CNA Newsroom, Jul 1, 2024 / 09:45 am (CNA).
Just one day after the news that hundreds of thousands of Catholics left the Church in Germany in 2023, the Vatican met with representatives of the German Synodal Way to discuss the controversial plans for a permanent synodal council.
The meeting on Friday resulted in Rome demanding the Germans change the name of the body and agree it cannot have authority over — or be equal to — the bishops’ conference, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
The gathering came at a critical time: According to the official statistics released by the German Bishops’ Conference on Thursday, more than 400,000 people officially left the Church in 2023.
While this represents a decrease from the 522,000 departures in 2022, the trend remains alarming for Church leaders and Catholics alike.
Currently, there are 20,345,872 Catholics registered in Germany. If trends persist, the number could drop below 20 million in 2024.
Moreover, only 6.2% of Catholics regularly attend Mass: This translates to approximately 1.27 million practicing Catholics in a country of over 80 million, CNA Deutsch noted.
The new official numbers also reveal significant disparities in Mass attendance across Germany.
The Diocese of Görlitz, bordering Poland, leads with a 13.9% attendance rate despite being the smallest diocese with fewer than 30,000 Catholics. In contrast, the Diocese of Aachen, on the Rhine in Western Germany, reports only 4.2% of Catholics practicing their faith regularly.
A 20-year comparison, released by the bishops’ conference, paints a bleak picture of the Church’s decline: Since 2003, the number of Catholics has decreased by almost 6 million, while Sunday Mass attendance has plummeted from 15.2% to 6.2%.
The number of active priests has also declined, with 7,593 in pastoral ministry in 2023, down from 7,720 in the previous year. Priestly ordinations have dropped significantly, from 45 in 2022 to 28 in 2023.
A 2021 report by CNA Deutsch noted that 1 in 3 Catholics in Germany were considering leaving the Church. The reasons for leaving vary, with older people citing the Church’s handling of the abuse crisis and younger people pointing to the obligation of paying church tax, according to one earlier study.
The German Bishops’ Conference currently stipulates that leaving the Church results in automatic excommunication, a regulation that has sparked controversy among theologians and canon lawyers.
Scientists at the University of Freiburg predicted in 2019 that the number of Christians paying church tax in Germany will halve by 2060.
‘A concrete form of synodality’
Warning of a threat of a new schism from Germany, the Vatican intervened as early as July 2022 against plans for a German synodal council.
Against the backdrop of ongoing dramatic decline and internal division, the Vatican engaged in yet another round of discussions with representatives of the German Synodal Way last Friday.
As CNA Deutsch reported, the meeting on June 28 involved high-ranking Vatican officials and representatives from the German Bishops’ Conference.
On the Vatican side, secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Parolin and four prefects attended: Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandéz, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Kurt Koch, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity; Cardinal Robert Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops; and Cardinal Arthur Roche, prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
The cardinals were joined by Archbishop Filippo Iannone, prefect of the Dicastery for Legislative Texts.
On the German side, bishops Georg Bätzing, Stephan Ackermann, Bertram Meier, and Franz-Josef Overbeck represented the Synodal Way. They were joined by the bishops’ conference general secretary Beate Gilles and communications director Matthias Kopp.
The talks centered on the proposed synodal council, which initially was intended to oversee the Church in Germany permanently but was rejected by the Vatican.
According to a joint press release, both sides want to “change the name and various aspects of the previous draft” for the controversial body. Both sides also agreed that the synodal council would not be “above or equal to the bishops’ conference.”
The meeting had a “positive, open, and constructive atmosphere,” the statement said, adding discussions focused on balancing episcopal ministry with the co-responsibility of all faithful, emphasizing canonical aspects of establishing a “concrete form of synodality.”
‘Who has actually read this letter?’
The ongoing dialogue may mark a significant step in the negotiations between the Vatican and the organizers of the German Synodal Way, following previous repeated interventions by Pope Francis and the Vatican.
Both parties have agreed to continue talks after the conclusion of the world Synod on Synodality in October, with plans to address further anthropological, ecclesiological, and liturgical topics.
This is a significant development: Amid the ongoing exodus of the faithful, the news that the German process will not simply dovetail with the Synod on Synodality in Rome raises the question of the overall purpose of what has proven to be an expensive German exercise.
In a video message released Saturday, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne urged German Catholics to take the Vatican’s concerns seriously. The archbishop reminded the faithful that Pope Francis said “everything he had to say” in a historic letter to German Catholics five years ago.
Pope Francis warned of disunity in the 5,700-word letter. He also cautioned German Catholics to avoid the “sin of secularization and a secular mindset against the Gospel.”
Woelki pulled no punches in his video. “Let’s be honest: Who has actually read this letter?” the German prelate asked pointedly.
Noting the pope had called on German Catholics to evangelize, Woelki said: “We should fulfill his so urgently expressed wish — for our own sake, but also the sake of the Church in Germany, because only then will she have a future [here].”
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We read: “According to a joint press release, both sides want to ‘change the name and various aspects of the previous draft’ for the controversial body.”
Probably just a translation error: the diluted and deluded fluidity of the “German Synodal Whey”!
“Currently, there are 20,345,872 Catholics registered in Germany.”
I highly doubt that this figure means anything in terms of the ecclesial experience in Germany.
As I have mentioned before, the number of Germans who actually practice the Catholic faith is abysmally low. It makes sense, then, that the number of German bishops and
cardinals should be drastically adjusted to reflect Church reality there.
The German Bishops’ Conference currently stipulates that leaving the Church results in automatic excommunication, a regulation that has sparked controversy among theologians and canon lawyers.
The reason the germans are changing their religious status with the government is to avoid paying the automatic church tax. So can someone tell me does this mean a person is automatically excommunicated?
Catholics always claim that you can’t live without God, yet we have an existence proof to the contrary of millions of people doing just that – living perfectly well without any gods.
Perhaps dying without God is another matter!
Spending your free time and energy writing bitter and bigoted posts on a religious website doesn’t exactly fit the definition of “living well” now, does it?
They weren’t living perfectly well during the eras of the atheistic despots of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Schickelgruber.
As a matter of fact they weren’t living at all.
And lest we forget the zeitgeist’s human sacrifices.
Synodaling while the Church burns.
What you prove is not only the invincible stupidity of forming unprovable presumptions about minds you cannot know, but the impossibility of religion hatred without conceit disguising desperation.
A few months ago, the contributors of CWR said more and more people were joining this church. This article must be false.
Brian: If Germany was the only country with Catholics, well, that would be the case. But the Catholic Church, in case you didn’t know, is global.
So, while the number of Catholics in some (not all) Western countries has decreased in recent decades, the Church is growing worldwide.
In 2020, the number of Catholics worldwide increased 16 million, mostly in Asia and Africa. And the numbers continue to grow.
Abandoning ship while there’s still room in the lifeboats. Smart move.
All they are doing is what one of your readers claimed to be doing several days ago. “After reading about the Church defending Rupnik I decided I will donate zero to the Church untill [sic] they apologize and throw Rupnik’s work in the trashcan.” Oh, and this reader was defended by several others, or at least I was attacked for pointing out that leaving the Church, or failing to support AT LEAST ONE’S OWN PARISH (which is how most people donate to the Church) is not the right thing for a Catholic to do.
This doesn’t mean, as one joker suggested, that Francis is my “hero”. He’s my Pope, though. He’s almost certainly the worst Pope in 500 years, and he’s as worldly as a Renaissance Pope (without, apparently, the mistresses and illegitimate children), but yes, he is the Pope. Not me. Not you. Not the editors of this mag. Deal with it. Or admit you are Protestant.
Is there any study or reasonable explanation for why German Catholics are leaving the Church?
Maybe it has something to do with the big-tent ecclesiology of “everybody, everybody”…. when contradicted by the German automatic excommunication for everybody (!) declining to sign the annual state income tax form as Catholic (branded as “apostates!”)–so as to pay the 8% tax add-on to automatically support apostate bishops marketing der Synodal Weg?