Since 1945 the Catholic Church has availed itself of a number of social-scientific methods to help it fill the spaces vacated by the general retreat of church influence, to demoscopically understand the feelings of its members, and to adapt the church´s organisational structure to modern conditions for pastoral care. Concepts of group dynamics and therapeutic approaches have shown the way to discover the religious attitudes of the individual. With the help of the social sciences the consequences of functional differentiation can be studied as “secularisation” without which a new rationality in church behaviour would not be possible.The reception and the practical application of these methods within the church is just one example of the “scientification” of all things social. The social sciences have been chosen to help spread the gospel in a new fashion, but they may also end up endangering the church´s beliefs. The historical analysis of this process allows us fascinating insights into the history of religion and the church from the mid-20th century on. At the same time it represents a critical look at the perhaps too easily obtained successes in Germany and a new interpretation of the events after 1945 as a period of “dangerous modernity”.weiterlesen