Emmanuel Thomas, DPA, Sunday, July 02, 2023
BAVARIA – A senior Catholic clergyman expressed concern on Sunday at the numbers leaving the Church in Germany. A senior Catholic clergyman expressed concern on Sunday at the numbers leaving the Church in Germany.
“The news this week moves me deeply,” Munich and Freising Archbishop Reinhard Marx said at a service at which three new priests were ordained. The cardinal was speaking after it was revealed this week that more than half a million people formally left the Catholic Church in Germany over the course of 2022.
Marx said he could not dismiss these departures. “I ask myself, what can I do? What is my duty? What is our duty, our joint efforts?”
He expressed concern that services were being experienced as boring. “Liturgy is not made, fabricated – it is celebrated,” he said.
All in the Church needed to ask themselves: “Why am I a Christian, and what does it mean?” The Church had to reveal what this means, Marx said.
The form of the Church would change, but the core that its members are God-seekers would remain, he predicted.
The German Catholic Bishops’ Conference published figures on Wednesday showing that more than half a million people left the Church last year, more than ever before and considerably more than the 2021 figure, itself a record.
German Catholics are registered with the local government and pay an additional tax to the Church, unless they formally withdraw from it.
