Posted on 07/16/2016 10:06:05 AM PDT by marshmallow
Figures released Friday by the German bishops' conference draw a bleak picture of the ongoing decline of Catholicism in Germany.
However, the head of the conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, described the Church July 15 as a continuing "strong force, whose message is heard and accepted".
With more than 23.7 million members in Germany, Catholicism is the largest single religious group in country, comprising 29 percent of the population. Yet people are leaving the Church in droves: in 2015, a total of 181,925 people departed.
By comparison, 2,685 people became Catholic, and 6,474 reverted to Catholicism.
Whilst the German bishops' conference emphasised that baptisms and marriages showed a slight increase as compared to the year before, the actual long-term figures describe a steep downward trend.
When compared to the official statistics of ten years ago, the number of baptisms has declined by more than a third, from almost 260,000 babies baptized in 1995 to just over 167,000 in 2015. The situation is even worse for marriages. Eleven years ago, 86,456 couples tied the knot in Church. Last year, the number was down by almost half: In a nation of 80 million people, only 44,298 couples were married in the Church last year.
Further official numbers confirm this precipitous decline: average church attendance is down from 18.6 percent in 1995 to 10.4 percent in 2015.
The number of people departing the Church has increased within the same timeframe, having peaked in recent years at more than 200,000 annually.
No numbers are provided by the German episcopate about how many Catholics went to confession last year. However, a recent academic study of the priesthood in Germany showed that even amongst the clergy, more than half – 54 percent – go to confession only "once a year or less". Amongst.....
(Excerpt) Read more at ewtnnews.com ...
We are now "accompanying" these people......< /sarcasm>
("Accompany"= politically correct buzzword of the moment)
Not to worry...those churches will make nice mosques, just like Hagia Sofia. Then they’ll be filled to the brim with the faithful.
Germany will never recover form the horrendous losses it suffered in WWI and WW II ...
True. That is because the alpha males were decimated due to the war. And, what was left were the timid and mentally weak.
Europe will never recover.
Couple all of that with the pedofelia and homosexuality of the clergy, is it any wonder?
The empty Churches will not go to waste ,the Muslims need Mosques
The Catholic Church probably could have retained their credibility if they would have turned the homo pedophiles in to the authorities for prosecution. Instead, they covered for them.
This has been happening for a while... I have Catholic relatives who have left the church. They didn’t leave because they’re no longer Catholic... but because they couldn’t afford the government enforced and extracted Tithing that comes directly out of your paycheck. In order to avoid paying... you have to officially leave the church.
Government has a tendency to kill everything...
Hitler’s lasting legacy - a nation of wimps and metrosexuals led by gutless women - sad. That’s OK, though - within 20 years they’ll all be “Sieg Heil-ing” to Mecca.
Disclaimer: I'm agnostic. I agree that the Catholic Church now has situational ethics. But then, I've never believed that a bunch of men can vote in another man to have a direct line to God.
Both the Catholic and Protestant churches are big time profiteers of the ...uh... "refugee" situation. They are raking in billions for all kinds of "social" services. People are pi$$ed off and say "no thanks, good bye".
Europe is a mission field. Hoping baptisms will outnumber funerals is not a plan.
My German grandfather survived being shot on the Russian front (where he returned after recovering) and built his life back up from nothing afterwards (the rest of his family was stuck behind the Wall). He still hunts in his 90’s. My grandfather and other male relatives might have been fighting the wrong side of history, but they were strong men of integrity their whole lives. I know plenty of Americans of that generation who didn’t serve at all or didn’t step foot out of this country.
Christianity began declining in Germany when its top theologians began straying from the supremacy of Jesus Christ and embracing Humanism, ie, that Man can be perfected on his own without the need for a Savior.
This eventually degenerated into anti-Christian thinkers like Nietzche. Hitler and the Nazis were simply the culmination of 100 years of godless thinking.
Now, Germany has doubled down on stupid, by replacing 18 million Jews in Europe with 20 million Muslims. They replaced 3000 years of art, culture, medicine, Philosophy, theology, and Intellect, with nothing better than semi-literate day-laborers (if that).
For Germany to regain its moral stature, its people need to come to the Cross in abject humility and repentance.
The new “springtime”..... /s
NO ONE wants to belong to a church that doesn’t believe in what the church teaches.
Are the German Bishops getting the message that something is wrong?
I doubt it for some of them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.