GERMANY
Christian Today
Mark Woods CHRISTIAN TODAY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR 20 July 2015
More than 200,000 German Roman Catholics formally left the Church last year in a blow not just to its membership figures but to its income.
Germans who belong to a designated Church pay an additional proportion of their income tax – between eight and nine per cent – towards its support. However, they can opt out of this by notifying the tax authorities that they no longer wish to do so. Increasing numbers of Roman Catholics have been taking this step in recent years, with the 2014 figure representing a 22 per cent jump from the previous year, from 178,805 to 217,716.
According to the 2014 statistics, only 2,809 people entered the Church while 6,314 were “readmitted”.
The formal withdrawals, however, do not tell the full story. Many are likely to be nominal believers looking to save money, while others are likely to have withdrawn as a protest over scandals – some of them while continuing to attend church. Only a third of German Catholics actually pay the church tax, but the Church is still very wealthy – the tax brought in a staggering £4.6 billion in 2013.
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