Church Census in Germany

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 42, 15 October 1903, Page 30

Church Census in Germany

The census of 1900 furnishes the following data in regard to the various denominations : Evangelicals, 35,231,104 ; Catholics, 20,321,441 ; Greek-Catholics, 6,472 ; other Christians, 103,793 ; Jews, 586,833 ; others, 17,535. Sixty-two and one-half per cent, of the population are Protestants, 36.1 are Catholics. In many sections nine-tenths of the inhabitants are Protestant. Catholics predominate, though not in such large proportions, in Western Prussia, Posen, Silesia, Westphalia, Rhenish Prussia, Bavaria, Baden, and Alsace-Lorraine. It will be- seen from these numbers that 100 members of the Centre Party out of 397 in the Reichstag are not in proportion to the number of Catholics in the country. In fact, if Centrists were elected in every place where there is a majority of Catholic voters, the party wouldihave 146 representatives-. Some statistics of tile different Catholic dioceses may be of interest. Breslau is the largest with 2,649,500 Catholics ; Cologne comes next, with 2,522,648 ; then follows Gnesen-Posen, Paderborn, Freiburg, Trier, and Monster, with over 1,000,000 each. Munioh has 991,690 ; Fulda, the smallest, has 167,306. The average number in the 29 dioceses (including two Vicariates Apostolic) is about 700,000.