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A survey reveals how the church formerly led by Ratzinger in the wealthy region of Bavaria, the German Catholic stronghold, has lost almost 25.000 worshipers who have left the Roman Catholic Church
andrea tornielli Rome Catholics in the Munich diocese where Joseph Ratzinger had been archbishop are now becoming a minority for the first time. This is according to an assessment carried out by the diocesan administration of Munich and Freising: there are currently 1, 77 million faithful in the Church of Rome, which equates to 49% of the resident population. This figure, which is in line with the general tendency Christians from all denominations have been showing of abandoning their faith, is shocking given that Bavaria is a historically Catholic stronghold. In 2010, as many as 23.000 faithful of the diocese of Munich left the Catholic Church and 80.000 have left over the past ten years.
According to some analysts, it is the sex abuse scandals which have blighted Germany and especially Munich over the past year that have caused this haemorrhage of worshippers. The two most prominent cases being that of Peter Hullerman, the priest who was repeatedly involved in sex abuse scandals and the scandals at Ettal Abbey. This explanation however risks being too simplistic. Annandonment of the Catholic faith seems to be a widespread phenomenon: in 2009, alongside the 123.000 German Catholics who turned their backs on the Roman Catholic Church, 148.000 Evangelists did just the same.
In Germany, there is, in fact, no real separation between Church and State. A system is in place whereby each worshipper pays an annual tax to the Church, equal to 10% of the taxes paid to the State. The State is responsible for collecting this tax which it then gives to the contributor’s church. It is still the State that is responsible for subsidising the cathedral chapters of the various dioceses and it is this system which has not only made the German Church wealthy and structured but has also created a great deal of bureaucracy. The faithful are obliged to pay the annual tax sum which is calculated on the basis on the basis of the taxes they pay to the State. If they wish to become exempt from paying it, they have to attend some kind of administrative court hearing and sign a declaration to this effect. From then on, the individual is considered
“excommunicated” and their name is removed from the list of those baptised. So it is not necessarily just the controversies surrounding the Church or people’s principles that are causing them to abandon the Catholic faith, but may also be down to financial reasons, linked to the crisis and the need to save money.
The current system which was put in place following an agreement is defended unanimously by all German bishops, who identify people’s connection with the Church, as linked to payment of the abovementioned fee. This position is not fully upheld by the Holy See, which believes that the two should not go hand in hand. There are those who favour the abolition of the compulsory annual tax, as a means of putting a stop to people abandoning the Church. This idea, however, is not shared by the new Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who in an interview with the Catholic monthly magazine “30Days” said: “Personally, I do not think there is anything wrong in asking people to make a decision and say: “Yes, I am part of the Church, and I am prepared to pay in order to support the work it does”. Of course, there is much that could be improved, but I believe that the system cannot be equalled. Each Church has its own events going on, a history of its own and this must be taken into account and respected. Also, the fee is only paid by those who have a steady income, which accounts for one third of the population, and the sum is proportional to each person’s earnings”.
Even Bavarian Catholicism is not as rigid as it once was. In the same diocese that was led by the young archbishop Joseph Ratzinger between 1970 and the beginning of 1982, before he was called to the Vatican to act as Prefect of the former Holy Office, there are groups that disagree with Rome’s line of thought: protests against clerical celibacy and against the Church’s stance with regard to sexual ethics. Secularisation is spreading fast and Benedict XVI knows it. During his flight in 2009 to Prague, Europe’s most dechristianised capital, he stated: “Normally it is the creative minorities that determine the future. As such, I would say that the Catholic Church needs to see itself as a creative minority; it has inherited values that do not belong to the past, but are a reality that is very much alive and current. These values need to be given more focus and taken into greater account in public debates”.
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