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    Germans quit church during 2010 sex scandal

    BERLIN (AP) — The number of people leaving the Roman Catholic Church in Germany jumped by nearly 50 percent in 2010 as an abuse scandal widened, new data showed Friday.

    Some 181,000 people quit their memberships last year, up from 124,000 in 2009, official numbers released by Germany's Roman Catholic Church showed.

    Deaths and people turning away from the church heavily outnumbered baptisms, which reached a record low, putting one of the world's wealthiest and most influential Catholic Churches further in decline.

    Over the past twenty years, the number of members of Germany's Roman Catholic Church has fallen from 28.3 million to 24.6 million or 30.2 percent of the country's population in 2010, the data showed.

    The numbers are easily tracked because members pay a church tax unless they formally leave the congregation — the same reason the declining membership has led to increasing budget shortfalls for the church.

    The new figures come ahead of a planned visit by Bavarian-born Pope Benedict XVI on Sept 22-25, when he is scheduled to visit the cities of Freiburg, Erfurt and Berlin where he will deliver a speech to German parliament.

    Germans are not required to say why they want to strike their church membership, but many have blamed the reports of sexual and physical abuse of hundreds of children by clergy that surfaced last year.

    The diocese that recorded the highest member loss last year was Munich and Freising — the pope's former diocese, which had been hard-hit by the abuse scandal — where 21,600 people alone left the church.

    The Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, late last year begged forgiveness for "everything those working for the church have done" as he presented a report that showed more-than 250 priests and religion teachers sexually or physically abused children in the diocese over the past decades.

    "We want to learn from our bad mistakes and misconduct of the past," Marx then vowed.

    In its response to the abuse scandal, Germany's Bishops Conference has publicly and repeatedly showed remorse, changed the relevant guidelines for the clergy and offered up to euro5,000 ($6,900) compensation to victims of abuse by clergy or church officials while they were minors, but it gave no total number of victims.

    The overall number of German faithful in 2010 fell by a total of 258,000 as deaths and people turning away from the church heavily outnumbered baptisms, which reached a record low of 170,000.

    Austria, which taxes church members in a way similar to those in Germany also saw a significant drop in the number of departures. Figures published by the Austrian Bishop's Conference earlier this year said 87,000 Austrian Catholics left in 2010, a 64 percent increase over the 53,000 who formally had their names struck from church registries in 2009.

    ___

    Melissa Eddy in Berlin contributed to this report.

     

    151 comments

    • Snafu B  •  9 mths ago
      Bavarians would rather drink beer and play football than go to church on Sundays. Good for them! Whereas the French, Italians and Germans would go to mass each week, they now go six times a year or less. ( Less and less, the people are wising up!) Even the most block headed Kraut catches on after some time that the Nazis were bad and the Catholic Church
      is bad too.
    • duran  •  10 mths ago
      a 'vicious attack' on the Church. What about the almost countless vicious attacks by that 'Church' on little innocent children?
      • GAIL 10 mths ago
        you missed the point, what about the vicious attacks on little children by other clergy, do you deny it exsists, or is it o k to abuse if you are not catholic?
      • Jo Jo 10 mths ago
        Don't degrade the whole because of the actions of a part!! Should one deduce that America is evil because we have so many murderers and rapists? The only one who wins all around is the Evil One-Satan..Why? Because through the demonic actions of those men/priests, young lives were scarred and countless people lost their faith, but even more so, the haters of God have something to back up their innate desire to destroy Christianity and the Catholic Church. (Ofcourse, I would also love to know how many who feel for the abused children also feel for those precious little babies whose bodies are viciously torn and maimed out of their mother's womb, and whose lives are snuffed out VIOLENTLY.or is it that they love those baby murders so much and that is why they want to destroy the Catholic church that tells them that it is wrong?!?)...just saying....

        owmb in the name of the 'rights' of the woman???)
      • Jo Jo 10 mths ago
        I agree that pedophiles are absolutely DEPLORABLE! But, umm...what about vicious attacks on precious little lives in the womb who men don't care about and women allow doctors to maim and rip out while they are still alive and breathing from their wombs?!? Isn't that the real reason everyone hates the Catholic church that has the guts to speak out on it? Because most of you are for the rights of a woman and man to murder?!? Fortunately your mother didn't do that to you, or you would not have been fiben the gift of life.
    • HERETIC  •  9 mths ago
      I am surprised that there were that many ignorant citizens in Germany who once were roman catholic. Well at least they have bettered themselves by leaving that cult.
      • Katherine 9 mths ago
        I have a book that tells how persecuted real christians were in Germany when I was a child. How they prayed for the Berlin wall to come down, how authorities busted lights out to search for christian literature, etc.. sure was nice to see some "reasons" other than what I alone knew about that Berlin wall.
    • Troy  •  10 mths ago
      Believe me I know how it feels. Catholic priests trying to molest me at age 12. Now the same priests are in Politics. Go figure.
      • Ken 10 mths ago
        Instead of telling people who can't do anything, go tell a lawyer.
      • Virginia 10 mths ago
        Something tells me the statue of limitations is up. I don't know for sure but something tells me he is not 17.
      • Troy 10 mths ago
        30 years ago.
    • Me  •  10 mths ago
      I'm Catholic and I gave up on the church almost 10 years ago. I don't go anymore. Had a priest drop his pants in front of me and then he asked to touch me.
      • Tangerine 10 mths ago
        Mercy
      • truth keeper 10 mths ago
        Allegiance to one’s faith should not in any way be compromised on the account of failure to protect oneself and family from the inevitable marks of the beast, more pronounced and prominent now than ever.
    • Felixx  •  10 mths ago
      During WWII, there were some Germans who stood against Hitler. They were largely put to death. The present Pope joined the Hitler Youth at age 14 and was in it until the end of the war which made him 19. Fourteen year olds as well as 19 year olds are old enough to know right from wrong. It is wrong to just "go along and keep quiet". It was wrong to elect a former "Hitler Youth" as Pope. I would think the RC has better to choose from than that.
      • A Yahoo! User 10 mths ago
        The Gestapo did not give choice, every parent's duty was to teach the kids to survive the political nightmare they were born into, nothing stays the same.
      • Edward 10 mths ago
        @ Felixx

        Given the same situation would you have had the courage to say no???? What makes you so different from millions of other germans during that time?
      • A Yahoo! User 10 mths ago
        Childen did not have anything to say, they were enrolled in the Hitler Youth Organization, whether they liked it or not. Telling it as if he "joined" is also a favourite lie of church haters.
    • Will of the People  •  10 mths ago
      Speaking the truth IS NOT 'hate'.
      Raping and torturing children is.
    • A Yahoo! User  •  10 mths ago
      THEY HID THE SIN AND MOVED THE PRIESTS ALL OF THEM ,TO DO IT AGAIN SOMEWHERE ELSE.. SO BASICLY THEY TOOK THE "CANCER"AND PLACED IT SOMEWHERE TO GROW ,SO THEY WOULD NOT HAVE THE REPORT THE DIEASE TO THE CHURCH. AND POSSIBLY LOSE BIG MONEY . AND THE PUBLIC FIND OUT .
      ALL TO KEEP THE MONEY COMMING IN..THAT THE WHOLE BUNDLE . ITS TRULEY ABOUT THE MONEY WHATTHE ROOT IS . THIS SHOWS YOU WHAT TRUE PRIORITIES THEY HAD . THE LORDS PURE REPUTATION WAS DELIBERALLY DISTROYED SO THIS QUOTE CHURCH COULD KEEP THE FUNDS COMMING IN ,
      THE LORD BECAME AN AFTER THOUGH TO THERE HUGE PAY CHECKS OBVIOUSLY...
    • Paul King  •  10 mths ago
      The Following Feature Appeared in Germany's STERN magazine on 10 September 1998 on occasion on Mother Teresa's 1st death anniversary.
      It is worth pointing out here that STERN, one of Europe's highest selling magazines, is a conservative organ, not known for its anti-Catholic bias. EXTRACT
      In Calcutta there are about 200 charitable organisations helping the poor. Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity are not amongst the biggest helpers: that contradicts the image of the organisation. The name "Mother Teresa" was and is tied to the city of Calcutta. All over the world admirers and supporters of the Nobel Prize winner believe that it must be there that her organisation is particularly active in the fight against poverty. "All lies," says Aroup Chatterjee . The doctor who lives in London was born and brought up in Calcutta. Chatterjee who has been working for years on a book on the myth of Mother Teresa, speaks to the poor in the slums of Calcutta, or combs through the speeches of the Nobel Prize winner. "No matter where I search, I only find lies. For example the lies about schools. Mother T has often stated that she runs a school in Calcutta for more than 5000 children. 5000 children! -- that would have to be a huge school, one of the biggest in all of India. But where is this school? I have never found it, nor do I know anybody who has seen it!" says Chatterjee.
    • Grim Reaper  •  10 mths ago
      As long as the Catholic church's hierarchy continues to support and protect pedophile priests this problem won't go away. Arrest all pervert priests and put them in jail with the general population. God will do the rest.
    • Nga  •  9 mths ago
      The priests are human too. However, the believers giving the priests too much authority, in my Roman Catholic church, the priest and the clerk are very close frienship, she build a half million dollars home, her salary is about $15K per month, the members are afraid to the priest. He is rich, I gave $300 cash to the priest but he return my money, some members gave him a check for $3,000, he acepts it. The Trinity God is a loving God, only human is causing problem in the church.
    • Midland  •  9 mths ago
      You have to hand it to the Germans they are not going to let these hypocrites molest their children.
    • McLevian  •  10 mths ago
      Jesus said, "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones (children) which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea". Perhaps that would be a good punishment for pedophile priests!!!
    • desmond  •  10 mths ago
      When Benny the Hitler Youth became Pope he made it clear that he wanted to downsize the Church, meaning, it's my way or the highway. The root of the pedophile priest problem eminates from Ireland where RTE Irish TV documents that the priests and nuns involved in this heinous crime in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia all were born in Ireland- there must be something in the water. The Church needs to out all gay parish priests worldwide and turn false priests like Cardinal Law of Boston over to federal authorities. Instead, the Church , through its various institutions, just keeps asking to be remembered in your will.
    • Paul King  •  9 mths ago
      "What does the church have to do?"
      Many Catholic simply tune out any and everything the Church does. They want to believe so badly that absolutely nothing will make them see the truth. If raping as many as 10 million children, supporting Hitler, stirring up genocide in Rwanda, corruption and countless other crimes have not shaken them, NOTHING WILL.
    • NeverHeardOf Him  •  10 mths ago
      "Christian bashing". Oh you mean morality and a disgust for child abuse. Yes that has become a trend. I SHOULD HOPE SO.
    • PussInBoots  •  10 mths ago
      C A T H O L I C
      P E R V E R T S
    • Luxref Staff  •  9 mths ago
      I'm shocked that almost 25 mill still belong. What does the church have to do?
    • In my own write  •  10 mths ago
      A sign at the Vatican, located at the main gate, says: -
      "Clergy, please enter in the rear"
    • Peter Green  •  10 mths ago
      Funny how Catholic supporters always try to attribute their crimes to the Jews as in the post below.
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