When it comes to Catholic demographics — think birth rate, membership and new clergy — researchers know where to look if they want to find the good news and the bad news.
It you are seeking new life and growth, all roads lead to Africa — where the Catholic population has grown by nearly 250% since 1980.
Anyone seeking bad news can examine trends in Europe.
Take Germany, for example. The Catholic church lost 216,078 members in 2018, according to the German Bishops’ Conference. Researchers at the University of Freiburg predict that Catholic membership totals will fall another 50% by 2060. How is the priesthood doing? Things were already pretty bad in 2005, with 122 diocesan priests ordained in Germany. That number fell to 58 in 2015.
So here is a question for journalists: If you were writing about the rising influence of German Catholic bishops in the bitter global debates about the future of Catholic doctrine, worship and tradition, how much material would your story need to include about the health of the German church? Would you assume that the Catholic world needs to be more like Germany, if the goal is growth and “reform”? Would it be wise — when discussing efforts to modernize the faith — to quote Catholic leaders from Africa (and Asia)?
This leads us to a fascinating report from the international desk of The Washington Post, with this headline: “German bishops want to modernize the church. Are they getting too far ahead of Pope Francis?”
That headline says it all. The German bishops are the good guys, but it appears that they may be moving too fast and, thus, are hurting the “reform” efforts of the ultimate good guy. The story notes that the German bishops are plunging forward on four topics — church authority, the “priestly way of life,” the role of women in the church and various sexual morality issues.
The overture is a masterpiece of semi-editorial writing:
ESSEN, Germany — Among those who believe the Catholic Church must liberalize to save itself from perpetual decline, some of the staunchest advocates are church leaders here in Germany.
Some German bishops have spoken in favor of abandoning the celibacy requirement for priests and vaulting women into leadership roles that are now off-limits. Some have urged updating the Vatican’s stern stance on sexual morality, saying the church can’t afford to be out of touch or alienating. Earlier this year, one bishop spoke so understandingly of homosexuality that a 53-year-old priest in a nearby town came out as gay and thanked the bishop for opening the door.
You can hear the angel choir “hosannahs,” can’t you?
Alas, there are bad guys in this story, as well, those who question the many “reform” efforts that are sweeping out of Germany.
Much of the concern originates in the United States, where some traditionalist bishops, along with Catholic conservative media outlets, are opposed to Pope Francis’s advocacy of a more inclusive faith. They say Francis is diluting moral teaching, pushing an anti-capitalist, pro-migrant agenda, and sowing confusion about what the church stands for. And Germany, they say, is a country whose appetite for change threatens to outpace that of the pontiff himself.
“The German bishops continue [to] move toward schism from the universal Church,” Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila said recently on Twitter.
Ah, the great rich-Catholic American conservative conspiracy, again.
So how many conservative critics were actually interviewed for this piece? Based on what was printed, the answer appears to be “zero.” Why would reporters need to talk to icky conservatives when their views can be covered with one zinger from social media?
But here is the crucial question: How many Catholic leaders from the growing churches of the Global South were interviewed? In particular, how many African cardinals and bishops were allowed to critique the doctrinal “reforms” being advocated by the still wealthy German church? Once again, the answer appears to be “zero.”
Meanwhile, what about the decline of the German church? How did the Post handle that?
The answer is simple: All of those German modernization efforts haven’t gone far enough.
You think that I made that up?
… German prelates and other church leaders, in interviews with The Washington Post, said they see a different risk: that their changes won’t go far enough.
These leaders have watched as more than 100,000 Germans leave the Catholic Church every year. They recognize that the sexual abuse crisis has intensified the discontent. A report released last year found sex crimes and coverups going back seven decades in Germany.
With the hope of making the church more relevant to people’s lives, German bishops have finalized plans for a two-year program of meetings that begins in December and aims to reexamine some of the church’s most contentious positions and teachings, including its restrictions on female leaders and its stance on sexuality.
This brings us to the thesis statement for the whole article, whether the Post team knew it or not.
“Do we want to be a closed church or one that embraces life and culture?” the bishop of Osnabrück, Franz-Josef Bode, said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Read it all. After all, it’s half of a very important story.