217,716 Leave German Catholic Church

By Conor Gaffey
Newsweek
July 21, 2015

http://europe.newsweek.com/217716-leave-german-catholic-church-330612

A woman kneels in prayer inside Limburg Cathedral October 14, 2013.

New data released last week by the German Catholic Bishops' Conference shows that 217,716 people left the Catholic Church in Germany last year, a 22 percent increase from the previous year.

In the past five years, more than 820,000 German Catholics have renounced their membership, according to official church data. Compared to the withdrawal rate in 1990, last year's exodus represented a 52 percent increase.

Commenting on the figures, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, said the bishops were "painfully aware" of the high number of withdrawals but declined to give specific reasons for people leaving the church.

"Behind the numbers of church withdrawals are personal life decisions that we in each case profoundly regret but also respect the freedom of choice," said Marx.

When contacted by Newsweek, the German Bishops' Conference was unavailable to provide further information on the rising numbers..

Catholics in Germany have financial reasons for abandoning their faith. German Catholics are subject to a church tax, known as the kirchensteuer, a levy of 8-9 percent of their income tax which also applies to Protestants and Jews living in the country. According to German law, anyone baptised as a child is considered a member of the church and liable for the tax unless they make a formal renunciation of their faith. The tax is collected by the state and distributed back to the respective religious communities.

Ben Ryan, a researcher at the U.K. religion and society think tank Theos, believes the tax provides a particularly enticing reason to leave the church for non-committed Catholics."That is a particularly serious disincentive if you are a nominal Catholic, someone who would put on a survey that they are a Catholic, for example, but in practice it doesn't mean much to them. There's obviously a financial incentive to withdraw," says Ryan.

On the other hand, there are serious consequences within the Church for withdrawing from the tax. The German bishops issued a statement in 2012 announcing that Catholics who failed to pay the tax would not be able to receive sacraments or work in the church's institutions.

Last year, the Catholic Church received around 5.68 billion euros in church tax, which is used to fund the running of parishes and other Catholic institutions, such as hospitals and schools.

The church in Germany is already acknowledged as one of the wealthiest branches of the Catholic Church in Europe, with the single diocese of Cologne having assets worth 3.35 billion euros, more than the Vatican's entire asset wealth.

The German Catholic hierarchy was rocked by a financial scandal overthe past two years as the former bishop of Limburg, Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, was accused of spending more than 31 million euros on renovating his private residence. Tebartz-van Elst,, who was dubbed the "Bishop of Bling" in media reports, reportedly carried out renovations including a luxurious bathtub worth 15,000 euros and a 2.9-million-euro private chapel.

Ryan says that the "Bishop of Bling" scandal, coupled with the church's massive wealth, may have proved a turn-off to German Catholics."[The German church] has an enormous property and financial portfolio, which is generally tolerated on the basis that it does a lot of good work. But if you get a situation where a person in power is seen to be spending all that money on a very nice bathtub and a nice palace, people understandably get annoyed about that," he says.

The Bishops' Conference recorded almost 24 million Catholics in the country, making up 29.5% of the country's population. There was a slight increase in the number of Catholic marriages and baptisms carried out in 2014 compared to the previous year, but there was also a small decrease in the number of priests.

The Catholic Church is not the only religious institution in Germany seeing followers leaving in droves. The Telegraph reported in January that around 200,000 Protestants renounced their church membership last year, the highest number in almost 20 years.