Hei, I am Dominik and a volunteer from Germany, sent by Bonifatiuswerk, who host the program „Praktikum im Norden“ (Internship in the North). I think some people know me already or have seen me running around. I arrived, more or less, 6 months ago and work within the boundaries of the Catholic Church here in Oslo.
I am one of 24 volunteers sent to Northern countries where catholics are a minority with a share of under 10% of the total population, to support the Catholic Church there. Norway is one of these countries, so are Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Lituania, Estonia and Finland. Normally, I study „Culture- and media education“ in Germany in a small town an hour from Leipzig. But I decided to take a year off and so I landed here. While here, I live with the Marist brothers in Strømmen. I would say that I have settled in quite well.
I have many different areas of responsibility in which I support the people who work in the local parishes, mostly St. Hallvard and St. Johannes. On one hand I have administrative tasks; such as shredding and recycling old archive stuff. On the other hand; I help out in the youth groups St. Jo and SHUL, or at various parish events and feasts. Furthermore, I am at many Mariaholm weekends, when needed, and with „Suppe og vennskap“ nearly every Wednesday, where we cook soup and serve it to the people on the streets.
In any case, I am always looking for work. So besides these „Maintasks“, there are a lot of smaller ones, be it crafting rosaries, gardening, doing the washing-up and so on. So far, no weeks have been the same and sometimes tasks have been added, sometimes others have been dropped. So it’s very flexible from week to week, even if something similar to a daily routine does set in now and then.
When I compare the Norwegian Catholic Church with the German one, I can spot some differences and similarities. First of all, I realized that the Norwegian church seems more alive than the German one (if you exclude the youth, then it’s similar). I have the feeling that the communities are more connected to each other here. That could be an illusion, but it feels like it. Also the Church here seems fuller, you have many more different cultures within it and through events, like the church coffee, which seems downright sacred in Norway. There seems to be a much stronger bond between the people than in the German church culture.
I have also seen that the youth weekends at Mariaholm, aren’t so different from the ones I know from my diocese. They are nearly identical. We have just other topics and less planned weekends in the year in our youth education center. But the fundamental organization structure is very different. While here in Oslo there are a lot of young leaders who are organizing everything and leading through the whole weekend, there is one paid person in Germany who does all that – a Community Representativ from our parish or the diocese. There are Youth Leaders who can support if support is needed, but they don’t plan and organize in a lot of cases.
So I was very surprised over all the meetings beforehand, during and after the weekends in Mariaholm, to evaluate the whole thing, because I never done such thing in my parish before nor have I seen somebody else doing this. In addition to this, we have also people who are cooking for the weekends, but these are mostly permanent staff, working in the facilities. I have to admit, that I don’t know how other parishes outside East-Germany are organized. Because Church in East- and West Germany is different. In East Germany there are only 6% of all people who are Catholic, while there are 29% in West-Germany. And that gap is because they developed in different ways during the aftermath of the war. But enough about that.
A normal day at Mariaholm
Besides the youth weekends, there is a big difference in the Church political positioning between the German and the Norwegian Catholics. What I learned very close to my arrival was, that many Norwegian Catholics represent a completely opposite point of view compared to the one I and the biggest part of my diocese have. There are a lot of people and movements, even priests and bishops in Germany who actively advocate for change in the world church. The Catholics want a change in question about topics as the accessibility of the sacraments of priesthood and marriage for all people. I am myself in one of many organized groups who are trying everything they can/we can for a change. In the Norwegian church I feel like there aren’t that many people who are thinking like that.
A big similarity which I appreciate the most is, that it doesn’t matter where you are coming from. You are heartily welcomed with open arms when you meet Catholics. It is the same in Germany as it is in Norway or other countries. As soon as I arrived, I was welcomed with big smiles and kindness. I think that’s because we are raised or standing in close contact with the same christian values. We are united in our faith, in our love, in our hope and in God. It doesn’t matter how everybody is living their faith individually, everybody does in another way, but we are living our faith and that’s important. So we can get along with each other and standing together no matter what.
I hope you lot enjoyed reading this. I don’t want to stress you out with more text, I tend to write more than I should. Maybe I will see you around.
God bless you all
Dominik
