Well over 500,000 people fled the Roman Catholic Church in 2022. The decline in church membership thus reached a (temporary?) peak.
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Many a bishop and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church will have looked down at the inventory of church members published today by the German Bishops’ Conference and 27 dioceses. In 2022, a total of 522,821 people left the houses of the Church of Rome located in Germany, as Vatican News reported. More than half a million people have turned their backs on this church. In 2022, membership was lost by more than 700,000, including those who had died.
At the end of the year, the Roman Catholic Church in Germany still had 20,937,590 members, accounting for 24.8 percent of the total population.
The number of baptisms in 2022 was 155,173, slightly more than in 2021 (141,922). There was a significant increase in church weddings from 20,140 in 2021 to 35,467 in 2022. The number of first communions also increased, from 156,574 in 2021 to 162,506 in 2022. The number of church burials remained almost constant throughout the year 2021 with 240,040 and in 2022 with 240,144 burials. The increases in marriages and first communions are clearly due to the pandemic reprisals still being applied in 2021.
The number of people who entered the Catholic Church was 1,447 in 2022 (2021: 1,465). There were also 3,742 readmissions (2021: 4,116). In 2021, the number of people leaving the church was 359,338 and this has now increased to 522,821 in 2022.
Ongoing mass exodus
The numbers are impressive. In 2022, on average, more than 10,000 people left the Catholic Church every week. Per working day (Monday to Friday) this would be over 2,000 per day. There was a lot of paperwork to do for the dioceses. The reasons for the mass exodus should be well known. In contrast to the miraculous changes in the evangelical church, the Catholic faith will play a lesser role. The Catholic dogmas have been “burned in” for many centuries. Dafür sind die cases of abuse in the Church of Rome are just as unprecedented as the “will” to clear them up. Leaving the church, like leaving the evangelical church, is not a mistake and should even be encouraged (Revelation 18:4). But the danger here lies in the homelessness of the refugees and the substitute religion according to “Laudato si’“, which has long been available. From the rain in the eaves.
