Germans Leaving Catholic Church In Droves

By Niels Sorrells
Religion News Service

BERLIN (RNS) The number of Germans leaving the Roman Catholic Church rose dramatically in 2010 as Pope Benedict XVI's homeland wrestled with reports of systematic sexual abuse of minors and attempted cover-ups, according to a study by a German newspaper.

About 180,000 Catholics officially ended their church affiliation in 2010, a rise of 50,000 (or 40 percent) from 2009, according to the weekly Die Zeit newspaper.

The data was collected from surveys answered by most of Germany's major dioceses. Official church-collected data is not expected until the summer.

The release of 2009 defections almost a year ago had already signaled a growing wave of departures even before the scandal fully erupted last year as several officials at church-run schools were accused of abusing children.

"The increase of church departures in 2010 represents a loss of trust that fell especially hard on the church because of the abuse cases," said Dominik Schwaderlappe, the general vicar of Cologne. "This is painful for us, because it clearly shows that people are using church departures as their personal form of protest and as a way to show their disgust with the scandal."

Leaving the church not only means a drop in attendance but also a formal severing of relations; people who formally leave a church are no longer required to have part of their income diverted to the church as church tax.

If the figures are validated, it would represent the first time since World War II that more Catholics than Protestants left their church in a single year.

Comments

[jayes]

08:42 PM on 04/17/2011

Gross historical errors aside, sometimes the german propensity for rationalized behavior makes a lot more sense than what I'm used to. The Vatican is pretty cool lookin' though.

[Roxee]

02:18 PM on 04/16/2011

WooHoo, way to go German people. The RC church needs to suffer enough financially before they'll bend to public opinion. It's amazing they haven't changed yet given the losses they have suffered lately. They must be even richer than I thought. They will bend eventually though and the irony is that bending will show them up as the money grubbing charlatans they are. The catholic faithful that I have met and know are generally wonderful people and they must be feeling so lost, hurt, betrayed and cunfused by all of this. As an atheist I hope they realize their ability to be good has little to do with the faith they follow and experience the freedom I have since I left all that behind.

[brentchicago]

11:08 AM on 04/15/2011

Good grief!!!! It has taken them THIS long to leave the church???!!!!!!!!! The Roman Catholic Church is a dying institution due not to just the sex scandals but the way in which the heirarchy holds itself above the faithful!!!!! The Holy Spirit speaks to all not just the Pope and they need to listen to what the members of the church are saying. Currently the inmates are running the asylum!!!!!!!!! My Lutheran church in Chicago is FUULLLLLLLL of ex-catholics!!!!

[ChaCubed]

01:16 AM on 04/16/2011

"The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also." ~ Mark Twain

[TomMartin]

02:33 AM on 04/15/2011

My maternal grandparents left the Catholic church in 1918 when Czechoslovakia became independent, not due to abuse, that was not know then, but due to the Catholic church's support of the Austria-Hungary monarchy and opposition to Czech independence.

[BlackYowe]

02:32 AM on 04/15/2011

Ironic considering the pope is German.

[tomterif]

12:53 PM on 04/14/2011

Your post, here, Kvolosevart, seems to have some "interesting" suppositions, and attendant questions, going along with it.

Before mentioning what I see as these "suppositions you seem to be making, and the instrinsically related very important questions immediately arising from them", let me mention I'm definitely not a "gay agenda" person.

Meaning that, for example though I personally fully believe in the notion of [what I, and very many other Americans consider] "full and complete civil rights for all gay people" in this country, I in no way believe such full civil rights happen to include any supposed "right" of government sanctioned same sex marriage in the U.S..

So I believe this country has every right in the world, while in no way whatsoever "persecuting" or in any way "making second class citizens", etc., any of it's gay citizens, to limit government sanctioned marriage to marriages between one man and one woman, which is something I definitely support [along with the well known "full civil union" rights for gay couples, etc.]

And I'd be really curious, based on my reaction [mentioned below] to your post's specifics, whether you might feel similarly about these well known "gay agenda" issues [most specifically gay marriage] as I do. [If for any reason(s), you just don't feel like answering that, please of course feel entirely free to just completely ignore the question, but I am genuninely curious about it, because of these other questions I think your post definitely brings up].

[Continued]

[tomterif]

01:28 PM on 04/14/2011

So some of the [quite interesting, I feel] questions your post immediately brought to my mind, Kvolovesart, are things like the following:

If, as you say, the Roman Catholic church will only be able to successfully deal, by means of allowing their priests to be married, with its' present "plague within" [my words of course, not a quote from you] of its' "underlying sex cult of pedophiles", that you see as being related to their present rules / general situation being something that has and will "continue to attract gay men", would this type of marriage, that you'd see as the solution to this problem, only be the traditional and government sanctioned heterosexual marriage ?

Or if Catholic priests were in so called gay marriages, with other adult homosexual persons [whether legally sanctioned gay marriages, in places where that became legally sanctioned by the government (which, as stated, I hope the U.S. government never does], or in "de facto" monagamous gay marriages, whether the Catholic church even happens to be aware of the actual existance of such a marriage, in any particular case, or not], do you see that as being an acceptable practical solution to the problem, that would cause pedophilia among gay Roman Catholic priests to effectively disappear, or not ?

Something very related to that, Kvolovesart, is that I wonder if you're aware that the pedophilia problem, among priests in the Roman Catholic church, has IN NO WAY been exclusively a problem of "homosexual pedophilia".

In...

[Continued]

[tomterif]

06:04 PM on 04/14/2011

[Sorry, Kvolovesart : I'm going to have to come back here later, and complete this post to you, and the question(s) I had for you in in it, later, when I have the time to finish this up properly.

"Just in case" anything I'm saying / asking, here, might in any way CONCEIVABLY be of any interest to you, and / or to anyone else here. : )

Actually, the questions that arose in my mind, related to this post of your's, turned out to be QUITE interesting to me, but of course... that may've been "just me" : ) ]

[tamazul]

12:07 AM on 04/14/2011

What! Did they just now find out that Hitler's top henchmen, i.e Heidrich, Goebbels etc, were all Altar Boys in their youth?

[GeorgieMark]

03:02 PM on 04/13/2011

It would be interesting to see if these people are converting to another doctrine or abandoning religion altogether. It is quite easy to do in Germany.

Germans pay to the central government a monthly tax which is deducted automatically from their salary for being members of either the Catholic or the Protestant Church. That money is spent on welfare (not religious institutions).

Germans can pay a visit to their local government offices declare that they're not Catholic or Protestant get the assorted certificates and hey-presto not a Catholic or Protestant anymore.

Of course if you want to baptise your offspring or have a wedding at a church you must re-enlist before priests of any denomination accept to consecrate your marriage/child.

I'd dare say that Germans Catholics are a bit reluctant to pay for a hobby whose grandmasters have brought so much shame on them. In fact they are even more upset with the Pope who (before being elected by the conclave) as the head of Holy Office formerly known as the Inquisition tried to cover up child abuse within the church.

[Greg Sureck]

02:28 PM on 04/13/2011

counting the number of Deutschmarks lost, probably the most accurate way to measure church membership, and sure dapope's attentions.

[Remendado]

04:48 PM on 04/13/2011

You do realize that the Deutschmark hasn't been Germany's currency since 2002, don't you?

[Norcal1]

01:20 PM on 04/13/2011

Since the R. Catholic Church doesn't let its members have a real say in the governance of the organization, church members have no alternative but to walk.

I walked away 20 years ago and think it was the right decision.

At the end of the day, the church will be starved for cash and collapse due to all of the lawsuits from victims of priests.

If the church chooses not to modernize, the organization will become history in short order.

[DangerousTalk]

11:08 AM on 04/13/2011

Good for them. Supporting the Church at this point is akin to supporting pedophilia.

[Defender of Truth]

12:49 PM on 04/13/2011

Why do people continue to use the word "pedophilia" when the problem of sexual abuse in the CC is not pedophilia but ephebophilia. The word ephebophile derives from Greek, with the individual root meanings of ephebo-, "youth", and phile, "one who is attracted to". In this case, "youth" does not mean "child", but rather a young adult, such as they are capable of reproduction and are biologically an adult regardless of the arbitrary age of adulthood defined by the government of ones country. A pedophile, by contrast, is attracted to pre-pubescent children.

My answer to my question is that pedophilia sounds much worse and ephebophilia and is used by those who are anti-Catholic and not particularly interested in truth.

[DangerousTalk]

01:47 PM on 04/13/2011

So let me get this straight, you are saying that every priest who raped a "young person" in Germany made sure that he or she had reached the age of puberty before raping them? "I think that buy's voice cracked at choir, must be okay to molest him then."

For the sake of argument though, I'll give this one to you. Priests are raping and molesting "young boys" not "little kids." That makes it all better, doesn't it? Would you like to defend the young adult raping and molesting now?

[liberal123]

01:51 PM on 04/13/2011

Sexual abuse in the Catholic church has included both pedophilia and ephebophilia. It is laughable that you are trying to say that it is not so bad that priests are only molesting teenagers instead of young children. It is a measure of the ridiculousness of your argument that you cannot assert that there was/is widespread abuse and coverup - and are left to assert that molesting teens is not so bad (are you a priest?). The persecution argument is not working for you.

[Kelly Jade]

10:16 AM on 04/13/2011

How do I get off the church's list here in the US, do I write a letter and request it? Just curious because, so far, my voicemails have gone unanswered

[Phlan]

10:30 AM on 04/13/2011

Tell them your life has taken a turn for the worse; you're broke and homeless. Ask the church for help. Ask the church for food. Ask the church for some love and compassion. -But remind them that you are broke and can give nothing back but gratitude-

You be deafened by the silence of their response.

No money? No Jesus for you!

[Kelly Jade]

10:41 AM on 04/13/2011

I've been calling the Church I was baptized at which has a school that was attached to it. I went to that school. A preist came in for an hour a week for "family life" class which was basically just a podium for him to rant about everything and anything. During one of these he told a group of 20 6th graders that animals do not feel pain--it was just conditioning. You can nail a dog's paws to a board and it's not feeling pain--just conditioning!! (this all somehow looped in with abortion and atheism?). I took issue with this (I am a vegetarian and was then too) jumped up and started an argument that got all the way to the principal who told me "he's a priest! he would never do such a thing". We also were told that yeah, you've got a choice about being confirmed but you better not die before you decide to do it if you don't do it now because you'll go to hell. Nice thing to tells 7th graders. They still send me letters asking for money in return for the "great experiences [I[ had at St. Eugene's!!" Tution was not enough. I send back everyone unopened with return to sender written on it with a note on the back stating that I will never give to them. The church just seems to have compassion in spades! Not to mention greed.

[ryker88]

11:32 AM on 04/14/2011

My parents were very loyal and faithful Catholics who supported their local Catholic church with their time and money for nearly four decades. When they became too ill to attend church, I called the rectory and asked if someone could bring them communion, I was told they had NO ONE who could do that. We lived two blocks from the church. The church cares only about money and having people volunteer many hours for them. Once they are no longer useful, they are free to go off and die somewhere. Christian charity-- a real joke! They are the takers, not the givers.

[Kelly Jade]

12:52 PM on 04/14/2011

Oh at the church I went to the rumor was that they would bring it to you...in exchange for a 500 dollar donation each time

[OGigi]

09:42 AM on 04/13/2011

The Pope's rings used to be hit with hammers once not on the Pope's finger.
In this day and age there will be one Pope's ring hit with the hammer....the auctioneers.

[KCM7]

07:17 AM on 04/13/2011

This is news?

Martin Luther started this, and NOW they notice.

[delhoghe]

11:16 PM on 04/12/2011

Finally a happy headline in a world gone mad.