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.
