Vatican Insider has come up with a some statement that Pope Benedict made back in his university days that is pretty interesting. See Ratzinger's forgotten prophesy on the future of the Church.
From reading this I think it's fair to say that he was not only just talking about the Catholic Church here but could see Protestant Faith communities would be affected to as to gigantic shift he was starting to see.
"A restructured Church with far fewer members that is forced to let
go of many places of worship it worked so hard to build over the centuries. A
minority Catholic Church with little influence over political decisions, that is
socially irrelevant, left humiliated and forced to “start over.”
But a Church that will find itself again and be reborn a “simpler
and more spiritual” entity thanks to this “enormous confusion.”
As to a radio address he made on Christmas
In five little known radio speeches made in 1969 and published
again a while ago by Ignatius Press in the volume “Faith and the Future”,
the future Pope gave his vision of the future of man and the Church. His last
teaching, which he read out on “Hessian Rundfunk” radio on Christmas day, had a
distinctly prophetic tone.
Today's Church could be faced with a similar situation,
undermined, according to Ratzinger, by the temptation to reduce priests to
“social workers” and it and all its work reduced to a mere political presence.
“From today's crisis, will emerge a Church that has lost a great deal,” he
affirmed.
“It will become small and will have to start pretty much all over
again. It will no longer have use of the structures it built in its years of
prosperity. The reduction in the number of faithful will lead to it losing an
important part of its social privileges.” It will start off with small groups
and movements and a minority that will make faith central to experience again.
“It will be a more spiritual Church, and will not claim a political mandate
flirting with the Right one minute and the Left the next. It will be poor and
will become the Church of the destitute.”
Then and only then, Ratzinger concluded, will they see “that small flock of faithful as something completely new: they will see it as a source of hope for themselves, the answer they had always secretly been searching for.
The process outlined by Ratzinger was a “long” one “but
when all the suffering is past, a great power will emerge from a more
spiritual and simple Church,” at which point humans will realise that
they live in a world of “indescribable solitude” and having lost sight
of God “they will perceive the horror of their poverty.”
Then and only then, Ratzinger concluded, will they see “that small flock of faithful as something completely new: they will see it as a source of hope for themselves, the answer they had always secretly been searching for.
Whole thing is a interesting read.
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