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.
note it’s not just Jews and Catholics — it’s members of all religious groups
But be aware that this has been overturned and soon your Jehovah's Witnesses too will collect Church tax at 8% or 9%
there are quite a few posted by non-Catholics who forget that the forces who are anti-Catholic hate other Christians as well...
Sorry, cyc, but Jehovah’s Witnesses too have failed to meet the criteria to acknowledge Jesus Christ as God, not some glorified angel
pssst... those are not Protestants. The main detractors are Jehovah’s Witneses, or cool Moslems.
Oh, you mean your Christian brothers the Mormons and the Muzzies...
The article mentioned Evangelicals too. It seems the seculars in Germany see the Roman Church as an easy target, meaning its size. The underlying issue we should all key in on is the comment about “educated” and prosperous people leaving the pews. As an Evangelical I say good riddance because the ones leaving because their god is mammon not our Holy God Almighty. I am sure Roman Catholics see it the same way.
The other lesson we should get from the article is having the State tax believers to support their particular church is bad “business.” Our founders saw fit to torpedo that bad idea. The Roman Empire did not tax The Way to keep their doors open. Paul and his companions risked dangerous sea routes to deliver aid to the Jewish churches. All coming from fellow Christians.
So Evangelical or Roman Catholic, these turncoat mammon lovers should be helped to the door.
To be exempt from the tax they have to do it. Weird ways in Europe. Truly I am shocked a secular government gets away with this in the 21st century. This is truly an alien concept for Americans given our Protestant founders torpedoed the idea of taxing citizens to support the clergy. They had enough of that nonsense under the church of England.
Stop projecting.
your moslem brothers aren't Christians.
The Pope then needs to cut off the imperfect member meaning the mammon loving bishop.
Perhaps the apostles should have written down those oral traditions and oral commands when they penned the epistles. Seems to be a huge oversight. Maybe they didn’t because they were not so important or left those traditions to local churches. When we find Paul’s letter to the Ephesians on liturgy practices it might clear things up. Until then bishops and popes can keep adding to the Scriptures at whim and declare infallibility. And when they rip off their lay folks by spending six figures to put in cabinets people can make excuses that the infallible men make fallible mistakes now and then. A wonderful self licking ice cream cone. It is like unaccountable government. We have a lot of that these days.
For Americans this tax is truly alien to us. Just the mere mention sends our Rome cursed Protestant founders rolling in their graves. The founders torpedoed any idea of one denomination lording over another and despised the church of England for taxing the colonies when we were under the crown.
I think this tax goes way back to the religious wars of the 16th century. When Prots and RCs finally decided that Christ frowned on torturing and burning each other at the stake (not very Christian mind you) they had to hammer out a settlement. The tax I believe was that settlement since various regions had scattered loyalties.
I’ll oblige. I send one out this weekend. Too easy the Muslims are always killing Christians somewhere.
St. Augustine was the first “Calvinist.”:)
Brother Augustine rocks! His writings on total depravity and by Grace we are saved is awesome commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Romans.
I recommend the Roman Church should keep reading the epistle addressed to them. It rocks!
FYI I am an American and we gladly pay this small tax to our beloved Catholic Church and receive the value back 100 times over.
Increasing every month... guess some are tired of bashing Mormons?
The apostles and other Biblical authors DID write down those oral traditions.
Certainly you’re not pretending that only the remaining 11 apostles authored the canon of the Bible?
As for the nonsense about “adding to Scripture”, you would do well to understand the basis for interpreting scripture, and quit pretending you have a monopoly on that....pope redleg.....
You can just call me papa. That will be fine.
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