The End of the Road

The results are in for Germanchurch, 2019: 400,000 fewer Catholics than in the previous year – 270,000 of that number represented those who offcially declared themselves no longer Catholic. It’s the worst result ever, a new low point after years of disastrous decline. Except for an increase of 8 permanent deacons, all other statistics are equally bad – the number of baptisms, first communions, marriages and even funerals is sinking too. 9.1% of German Catholics now attend Mass on Sunday. And all this after 55 years of Vatican II, 7 years of the “Francis Effect” and 1 year of the “Synodal Path.”

This time the German clerical establishment couldn’t conceal its shock. This time there was no scapegoat to blame. Until some very recent setbacks, hadn’t they been having things their own way under Francis – the Synodal Path, the Amazonian Synod, the takeover of the Knights of Malta? For the time being, of course, the German bishops’ only answer to the crisis is to “stay the course” of the Synodal Path: more agitation for married priests, women clergy, homosexual blessings and marriages and so on.

A more perceptive commentary in katholisch.de, the internet presence of the “German Catholic Church.” touches on more significant issues and problems. For example, that in the Coronavirus panic ( an event subsequent to the period covered by these reports), the popular perception was that the Church could be neither seen nor heard, even though those in the Church business thought they were doing a lot. And no more fantasies that downsizing is leaving a smaller but more healthy core – church atendance is declining among those who stay too. Those working in the German Church (mostly lay nowadays) describe losses not just at the edges, but in the center.

[P]erhaps the (Synodal Path) is only the latest edition (after the Council, Würzburg Synod, “discussion forums” and innumerable diocesan synods and dialogue processes) of the self-assuring of that small remnant for which the Church still matters.