In the face of this terrible reality, it is essential not to lose sight of the fact that the Church is a human-divine institution, and that its vitality comes above all from union with Christ.
Newsroom (30/06/2022 09:00, Gaudium Press ) Those who abandon the faith do not normally make a formal act of their apostasy. It is clear that in Germany this is explained more by the juridical repercussions that being Catholic or non-Catholic entails, for example, in tax matters. But the fact that 360,000 people left the Catholic faith in 2021 in the country is very significant, depending on where you look.
Sad record
That data surpasses the sad record of 2020, when 273,000 people left the Roman Catholic Faith.
As an element of analysis, it is reported that this mass flight of believers does not apply only to the Catholic Church, which in Germany today has 21,645,875 members: in 2021, 280,000 Protestants also abandoned their faith.
In any case, the data already question many scholars and, of course, the hierarchy of the German Church, which has embarked enthusiastically upon the increasingly dark and distant German Synodal Way: the way described in recent days by Cardinal Gerhard Müller not only as schismatic but apostate.
It is clear that the followers of the German Synodal Way will claim the collapse of the Church in their country to justify and accelerate their reforms, along the lines of the female priesthood, the end of ecclesiastical celibacy, and the ‘blessings’ of homosexual couples, all subject to the Magisterium of the Church and Roman authority.
The Church, a supernatural reality
However, together with the necessary analyses that must be carried out in the face of such a terrible reality, it is essential not to lose the notion that the Church is a human-divine institution, and that its vitality comes above all from union with Christ .
In this sense, the accusation launched by Cardinal Müller against the German Synodal Way of “denying grace” is of the utmost gravity and, at the least, would explain the collapse of the Church in his country: the Church which is far from the supernatural flow and the Source of grace loses its impetus and its capacity of attraction, tending instead towards stagnation.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
