When historians write about the career of Pope Benedict XVI I predict that they will include a sobering quote that dates back to his life and work as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany.

I am referring to that 2001 interview when — looking at trends in postmodern Europe — he put all of his hopes and fears on the record. I thought of this exchange during a Twitter dialogue the other day with GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge. Hold that thought.

Ratzinger had been candid before. German journalist Peter Seewald probed on this topic by noting an earlier quote in which Ratzinger said that the future church would be "reduced in its dimensions; it will be necessary to start again." Had the leader of Rome's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith changed his views?

That led to this famous reflection by the future pope. This is long, but essential:

[The Church] will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes … she will lose many of her social privileges. … As a small society, [the Church] will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. …

It will be hard-going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. … The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain. … But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. She may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but she will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man's home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

With that in mind, please work your way through Burge’s ideas and reflections — which begin with the chart and comments at the top of this post. Follow the threads on his related tweets. See also:

The basic idea here is quite familiar, to anyone who has studied the omnipresent Pew Research Center report that, in 2012 and thereafter, launched a gazillion headlines: “Nones on the Rise.”

In an “On Religion” column at that time, I observed:

… Increasing numbers of Americans – especially the young – are now willing to say that they do not believe. The Pew Research Center numbers indicate that millions of Americans are no longer willing, as was common in the past, to remain lukewarm members of religious bodies in which they were raised. …

The unaffiliated overwhelmingly reject ancient doctrines on sexuality with 73 percent backing same-sex marriage and 72 percent saying abortion should be legal in all, or most, cases. … The unaffiliated are now a stronger presence in the Democratic Party than African-American Protestants, white mainline Protestants or white Catholics.

I think that Burge is right about the impact of this unavoidable clash between the doctrines of ancient Christianity and the modern Sexual Revolution.

The question is: If millions of religiously unaffiliated young adults leave organized religion (on the left and right) where will they go? Nowhere? Will this cut into core members of traditional faiths — the people who are actively attempting to live and teach their traditions?

I bring this up because Burge has, to his credit, consistently noted that there are two dominant religion trends in our age — the soaring number of “nones” and the rapid decline of the oldline world of theologically liberal (in pulpits and institutions, as opposed to pews) Protestantism.

See this chart, which points to all kinds of potential news topics:

With that in mind, please add my comments into that thread (Alas, I cannot seem to find a way to embed the entire exchange).

Here we go.

Also this:

Finally, there is this:

All of this makes me wish that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was active on Twitter.

Journalists and clergy: See the connections here to his famous “smaller church” quote? See how these topics are linked to many important topics in the news?