Communication and Church Day

1. The Pope is on the Internet. He even tweets regularly on the short message service Twitter. Yes, that’s what they really call it. Even with the Holy Father. Although this chirping has nothing to do with birds. In the English version of his tweets, Francis has about 19 million followers. In German, that’s just under 700,000. There are also papal websites for friends on Facebook and Instagram.

2. By the way, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn has more than 20,000 Twitter fans. This is not just modern frills, but an important balance in the Church’s otherwise increasingly unsuccessful media communications. “Kirchenzeitung”, “Sonntag”, “Sonntags-” and “Rupertusblatt” – the titles of church print media in Austria – had up to a third less circulation in 2021 than in 2011. So you lose traditional sheep.

3. This decline over the past decade suggests that readers who are less interested in the Catholic Church are accordingly. Media advisor Peter Plaikner says: “One of the reasons could be the late digitization of the offers. This is understandable given the advanced age of the main target groups, but the share of electronic publications is very small compared to daily newspapers.”

4. Less polite: By 2050, a minority of people living in Austria will likely be Christian. This is not only due to immigration, but the majority of churchgoers are so old that they will not be alive by 2050. In addition, more and more people are leaving the Roman Catholic Church. Furthermore, there are many people who do not do this, but live their lives without any connection to church and religion.

5. Until now, church leaders have found no way to communicate to reverse or at least slow this trend. The church tends to use strategic communication tricks. On the one hand, the law helps her. Because for more than 20 years no one in Austria has officially known how many Christians and church members there are fewer than before. This is because the creed has not been asked for since 2001. It is not wrong to think that religion does not concern the state.

6 On the other hand, the Church welcomes the encouragement in other parts of the world, which is cleverly communicated in terms of communication strategy. Yes, hey, but why are we ignoring the sharp downward trend in Europe? Do you really want to get it to the point “Imagine, it’s church and nobody goes there!”?

7. The church doesn’t even know what baptized Christians want. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that the internal church democracy as the right of the faithful to have a say is a very delicate plant. So delicate that you often don’t even notice it. On the other hand, church leaders know very little what their followers think at all.

8. The parish councils have recently been re-elected. Lay people also have a say in church affairs. However, voter turnout averaged just 14 percent for Austria as a whole. In Vienna it was less than four percent, in some parishes only 0.5 percent! Conversely, the majority of people have no idea if and what church members mean and want. Because there is no non-voter survey.

9. Why is the Church’s communication deficit so sad? Here’s a positive example of the Church’s efforts to promote more dialogue: The Church and its top representatives want to participate as best they can in the fight against the Covid 19 pandemic. Even St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna was vaccinated. The cardinal said a short prayer in the “press hour” a week ago to the address of the corona deniers: “God, please let it rain brains!”

10. The catch is that it’s best to contact the very small group of regular churchgoers and convince them to protect themselves and others from the virus. To be really successful, one would have to communicate with the majority of those who have nothing to do with church representatives, from the cardinal down.

This applies to the pandemic and to all social issues from non-violence to respect, where a responsible attitude can make the difference. But there isn’t even a channel of communication with people outside of the shrinking church world, let alone deeper connections.