Two weeks after the Catholic Church in Germany announced a record 272,771 people formally left the Catholic Church across the country in 2019, a new survey released Thursday says some 30% of the Church’s more than 22 million members are considering similar action.
The survey, conducted by the research institute INSA Consulere for the Catholic weekly newspaper Die Tagespost, shows that nearly a third of respondents agreed with the statement “I am a member of the Church and can imagine leaving the Church soon,” the Catholic News Agency reported. Some 54% of Catholics disagreed with the statement, 9% said they did not know, and 7% did not respond to the statement.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, said in a statement on the 26th of June that while some of the decline can be attributed to changing demographics, he was concerned that the Catholic Church was no longer inspiring people to stay.
“Of course, the declines are also due to demographics, but they also show first of all the fact that, despite our concrete pastoral and social actions, we no longer motivate a large number of people for Church life,” Bätzing said.
“I find the very high number of people leaving the Church particularly burdensome. We regret every departure from the Church and we invite everyone who has left or wants to leave to talk to us. The number of people leaving the Church shows that the alienation between Church members and a life of faith in the Church community has become even stronger.”
Bätzing, who succeeded Cardinal Reinhard Marx as the Bishops’ Conference chairman in March, noted that the Church would respond to the falling numbers by recognising the “signs of the times,” as called for by the Second Vatican Council, instead of “chasing after a spirit of the times,” the National Catholic Register said.
Source and image: christianpost.com
