It wasn’t especially long ago that any sentence beginning with “the Norwegian Catholic” would have sounded faintly ridiculous. For centuries, Norway was among the most thoroughly Lutheran countries in Europe, with Catholicism almost completely expunged from public life during the Reformation. Even Norway’s constitution – one of the oldest in Europe still in effect – contained a specific ban on Jesuits until 1956. By the time religious toleration became the norm, the Catholic Church had been absent from Norwegian society for so long that it seemed less a living institution than a historical curiosity.
8:00 PM
Saturday Read: The remarkable rise of Norwegian Catholicism
Once almost extinguished by the Reformation, Norway’s Catholic Church has quietly become one of Europe’s most intellectually vibrant communities, producing distinguished clergy, scholars and converts far beyond its modest size
Andrew Cusack
8 min read
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