German Catholics say bye bye to institutional church

The German Catholic Church posted some interesting figures yesterday.

Last year 178,805 people left the church in Germany. That is 80,000 more than in the previous year.

In the Diocese of Limburg, where Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst was bishop, 7,980 left the church compared to 1,400 the previous year.

Is it that so many people have lost their faith, their belief in God?

Will the management of the universal church not wonder what's happening? Might it be more a question of appalling leadership structures and poor and incompetent managers?

If companies such as Microsoft, Siemens, The Kerry Group experienced such 'poor figures' what would they do? Would they blame the customers? Most unlikely.

And what's happening in Germany is not unique to Germany.

Before the church talks about  a priestly vocations crisis it needs urgently to look at what is going on inside its own doors.

There is not a vocations crisis in the Catholic Church. There is a serious management crisis.

It's most likely that people are losing their 'faith' in the nonsense that goes on in the church. And sadly the nonsense seems to be in the ascendancy.

The numbers leaving is also due to new State regulations, whereby banks are obliged to tell their customers the details of church tax.