Sociologist of religion: Small, sect-like church cannot be a goal. Proclaims the death of Catholicism.

522,821 people left the Catholic Church last year - a new record. In the Katholische.de interview, the sociologist of religion Gert Pickel classifies the numbers and talks about whether reforms would help to counter the resignation numbers.

With a view to the number of people leaving for the coming years, the sociologist of religion Gert Pickel paints a bleak picture: "I assume that the number of people leaving will remain around the same level, and with regard to the Catholic Church I'm almost afraid that we'll even will move higher." In the Katholische.de interview, he talks about what the church could do about the exit numbers - and why a smaller church should not be the goal.

Question: Mr. Pickel, last year more than half a million people left the Catholic Church. How do you look at this number?

Pickel: This number is surprising on the one hand – but not on the other. For a long time we have been able to observe processes of secularization, which are now accompanied by dissatisfaction with the handling of cases of abuse, especially in the Catholic Church. It is quite surprising that the momentum is picking up so quickly.

Question: What do you think are the reasons for this?

Pickel: It is often the case that when people leave the church, Protestants and Catholics are in the same boat. It's different this time: This time we have a clear backlog of people leaving the Catholic Church. One can strongly assume that dealing with the abuse scandal plays a role. But I also suspect that this is a reaction to the fact that the Synodal Path is being blocked so much from Rome. This blockade has led to committed Catholics in particular asking themselves whether their commitment there and in their Church is still worthwhile. The SWR did a small study last year, in which I was involved in an advisory capacity. In Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg, people who had left were interviewed in 20 registry offices. A special feature was that for the first time you can see that people are leaving the church who are religious and can no longer stand it in the Church. This is not particularly good news for the Catholic Church, and it is now reflected in the numbers leaving.

Question: Viennese Cardinal Christoph Schönborn said at the beginning of the week with regard to exit numbers in Austria: "We will not be able to stop the decline in Catholics through any measures - not even through any alleged, absolutely necessary reforms." Is that correct from your point of view?

Pickel: That's not quite right. Of course, secularization processes take place independently of any measures in the church. We have been able to observe this in Germany since the late 1960s. But what we have observed in recent years is a significant acceleration – especially with regard to people leaving the Catholic Church. And that has to do with the decisions of the church. If we now experience the upheaval that even religious people say that they are no longer in the right place in the Catholic Church, then it reaches a new level. This means that it is now also losing from the members who were the substance of the Catholic Church. So not just people who went to church maybe twice a year, but people who were central to church life. And that is actually a difference.

Question: What are the implications?

Pickel: On a very practical level, this means that people who have volunteered in the parishes are now declining. The number of full-time employees has been falling for years, and if the number of volunteers is also decreasing, that means a structural problem for the church of tomorrow. There will also be fewer people who have represented the Catholic Church to the outside world or speak pro bono. This is also not beneficial for the future. At the moment we are on a path in terms of membership losses that does not lead to consistency, but to acceleration. That should worry those responsible – unless, of course, they say that a small group of believers is enough. But looking at these developments and saying you're not doing anything because there's nothing you can do about it isn't a particularly good strategy.

Question: What do you think the church should do to counter these waves of resignation?

Pickel: This is a debate that the Catholic Church keeps bringing Rome into play. You have to think about what a modern church should look like. Perhaps there are forms that can be changed without jeopardizing the depth of the faith. The question is also how to deal with social changes, for example with people who are queer. In the church there are sometimes great difficulties, but these are debates that have to be held. When I ask young people, 70 percent say the church has a big problem with gender issues. Here, just like with other questions of modernity, one has to open oneself up.

"Because the risk with such a shrinkage is that only conservatives to fundamentalists will remain, who will no longer be able to keep up with society in the long term," says Gert Pickel, Professor of Religious and Ecclesiastical Sociology at the Institute for Practical Theology at the Theological Faculty of the University of Leipzig.

Question: What next?

Pickel: The second thing is that you look at what is important for the church. The church actually means community. And we see that often people who are not religious at all stay in the church because they value the fellowship and the groups in which they are involved. This can be a Bible study group, but it can just as well be an "anti-right group" or a choir. If we now look at church members, we find that a third of them say they are not religious but are members nonetheless. You rarely see these people, who are committed but not very religious, but they are also important for the religious framework and in the churches.

Question: However, reforms are not so easy to implement in the Catholic Church. You mentioned the Synodal Path and Rome's interventions...

Pickel: That's exactly the problem, you get caught in a quandary. Some Catholics certainly had hope that something would change as a result of the Synodal Path and are now realizing that this was only a sham hope because a "no" came from Rome. That frustrates people - and when you're frustrated, you react to it. When the Pope says: "We have a good Protestant church, we don't need two of them," then one clearly notices the fear that certain progressive groups will break away from the current Catholic Church. I could imagine that at some point it could play a role. Because one can no longer cope with individual norms that are not appropriate to the present, but are somehow Catholic. But I don't see that at the moment.

Question: Many things have been implemented in the Protestant church that reform-oriented Catholics wish for. Nevertheless, the Protestant church is also struggling with ever-increasing numbers of people leaving.

Pickel: It has to be said that there are also some problems in the Protestant Church. The Evangelical Church has tried to modernize itself, but at the same time it is quite hierarchical. In the Protestant Church, too, arguments are strongly centered on church services and pastors, but at the same time they sometimes lose sight of the socially committed groups in the parishes. One does not realize that they can also organize elsewhere, that is, outside the church. There is definitely a need for reform. But one must also say that we have a modernization process that does not seem to harmonize well with religion. There is relatively little you can do about it. But you can do something about it within this framework, so that the members don't run away en masse. And it is also important to look at the community and the community spirit in communities.

Question: Let's take a look into the future: What developments do you expect in terms of the number of departures in the coming years?

Pickel: I assume that the number of people leaving will remain around this level, and with regard to the Catholic Church I almost fear that we will move even higher. Depending on the situation, things could get a little quieter again. But the long-term perspective is another significant decrease in members. I talked earlier about what to do about it. That doesn't mean that the decline in membership would stop because of that. But you can reduce it, you can perhaps keep people who are committed. But it will not go beyond that. The sociology of religion says that despite secularization, a core of believers will remain, but how large it will be cannot yet be said. For the churches it could be a total of 20 to 30 percent of the population in Germany. So you will probably have to deal with a minority role.

Question: Some people don't think this process is bad at all because only those who are determined to remain Christians remain. Can the church really want that?

Pickel: That is quite possible. The problem is that there is also a loss of meaning that is difficult to deal with. And at least as important: It is the mission of the churches to bring believers to God and to reach them. The goal cannot be a small, cult-like group. Because the risk of such a shrinkage is that only conservatives to fundamentalists will remain, who will no longer be able to keep up with society in the long term.

Question: The canon lawyer Thomas Schüller spoke yesterday in view of the high number of resignations that the church is "dying". Would you sign up to that?

Pickel: What we know as the national church will probably die in this form. I can definitely agree with him on that. Of course, that also brings with it a problem: I spoke about the fact that the communities are a very important value. How do I want to keep it up if I'm no longer a national church? This will be a question for the churches to ask themselves. You can't react to that by saying that there is only one pastor in the big city and everyone else has to go there. It will not work. You have to make sure that you remain in the area, even if you only have a few people in these areas. That will be the challenge, only if the churches succeed in this will they be able to survive - not as a national church, but as a community that has quite a few followers. I don't think religion and church will disappear completely. We assume that being a member of a church is always interesting for a group of citizens. For religious reasons or for community reasons. But of course the churches have to learn something new. A Church like the one that existed in the 1950s or 1960s, for example, is doomed to die out.

Source

Cathcon:  The Church which proclaims salvation in the Cross of Him Crucified will not die. If all the people hear are vicious attacks by Synodalists on the Holiness, Unity, Catholicity and Apostolicity of the Church, of course, they will leave.