Katholische Kirche und Sozialwissenschaften 19451975

Since 1945 the Catholic Church has resorted to a number of sociological methods in rapid succession. These should help to fill areas of church removal with new missionary zeal, to observe the attitudes of the faithful through demoscopy and to adapt the church's organizational structure to the changed conditions of pastoral care. Group dynamic and therapeutic concepts opened up new possibilities for the religious self-thematization of the individual. With the help of the social sciences, the consequences of functional differentiation as "secularization" could be observed without a greater rationality of church action being easily achieved. The reception and practical application of these methods in the church is a vivid example of the increasing "scientification of the social". The social sciences should help preach the gospel message in new ways. But at the same time they threatened to drain the faith. The historical analysis of this process enables fascinating insights into the religious and church history of the 20th century. At the same time, it is a criticism of the success stories of the Federal Republic that have turned out too smooth, and rather interprets them as a period of "dangerous modernity".