It is a fair assessment to say that Christianity in the Republic of Germany is in a dramatic state of decline. More than half a million people there have officially left both the Catholic and Protestant churches.
The Catholic Church of Germany lost 272,771 adherents in 2019 and the numbers of both baptisms and marriages have dropped precipitously. This number follows some 216,000 people officially cancelling their registered membership in 2018 and even beats the highest recorded number of defections in 2014 when some 218,000 left the church in Germany.
Bishop Georg Batzing, a German theologian, currently bishop of the Diocese of Limburg and chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, said of the statistics of those abandoning the church that the exodus coupled with the decline in baptisms and weddings shows the “erosion of a personal attachment to the church.”
German Protestants have not fared any better. The German Protestant Church (EKD) is alarmed over the statistics that show some 270,000 members officially leaving the ranks of their church in 2019, an increase of 22% from 2018 and the same number as in 2014.
Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, head of the EKD, said that every person who leaves the church is a painful blow and produces a financial loss, as a church tax is deducted from people’s incomes if they are registered as either Catholic or Protestant.
With deaths outnumbering births in Germany, the loss in membership goes beyond the number of people leaving the churches. There are now around 22.6 million Catholics in Germany, a drop of 400,000 in 2019 and 20.7 million Protestants, 427,000 fewer than the year before.
In the midst of this decline, the German Episcopal Conference approved a proposal in 2018, after a vote by 62 bishops, to produce a guide, titled “Together at the Lord’s Table,” and put together by an ecumenical working group on how to allow Protestants married to Catholics to receive Communion in the Catholic Church. The non-Catholic spouse in a “mixed marriage” could receive holy Communion if they simply “affirm the Catholic Eucharist.”
Speaking for Protestants in Germany, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm welcomed the proposal as “an important step in our ecumenical path.”
Since 2017, the year that commemorated the 500 anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, Protestant and Catholic leaders have been proactive in issuing pro-ecumenical messages and proposals to “heal the wounds of the past” and advance a stronger “unity” among Christians in Germany, according to Bedford-Strohm.
Seven Catholic bishops in Germany wrote a letter to Pope Francis and the world challenging the proposal and describing it as a “Protestantisation of the church.” Some leaders of the Protestant Church in Germany also oppose the proposal. Evangelical theology professor Ulrich Kortner said it would be difficult for a Protestant believer to accept a Eucharist which “includes the veneration of Mary as the Mother of God and the intercession of the Apostles, martyrs and saints.”
Rome has finally ruled on the acceptability of “Together at the Lord’s Table” with a letter issued last week and sent to Bishop Georg Batzing, as the German bishops’ chair, from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, (CDF), saying that the proposal advocating “Eucharistic meal fellowship” would harm relations with Orthodox churches.
Asked about the rebuke from the CDF, Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said he believed Pope Francis backed the rejection from the CDF. Asked directly from a reporter whether Pope Francis personally approved the letter from the CDF, he said, “There is no mention of this in the text. But the prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Ladaria, is a very honest and loyal person. I cannot imagine that he would do anything that Pope Francis would not approve of. But I have also heard from other sources that the pope has expressed his concern in personal conversations.” He added that this concern was not limited to intercommunion alone, “Not only, but about the situation of the church in Germany in general.”
German bishops are presently at their fall plenary meeting. Bishop Batzing said the CDF’s “critical remarks” would have to be “weighed up” at the meeting.
Cardinal Koch added, “If the German bishops were to rate such a letter from the CDF less highly than a document (the proposal) from an ecumenical working group, then something would no longer be right in the hierarchy of criteria among the bishops.”
Stay tuned because I don’t think we have heard the last word on all this yet.
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