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Germany now a ‘mission country,’ Bishop Bätzing says amid declining Catholic numbers

Bishop Georg Bätzing, chairman of the German bishops’ conference, meets with Pope Francis at the Vatican, June 24, 2021. (Vatican Media)

CNA Newsroom, May 14, 2024 / 09:32 am (CNA).

The German Bishops’ Conference president has called Germany — a nation whose very history is entangled with the Catholic Church — a “mission country.”

In an interview with the Society of the Divine Word’s German-language magazine, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg said: “We live in a missionary country when we realize that less than half of Germany’s citizens still belong to the Christian denominations.”

According to CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, Bätzing said evangelization had been a central theme “since [Pope] John Paul II and also for [Pope] Francis.”

The German prelate continued: “But the other half are not simply faithless or don’t ask any questions, and in this respect, I believe we need to do much more.”

“We should get in touch with these people, talk to them without being intrusive. These times of a mission with a negative tone are over, but speaking and answering questions about the hope that fills us, as the letter to the Hebrews says, is part of Christianity.”

Bätzing has led the Diocese of Limburg since 2016 and the German Bishops’ Conference since 2020. In 2016, more than 630,000 Catholics resided in Limburg. By 2022, this number had dropped to fewer than 540,000.

The Catholic population in Germany, a nation of about 83 million people, has significantly decreased.

In 2020, there were approximately 22.19 million Catholics. However, by 2022, this number had dropped to about 20.94 million.

Researchers paint a stark picture of the future: In 2019, a project of scientists at the University of Freiburg predicted that the number of Christians paying church tax in Germany would halve by 2060.

Three years later, in 2022, more than half a million baptized Catholics left the Church, figures released by the German Bishops’ Conference confirmed.

At the time, Bätzing stated on his diocese’s website that the “alarming” figures underscored the need for continued “cultural change” and the implementation of the German Synodal Way resolutions.

However, the German Synodal Way, which has advocated for significant changes to traditional Church teachings since 2019, has not stemmed the dramatic decline in Catholic numbers.

A 2021 report by CNA Deutsch noted that 1 in 3 Catholics in Germany were considering leaving the Church. The reasons for leaving varied, with older people citing the Church’s handling of the abuse crisis and younger people pointing to the obligation of paying church tax, according to one earlier study.

The German Bishops’ Conference currently stipulates that leaving the Church results in automatic excommunication, a regulation that has sparked controversy among theologians and canon lawyers.

In June 2019, Pope Francis addressed a 28-page letter to German Catholics, urging them to focus on evangelization amid a “growing erosion and deterioration of faith.” He warned against relying solely on internal strengths, stating: “Every time an ecclesial community has tried to get out of its problems alone, relying solely on its own strengths, methods, and intelligence, it has ended up multiplying and nurturing the evils it wanted to overcome.”

The Synodal Way initially struggled to embrace this call. In September 2021, a motion to emphasize evangelization was narrowly passed but was initially rejected due to misinterpreting abstention votes. Bätzing later confirmed the proposal had been accepted, acknowledging the procedural error.

One year later, in September 2022, Bätzing said the shortest definition of religion was “interruption” and that some forms of continuity people seek from religion are “frankly suspect.”


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20 Comments

  1. It seems to me the issue is not complicated. If the bishops and priests preach universal salvation why bother to attend mass and receive the sacraments? Jesus died to break the power of Satan in a fallen world. There is no salvation apart from union with Him in His Mystical Body. Unless we eat His Body and drink His Blood we have no life within us. Unfortunately, many in the Church have been deceived into believing that Satan does not exist, clergy and laity. We live in a sea of wickedness, were many call what is evil good, and what is good evil. There are none so blind who will not see.

  2. We read: “…The reasons for leaving [the Church] varied, with older people citing the Church’s handling of the abuse crisis and younger people pointing to the obligation of paying church tax, according to one earlier study.”

    So, the 1960s sexual revolution metastasizing into clericalist sexual abuse, plus clericalist entanglement with the state through the Church tax. Symptoms of a profoundly hollowed-out Church…

    And, leading from behind, the clericalist Bishop Batzing believes (the Faith?) that the solution is more of the same; he advocates “continued ‘cultural change’ and the implementation of the German Synodal Way resolutions…” So, invalid ordinations of a female priestesshood; a permanent “synodal assembly”/local plebiscite absent the papacy; and cultural (!) redefinition of the universal Natural Law and the very meaning of “sexual acts”, etc. etc.

    Life inside the bubble!

    • Yes. Because embracing the zeitgeist of the 1970s has worked wonders for mainline Protestant communities.

      Confront these fools and call them to account.

  3. Two things need to happen to the Catholic Church in Germany:
    #1. All bishops must resign immediately.
    #2. The German Church needs to stop taking any and all money from the German State. Until the German Church does this, they are in bed with Satan and doing Satan’s bidding.

    • #1 I believe there are 4 bishops who oppose the Synodal Way (effectively, they have blocked a number of its moves). Probably be better to keep them around. Given the shrinking Catholic population, they could probably consolidate the other dioceses into those 4.

      #2 Yes. A thousand times yes.

    • Maybe not so fast, here…

      On the FIRST point, not “all” bishops in Germany are sucking up to der Synodal Weg.

      Of those not devoted to mutilating the Church and the universal natural law, one listing gives Cardinal Rainier Woelke (Cologne), Stephan Burger (Freiburg), Bertram Meier (Augsburg), Stefan Oster (Passau), Rudolf Voderholzer (Regensburg), Wolfgang Ipolt (Gorlitz), Gregor Maria Hanke (Eichstatt), plus a few auxiliary bishops and probably others.

      On the SECOND point, the church tax is not confined to Germany.

      It’s also collected in five other European nations (Germany, plus Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden), largely as an awkward compensation for the combined effects in the 18th and 19th-century industrial demographics (populations migrating off the farm) and then secular expropriation of land previously owned by the churches. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/04/30/in-western-european-countries-with-church-taxes-support-for-the-tradition-remains-strong/ Pope Benedict commented in one of his books that the tax could be understandable given the even longer weight of history, but that the penalty of excommunication for opting out was “indefensible.”

      THIRDLY, and looking ahead, the next-generation question might be whether or when a non- or even anti-Christian religion/culture grafts itself onto any of the secularist and post-Christian state mechanisms.

      My limited reading suggests that Islamic interest in the church tax (and mosque tax?) is stymied by the fact that the highly sectarian Islamic immigrant enclaves cannot agree on a needed consolidated leadership within any of the above-listed nation-states.

      And we Catholics thought Protestant “sects” (including der Synodal Weg) were quite enough…

  4. ” . . . the German Synodal Way . . . has not stemmed the dramatic decline in Catholic numbers.”
    Mmm. I wonder why that is.

  5. A good bad thing is that there’s no German Church to be in schism. At least His Holiness can take credit for that. Dallying along for over a decade has left a lonely group of hierarchy, generals without an army.
    They’re multiple reasons apart from indecisive Vatican intervention. Nazism and war had to have had a deleterious effect on the German psyche, the truth of the faith. I still recall as a soldier the many crucifixion shrines hidden in the forests of Bavaria. I remember my Internet friend Alexandra, who later entered a contemplative convent in Bavaria. Some of the more pleasant tourists I met in Rome were German. Because of that and other reasons I don’t believe the faith is entirely dead. Not yet.
    Bishop George Bätzing, cardinal Reinhard Marx need to own their responsibility in the futile, demoralizing path they took the Church. Rabid liberal clergy and laypersons performed the finishing touch. Who needs a Church to attend and pay huge dues to when one need not do anything different from whatever one does? Except to pay dues and attend pop liturgical entertainment on Sundays. Although good leaders like Woelki, Muller, Voderholzer remain.
    Wonderment remains over the effectiveness that Amazonia style ecclesiology had in the German debacle. From the rainforests of Brazil pagan, likely diabolic ritual was imported to Rome, Vatican lawn prostrate worship of pagan paraphernalia, enshrinement of pagan goddess with song and dance in the sanctuary of St Peter’s Basilica. Further bedazzlement that this ancient liturgy was reveled while the Latin Mass was disparaged. Idolatry has consequences.
    While there remains the remnant of true faith in Germany there’s hope of the return of the King. Let’s hope, yes pray that occurs before the final return.

  6. Bishops announce this sort of tragic news but never say who is responsible. Could they be more brazen? Who ever came home from work and announced “Honey, I really screwed up today. We’re broke and I lost the business!”
    Their very comportment bespeaks the present tragic circumstance. Faith comes through hearing. What is the world hearing?

    • Ps: if the German bishops have done such a smash bang job that Deutschland is now a “mission country,” will the Kirchensteur (church tax) refunds be in the mail with apologies from Their Graces?

  7. True indeed! In Germany today you now have many priests and missionaries from former mission countries like Nigeria, India, and the Philippines staffing parishes and other Church based institutions.

  8. Well, there’s a new one on me. German theologians and canon lawyers are debating about excommunication for those who LEAVE the church. No wonder the German church is failing. What a hot button issue: people leaving the church are apparently angry that they are excommunicated. It’s what they want, for crying out loud. But this is the convoluted, nothing-ness of an intellectual elite who cannot fathom the silliness they immerse themselves in. And the German faithful are supposed to trust that crowd? That crowd of intellectuals that seems to be counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin THAT DOESN’T EXIST. The growing list of German Catholic inanities is depressing.

  9. Maybe if Batzing and his Buddies started teaching REAL Catholicism rather than their synodal salad, Germany might be a little more Catholic. Take Christ’s advice to Peter, Georg: be converted (back to Catholicism, not what passes for it in Limburg) then confirm your brethren.

  10. When Faith and Money are so intertwined within the Church, alongside a national government with little semblance of having a moral compass.

  11. Germany isn’t the only European mission country. Germany gets all the attention but Belgium is, as far as I can tell, in the same category. There are others.
    What they seem to have in common is the notion that the answer is more of what isn’t working.

  12. Still it would be better if your cash cow dried up and souls were saved! But that is not how Catholicism is done Deutschland? Nein?

  13. The German church is already in de facto schism, thanks to Batzing and about 90% of the German hierarchy. Their Synodal Way is promoting heresy in order to accommodate the church to the secular world. When there is no difference between Church teaching and the secular world, why belong? Especially when a tax is involved! This insane symbiosis between the Church and State reminds one of why Luther rebelled against the Church, especially when the non-payment of the tax results in excommunication! Show me the money or you will not be saved!

  14. The Pilgrim Church is a movement of fellow mortals forward. Prayer, fasting, penance, solidarity, and co-humanity were values practiced and preached by Jesus and his apostles. Germany is a beautiful country. Germans are hard working and wonderful people.

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