Karlsruhe / Freiburg (dpa / lsw) – The churches in the southwest are adapting their plans for Christmas services to the new Corona regulations. One thing is clear: the events should take place. Requirements such as distance and hygiene rules, singing bans and mandatory registration apply. Many offers on the Internet, radio and television should enable everyone to participate in a church service.
The situation poses major challenges, especially for the parishes, said the Baden regional bishop Jochen Cornelius-Bundschuh on Tuesday in Karlsruhe after talks with the Evangelical Church of Württemberg. The churches wanted to do everything to ensure that more people do not get sick or die. “But at the same time we feel that people particularly need the Christmas message: God becomes human and brings light into our darkness.”
The regional church recommends inviting digital worship formats or house devotions within a week from an incidence of 200 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants. “With an incidence of 300 or more cases, face-to-face services may not take place, not even outdoors,” it said in a statement.
The Archdiocese of Freiburg announced that due to the very dynamic situation, the planning in the communities has mostly not yet been completed or is subject to the corona development. If you want to attend a church service, you should find out how many places there are and how to register. In this way, queues in front of the churches could be avoided.
Worship services are also valid in the national exit restrictions as a valid reason to leave the house. According to the information provided, however, the archbishopric recommends that the congregations plan services so that the faithful can be home by 8 p.m. Only for December 24th, this recommendation does not apply – so visits to Christmas mass are also possible here – at a later time in the evening.
The Rottenburg-Stuttgart diocese announced similar plans. Furthermore, the Christian churches have many ideas on their websites, for example how to celebrate church services at home.
Christianity is still of great importance in Baden-Württemberg, even if the number of members of the churches has been falling for years: at the end of 2019, around 3.58 million people in the state belonged to the Catholic Church (2018: 3.64 million). The Evangelical Church in Württemberg had around 1.96 million members at the end of last year (2018: 1.99 million). There are still around 1.12 million Protestants in Baden (2018: 1.14 million).
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