What's New

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    Food and abstention from food play a very important role in Ethiopian Catholic life and practice. The norms for Catholic practice here are more lenient than Ethiopian Orthodox practice, but far stricter than in the Latin Catholic world.
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    Ethiopian Catholics regularly differentiate themselves from the dominant Orthodox religion by stressing the degree to which they learn catechism. But compared to many other countries, Catholicism here also places special stress on the way that the liturgy communicates the faith.
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    Catholicism in Denmark is a tiny minority religion, an immigrant religion in a country that is among the most secularized countries in the world. In one large cross-cultural study, only 9% of Danes describe religion as being very important in their lives.
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    Danish Catholic liturgy might best be described as calm, orderly, but not formalistic, and convivial.
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    Beyond the churches and towers, Catholicism, indeed Christianity, is almost never visible in public.
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    Approximately one third of all Danish Catholics have been born abroad, and immigrant cultures often celebrate Mass separately, in their own languages.
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    Saints are not absent from Denmark's dominant Lutheran culture. One sees biblical saints’ names on Danish streets and at Lutheran churches, and one of the major Lutheran churches in Copenhagen is Our Lady's church. Still, Marian devotion is somewhat more emphasized among Catholics in Denmark.
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    Independent lay organizations do not seem to play a significant role in Danish Catholics’ lives, but Catholic charities and mission organizations are important to their identity.
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    Danes suggest that the quieter, more Lutheran qualities of their culture militate against any likelihood that charismatic religion will ever take root in Denmark.
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    In a far northern country with very short winter days, Danes do what they can to overcome the darkness of winter with light and warmth. In Denmark the connection between Christmas and winter solstice seems especially strong. Christmas season begins in a small way at schools with Luciadag, (St. Lucy’s Day) on December 13. Lucia means “light,” and in pre-Reformation Denmark, St. Lucy’s feast was tied to the winter solstice and the beginning of the return of light to the world.1 1The feast has ancient roots in Denmark, but was imported to Denmark churches in 1944 as an act of light and hope