Berlin, July 3, 2024.
In 2023, 402,694 members of the Catholic Church in Germany have decided to officially leave the church, indicating a deep spiritual crisis in the country, according to the Christian Post website.
The German Catholic Bishops' Conference, which released the data, said that while this is a huge figure, it is just below the "record" figure for 2022, when 522,821 people officially left the Catholic Church.
One of the reasons for the mass exodus from the Catholic Church is the fact that German citizens officially registered as Catholic, Protestant or Jewish must pay a religious tax of 8-9% of their annual income tax (exempt from tax on Only low-income people, the unemployed, pensioners, children and students). Former church members (even if they were only nominal) who have officially left their denomination no longer have to pay this tax.
According to the German Catholic Bishops' Conference, despite a steady increase in the number of Germans wishing to break with Catholicism, there are approximately 20.35 million official members of the Catholic Church in Germany at the end of 2023.
As the U.S. Catholic publication National Catholic Reporter notes, the main reason hundreds of thousands of Germans are leaving the Catholic Church is a long-standing crisis caused by scandals involving clergy abuse, especially of pedophile priests. In recent years, many have turned away from the Catholic Church as the problem persists.
In an effort to resolve the crisis, the Catholic bishops of Germany and a prominent lay organization once launched a three-year "reform" initiative known as the "Synodal Way." This period, marked by deep divisions between liberal and traditionalist movements in the Catholic Church, culminated last year in calls for the church to allow the blessing of same-sex unions despite disapproval from the Vatican.
"These figures are alarming. They show that the church is in a massive crisis. Reforms alone will not solve the whole problem, but without them the crisis will worsen. And that is why change is necessary," said Bishop Georg Betzing of Limburg, chairman of the German Catholic Bishops' Conference.
The problem of declining numbers of parishioners is not unique to the Catholic Church in Germany. The Protestant Church in Germany has also reported a significant decline in its official membership, with around 380,000 people leaving the denomination in 2023.
Meanwhile, a very different picture is emerging in several regions of the United States. While the Northeast has recorded a steady decline in the number of Catholic Church parishioners, areas such as South Florida have seen an increase, largely due to an increase in the Hispanic population, according to an October 2023 article by Pastor Ryan Burge published on the Substack platform.
Conducted by R. Burge study found that from 2008 to 2022, six U.S. states - Vermont, Idaho, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Arizona and Tennessee - saw an increase in the number of residents identifying themselves as practicing Catholics. In contrast, states such as Hawaii and Connecticut saw significant decreases in the number of people identifying themselves as practicing Catholics.
In addition, in terms of weekly church attendance, the U.S. showed different trends over the period, with states such as Alaska and Hawaii seeing increases in attendance, but states such as Wyoming and Rhode Island seeing sharp declines.
Source: https://www.christianpost.com
