Measured against traditional criteria, the 102nd German Catholic Day was a debacle.

With an official 27,000 participants, the five-day event, which ended in Stuttgart on Sunday, attracted fewer Catholics than it has in decades.

Why this happened is not as easy to explain as the co-organizing Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) would like.

Wouldn't the corona pandemic and its consequences have been a reason to pray, debate and celebrate together again?

If the blessing of the Moscow Patriarch Kirill for the war of aggression against Ukraine and the unspeakable statements of Pope Francis should not have been an incentive to set out for Stuttgart and also, using the example of Christianity (and not just Islam) about the relationship between religion and thinking about violence?

But can the supposedly good old days still be used as a benchmark for a church that is in a fundamental crisis, wherever you look?

Doesn't the church need a new look at itself and at its position in society and in relation to politics?

The Katholikentag documented two things: times in which reports on abuse appear almost every three months into ever deeper abysses are not only poisonous for the identification of the members with their church.

The damage to the reputation of Christianity in society and politics is now obvious.

The wind is getting stronger

It speaks volumes that many political officials, who traditionally gave the Catholic Day a sense of social importance by attending, did not show up at all this time or canceled at short notice.

One is that it no longer adds to top politicians' popularity accounts when they show up on church stages.

The other thing is that the churches have long had a stronger wind blowing in their faces in everyday municipal and state politics – also and especially as the largest independent providers of social and educational institutions.

The question of the meaning and relevance of church institutions is good insofar as it can set processes of clarification in motion.

So Caritas and Diakonie institutions should not only see themselves in economic competition with other providers, but also score points with their orientation towards the welfare of the weakest.

However, this requires highly motivated employees, and often also grants from the church budget.

Structurally misogynistic

For the future, a contrary development is to be expected: both money and personnel will become scarce.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for church or church-related employers to recruit qualified junior staff and management staff for demographic reasons alone.

And should the Catholic Church not succeed in overcoming structural misogyny and the fixation on biopolitics as a marker of identity, the lights will literally go out in many places.

However, if it is expected that there will be much less money in the system, this should be an occasion to thoroughly reconsider your own actions and omissions.

But there isn't much to see of that yet.

But it won't stay quiet for much longer.

The question as to which rules are to be used in the distribution battles for increasingly scarce resources will soon be raised in all sharpness.

Concerns of the associational and voluntary Caritas do not have a strong lobby in many dioceses.

School and extracurricular education is somewhat better.

After the state, the churches are the most important players in this field.

It would be a fallacy to believe that a shrinking church will automatically be a better one.

At the same time, it is doubtful that society will become richer and living together easier as the churches become poorer and weaker.

Less ideological pluralism is just as undesirable as a decline in institutions that continue to achieve significant integration efforts of their own accord and contain centrifugal social forces.

So it is almost an irony of history that in 2022 the event format that offers perhaps the greatest opportunities to bring together interior and exterior views was so poorly attended.

Despite all the criticism of the program, which was completely overloaded with 1,500 events, of the thematic fragmentation and the sometimes excessive demands on the moderators and podium guests in terms of content: never since the Essen Catholic Day in 1968 has there been more open debate and argument than in Stuttgart.

This gives hope not only for the Catholic Days, but also for the church and society.