Protestantism dying even faster than Catholicism in Luther's homeland

KATH.NET - Katholischer Nachrichtendienst

In Germany, the Protestant church is shrinking faster than the Catholic. Overall, only about 60 percent of Germans are church members.

In Germany, the Protestant church is shrinking faster than the Catholic. This is apparent from a comparison of the numbers in the statistical booklet produced on 20 July by the EKD Church Office in Hanover and those in the previous edition. The new figures are based on a survey of 2010. Of the almost 81.8 million inhabitants, 61.4 percent are members of churches and free churches. The rest belong belong to other religions or no religion. The Christian population has declined by 0.6 percent within a year. The largest denomination is Roman Catholic with nearly 24.7 million members - a drop of 0.6 percent.

30 percent of the population is Catholic. The number of members of the Protestant churches has declined by 1.2 percent to 23.9 million, which represent 29.2 percent of all residents. Unchanged are the almost 1.3 million people (1.6 percent of the population) in Orthodox churches. Membership in the Evangelical Free Churches dropped by 0.6 percent to just over 330,000. They represent 0.4 percent of the population. About 33,000 residents belong to the other churches, which represent 0.04 percent of the population. The church affiliation is very different in East and West. In the old Federal Republic, 70 percent of the people belong to churches, on the territory of the former East Germany it is only 25 percent.

Cathcon- first 20 years of Nazism and then forty five years of Communism has decimated religion in the East. This is what happens when error is given rights. Atheistic parents do not pass religion to their children- occasionally the children revolt and go and find it for themselves. It is all the more depressing that now there is a head of the CDF who sympathises with liberation theology. Any German knows where Communism leads. He has no excuse for being a fellow-traveler.

The Catholic figures in Germany have been in linear decline since 1944- in contrast to other countries where Catholicism was in linear ascent before the Council followed by a symetrical linear descent after the Council. At the present rate, the Catholic Church in Germany will not exist in about twenty-five years time.