Posted on 11/07/2013 8:06:41 AM PST by Alex Murphy
The number of Germans leaving the Catholic church as much as tripled in October. Trust among followers has plummeted after a major financial scandal, experts said on Thursday.
There has been a significant increase in people filling out paperwork at town halls to leave both the Catholic and Evangelical churches between September and October, new research suggested on Thursday.
The trend is, experts said, linked to the “bling Bishop” scandal, in which Catholic Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was found to have spent millions of euros of church money on his own private house – including hundreds of thousands on cupboards alone.
Church officials are calling it the “Tebartz-effect”, with dioceses across the country reporting receiving letters from congregation members saying that they had lost faith in the church's handling of its finances. When a person leaves the church, they become exempt from church tax which is levied by the government.
A full, 65 percent of German Catholics consider their church less, or not at all, trustworthy, according to pollsters Forsa who recently conducted a survey.
In Cologne, 571 people officially left the Catholic church in October – twice the number who left in September. This was, city council spokesman Marcus Strunk said, the highest number in years.
Cologne's Evangelical church also saw an 80 percent rise in people leaving its pews in the same time frame – with 228 people unregistering. “People are queueing morning and evening,” at the council offices, said Strunk.
In Paderborn, also in North Rhine-Westphalia, the number of Catholics unregistering tripled on the month before. Osnabrück and Bremen also reported rising figures. As did councils across Bavaria, a largely Catholic state.
Bavariacapital Munich saw 1,250 people leave the Catholic church in October, more than twice the 602 who left in September. In Regensburg, Nuremberg and Passau the number tripled.
Religion sociologist Detlef Pollack from Münster University said this sudden jump was part of a trend that had been developing slowly for some time.
“The quality of living and level of education is so high [in Germany] that fewer people are turning to the spiritual support and social services of the church,” he said.
....Church officials are calling it the “Tebartz-effect”, with dioceses across the country reporting receiving letters from congregation members saying that they had lost faith in the church's handling of its finances. When a person leaves the church, they become exempt from church tax which is levied by the government.
Related threads:
Germans quit church during 2010 sex scandal
Catholics to exclude dodgers of church tax
German Catholics can only remain in the Church if they pay membership tax, rules court
What’s the deal on all the anti-catholic articles on Free Republic?
How is this an "anti-Catholic" article? Should the headline have read....
'Trusting' Catholics rush to join church....or should we just avoid reporting any news event that doesn't paint the rosiest of all possible pictures about Catholicism?
That's the point.
Eyes on the Prize, people. Jesus is the founder of the Catholic faith, not Bishop Tebartz, or any other mere mortal who loses their way.
What’s the deal on all the anti-catholic articles on Free Republic?There are a number of non-Catholic Christians who deplore Catholicism, and they want their voices heard. Since this is an open forum, they voice away.
Not just anti-Catholic, but anti-Christian articles as well; it does also state: "There has been a significant increase in people filling out paperwork at town halls to leave both the Catholic and Evangelical churches between September and October, new research suggested on Thursday.
**There has been a significant increase in people filling out paperwork at town halls to leave both the Catholic and Evangelical churches between September and October, new research suggested on Thursday. **
LOL! at the reporter who wrote that. No paperwork needs to be filled out at a town hall.
What a riotous laugh!
The “Catholic Church” is NOT the imperfect human members.
Those members are NOT where faith and trust is to be placed.
The “Catholic Church” is comprised of the Word of God, as conveyed in Scripture and Tradition, as Tradition and oral teaching preceded the written Word.
Churches in Germany are supported by tax money. They're filling out papers to tell the government to stop taking money out of their taxes to support the church.
Shhhh! Don't upset the apple cart! The next thing you know, people might start doubting whether the sky is green!
I have it on good authority that Hitler died. And now I find out that Jews and Catholics must pay 8 to 9 percent more on their income tax in order to join a church or a synagogue.
And the Jews and Catholics failed to stop the government from doing this.
There is NO rule in the Catholic church that any member must pay a given amount in order to receive Communion, etc. The money paid is filtered though The German government which means great gobs of money must be spent on government offices. Hitler still lives.
How sad that they’d leave a church based on what one Cardinal did ... even after he’s been caught and the situation taken care of.
At the end of the year you can deduct it from your taxes.
IMHO, if your faith in God is dependent upon the scandalous actions of a Church official (or worse a 'church tax'), you didn't have a real 'faith' to begin with.
Germany’s Roman Catholics can only remain part of the Church if they pay a membership tax, a court has ruled. All Germans who are officially registered as Catholics, Protestants or Jews pay a religious tax, worth an extra 8-9% of their income tax bill.
This had been challenged by a retired law professor who said he wanted to remain a Catholic but not pay the tax. Last week, a new bishops’ decree warned that anyone not paying the tax would be denied the right to religious rites. The German church levy was introduced in 1803 in compensation for the nationalization of religious property.
In 2011, the Catholic Church received 5bn Euros and the Protestant Church 4.5bn Euros from taxpayers, each adding up to the bulk of the churches’ income, the BBC’s Berlin correspondent Stephen Evans said.
He added that this arrangement, whereby the state collects taxes on behalf of religious groups and then reimburses them, was unusual in Western secular societies.
A nice bit of foot work there, SC. In my discussions with many former Catholics I find it loss of faith in the Catholic church that follows the endless and horrid scandals not a loss of faith in God.
So these former Catholics continue their search for God. As in Jesus’ illustration the wheat is easily distinguished from the weeds ever more easily.
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