pope could not possibly have furnished any positive example from his own religion for his address, therefore, by mak- ing baseless accusations about Islam, he has attempted to connect Christian teachings with rationalism by a convoluted reasoning. In Western countries, the conflict between religion (Christianity) and science is quite flagrant. The fact of the matter is that each year Christians are abandoning the Church in large numbers so much so that the Church is facing the difficulty of how to provide for the upkeep of the churches that are being shut down. Just in Germany, hundreds of churches are being closed. This year, Professor Petzinka of the University of Darmstadt chose the topic, for the master’s thesis for his architecture students, of how to transform the buildings of those churches which are not being used due to lack of parishioners and have no one to take care of so that they may serve some other purpose. Thus he writes, It is a fact that the Church has lost its monopoly as the guiding force in the society. As a result there has been a decline in the need to build new churches and unfortu- nately even present churches are being demolished. For example, the Protestant Churches in Frankfurt have the capacity for 400,000 members, but it has the membership of only 145,000. Some reviews boldly predict that every third of the 32,000 Churches will be sold sooner or later