The pope recently called Sunday a critical day of worship. German Christians have immediately taken on the pope’s battle cry for Sunday observance, launching a campaign against shopping on the first day of the week.

Pope Benedict xvi chanted for Christians to “give the soul its Sunday, give Sunday its soul” in his mass on September 9 during a visit to Austria. Three days later, Christian churches in Germany started their campaign with the slogan “Thank God we have Sunday.”

The campaign, which prepared posters and brochures for parishes and launched its own website, highlighted the meaning of Sunday for the spiritual life of Christians. The drive’s Catholic organizers have also collected 365,000 signatures on a petition to stop Sunday shopping.

The pope’s call for faithful Sunday worship was not only answered by Germany’s Catholic masses, but was even embraced by some German Protestant churches.

The head of Germany’s Lutheran Church, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, said, “Sunday shopping reduces man to the role of consumer” (Catholic World News, September 12).

The campaign has been a quick demonstration of Catholics’ desire to put Sunday worship above other freedoms, and of the pope’s considerable influence in Germany.

While many of the pope’s followers believed his conservative views and policies would alienate Catholicism’s Protestant breakaway churches, which he has called spiritually inferior to Catholicism, Benedict is proving that strict adherence to and defense of Catholic doctrines can actually attract greater support from Protestant churches on top of galvanizing his many Catholics into action.

The Trumpet urges readers to follow this story with a watchful eye, and not only because of infamous past efforts by this organization to enforce Sunday worship. For more on the relationship between the Catholic Church and Germany, read Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.