The Catholic Church in Germany is in a downward spiral. Since 1990, since German reunification, the number of Catholics in the country has fallen from 28.3 million to 21.6 million in 2021, a drop of 23.7 percent. The number of priests in the country fell even more blatantly – by 37.7 percent.
The downward trend in church tax receipts is already making itself felt. The 27 Catholic dioceses are happily cutting back where they can. Schools are being closed here, Catholic libraries there, and conference centers there. And above all, the merging of parishes and the closure of places of worship are invoked and practiced as if they were already recommended in one of the gospels.
Fewer church members mean less church tax revenue
“Mergers free up resources”
Two pieces of evidence, both from last weekend: “Mergers in the church release resources,” announced the Vicar General of the Diocese of Eichstätt. And in Fulda, where the 69 Catholic German bishops and their general secretary have been advising at their general assembly since Monday, the local newspaper announced on this date: “Diocese is reorganizing – 200 parishes will become 28 parishes”.
But not everything is merged for new resources. 27 dioceses remain 27 dioceses – with the bishop and his personal staff, authorities, administration. “To be honest, we have never really discussed the question of how many dioceses there are in Germany in an objective manner,” said Bishop Georg Bätzing, the chairman of the general assembly of bishops, in response to a question from Deutsche Welle.
However: If you speak to many of the employees in this church without citing them by name, you hear completely different voices. That bishops do not take the drama of the current church situation seriously, for example. And one says, half jokingly: “If you want to drain the swamp, you can’t ask the frogs.”
The Vatican decides
You wouldn’t have to ask frogs anyway, but ask the Vatican. Ultimately, it is the Pope who decides whether to establish or abolish a diocese. To put it simply: Where there are enough believers, the head of the church can establish a diocese. Or the other way around. Six years ago, for example, Rome asked the Italian Church to drastically reduce the number of dioceses. The 226 dioceses are to become 119 – with 48.5 million Catholics in the country at the time. Conversely, Pope John Paul II established various dioceses in his native Poland. To the delight of the faithful.
More than 1200 years old, but less than 100 years as a bishop’s church: Aachen Cathedral
In Germany, the situation is more complicated, due to many treaties between state and church and regulations in so-called concordats, international legal regulations between the Holy See and the federal states. Nevertheless, since the Second World War, dioceses have been founded in Essen (1958) and Hamburg (1994), in Magdeburg, Erfurt and Görlitz (each in 1994). Conversely, in the course of the long history – the oldest German dioceses are over 1700 years old – around 20 dioceses have been abolished. In Konstanz or Worms, for example, there was once a Catholic bishop’s throne. And even a diocese of Chiemsee can be found in history.
The political scientist, church expert and author Andreas Püttmann finds the idea of merging dioceses “not unreasonable”. “If congregations are merged, in fact because of a shortage of priests, then the top should also be thinned out accordingly. Otherwise, as in other traditional organizations, the rule is: ‘Many chiefs, few Indians,'” he told DW. The spokesman for the Archdiocese of Berlin, Stefan Förner, finds the idea of merging dioceses or archdioceses “obvious, since parishes are being merged everywhere in different processes”. For smaller dioceses, the effort in terms of administration and representation is “much greater”. The question of externals is one thing; From the inside, however, there is “a strong bond with the diocese”.
The Bishop’s Mission
The Bochum theologian Matthias Sellmann also thinks it is appropriate to think about it in a DW interview. It is not a bishop’s job to ensure the continued existence of his diocese. Rather, he should ensure that parishioners can practice their faith, that they can participate in the Eucharist, that they can experience church.
Worship of the Bishops at the General Assembly
Clearly, there are canon law and state church law hurdles for changes, Sellmann, who heads the Center for Applied Pastoral Research at the University of Bochum, told DW. The Second Vatican Council (1962 to 1965) also re-emphasized the role of the diocese and the bishop. “But if it comes to the point where a bishop has to decide to merge or integrate into another diocese, that can also be a very responsible step from a theological point of view.”
Should smaller dioceses disappear?
West German Catholics cite the East German dioceses of Görlitz (with fewer than 30,000 believers) and Magdeburg (with almost 80,000 believers, but the fourth-largest German diocese in terms of area, three times the size of the Archdiocese of Cologne) as examples of dioceses that could disappear. The poorer dioceses also include Speyer and Trier, Hildesheim, Essen and Limburg.
Magdeburg Bishop Gerhard Feige, a pastor by type and not head of administration, spoke to a committee of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) last summer that “East and West do not always succeed in really understanding one another or making themselves understood “. The German dioceses are “very unequal in terms of personnel, finances, structure and context”. Overall, his diocese is in a different league. And sometimes he feels “like a Hartz IV recipient in a western department store.”
Even if the bishops are not officially talking about mergers, they have long been swearing by cooperation in individual areas. Be it church courts, the responsibility of data protection or abuse prevention officers, labor law commissions or classic administration. There are more and more requirements in German law that every diocese administration, like every other authority, has to meet. “Whether the administrative authority of a diocese has 1,000 employees or – like we do in Magdeburg – only 40, is not insignificant,” said Feige last year. Therefore, the following applies: the smaller a diocese, the greater the per capita expenditure.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference
But stronger cooperation is not really planned. In the media perception in Germany, the chairman of the German bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, is the head of the German bishops and the top man of the church in Germany. But far from it. For the Vatican and actually also for many confreres in the episcopacy, Bätzing is simply the bishop of Limburg. To put it in a generally understandable way: Individual bishops formally don’t have much more to do with each other than individual franchisees at the burger fryer McDonalds, who all work together for the same company. An example: for years the bishops discussed concentrating on the training of priests. After all, there were steps in this direction, but no nationwide common line.
It stops with the money
And it is striking that cooperation often falters, or even fails, especially when it comes to money or the possessions of the rich dioceses. A current example: a year ago, trade journals and regional daily newspapers in Westphalia headlined “Peach marriage between Paderborn and Munster” or “Billion-dollar merger: Germany’s largest pew is being built in North Rhine-Westphalia”. It was about talks about merging the Münster loan office and the Bank for Church and Caritas based in Paderborn. A smaller headline, “Church banks pause merger talks,” followed in spring 2022. And at the moment it looks like the whole thing is going quietly fizzled out. It’s better to stay with yourself. Even with his money.
So everything goes on. Incidentally, in 1990, 295 mostly young men were ordained as Catholic priests in Germany, in 2021 there will be 48. Forty-eight. The chance for each of them to become a bishop increases. But as someone said in a conversation these days. “If we go on like this for another ten years, the cart will hit the wall.”
