German Bishops’ Conference: Hardly reconcilable positions


analysis

Status: 09/26/2022 10:35 a.m

Conservative bishops let a document on sexual morality fail in the synodal path. Now the scandal is to be worked up at the bishops’ conference. This will be difficult in view of the deep rifts in the church.

An analysis by Klaus Hofmeister, HR

The “shock from Frankfurt” continues to have an effect and is overshadowing the four-day autumn conference of the German Bishops’ Conference in Fulda from today: At the synodal path at the beginning of September, the German bishops prevented a policy paper on sexual morality and thus caused horror – among lay people as well as among reform-oriented bishops around around the conference chairman Bishop Georg Bätzing.

The text should mark a new beginning, end discrimination against homosexuals and create space for queer identities in the church. 21 no votes from the bishops’ camp prevented the necessary two-thirds majority and thus brought the joint reform project of bishops and lay people to the brink of failure. Never before has it become clearer how deeply divided the German bishops’ conference is.

Lay people put the pressure on

This scandal is to be worked up in Fulda. Above all so that something like this does not happen again at the last synodal meeting planned for March 2023.

The laity are putting pressure on: The presidency of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) declared in the ultimatum that they “expected” an “unmistakable clarification” and “verifiable actions” from the bishops’ conference, so that every form of discrimination would be overcome. The church must be a “safe place” for queer people. The intolerant, sharp tone with which the lay representation under its President Irme Stetter-Karp addresses demands to the bishops shows that the “shock of Frankfurt” has also deepened the rift between lay people and bishops.

At the time, the Erfurt dogmatics professor Julia Knop commented that the “no-bishops” considered “intact” church teaching more important than “church-damaged people who broke down crying in the same room as a result of this vote”.

Criticism of “auxiliary bishops”

The ZdK was not only shaken by “the way we deal with queer people”, but also by the bishops’ “lack of willingness to take on responsibility”. Because in the debate, most opponents of the text would not have expressed themselves accordingly. However, “transparent communication and a willingness to engage in dialogue” are essential prerequisites for synodality.

The criticism is primarily aimed at the auxiliary bishops, who are difficult to assess when it comes to reform issues. The 27 bishops who lead a diocese are assisted by a total of 42 so-called auxiliary bishops, who are not so much in the public eye and whose positions are often unknown. After the scandal with the sex paper, the synodal majority forced roll-call votes on all relevant decisions, so that the reform positions of these bishops are also understandable.

Hardly reconcilable positions

However, it is not to be expected that the rifts between the bishops who are open to reform and those who refuse to reform will be overcome in Fulda. Passau Bishop Stefan Oster called the positions “hardly reconcilable”. Resistance to the Synodal Path reform project is formed primarily in the Bavarian dioceses of Regensburg (Bishop Voderholzer), Augsburg (Meier), Passau (Oster) and Eichstätt (Hanke), as well as in Cologne around Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki. This conservative minority wants to keep church teaching “pure and intact,” as Cologne’s auxiliary bishop Dominikus Schwaderlapp explained.

Reforms as a “kneeling”

Reforms are seen as “knowing before the zeitgeist”. The fact that all people are loved by God and are allowed to love as they want, “in their respective identity and sexual orientation” is considered a “break with the Christian image of man”. The binary world view of the Bible (“as male and female He created them”) should not be sacrificed to a gender ideology.

On the other hand, a majority of bishops want to further develop church teaching, for example to achieve full equality for women in all offices. For these bishops – among them the bishops of Limburg (Bätzing), Osnabrück (Bode), Essen (Overbeck), Munich (Marx), Aachen (Dieser), Mainz (Kohlgraf), Trier (Ackermann) and Speyer (Wiesemann) as well as Hamburg (Hesse) – the “signs of the times” are important places of theological knowledge, not just the Bible, tradition and the Magisterium. If a teaching such as sexual morality or the exclusion of women in the “people of God” is no longer understood, one cannot simply ignore it. The “believers’ sense of faith” has theological relevance.

Synodal path must not fail

There is not much that holds the German Bishops’ Conference together in view of these rifts and the corresponding trench warfare. Most likely it is still the insight that the synodal path as a whole must not fail. That would be a fatal signal of a refusal to reform and the deathblow for the cooperation between bishops and lay people in Germany, which is exemplary in international comparison.

The other thing that holds the bishops together is the Catholic ideology of unity. Even if the rupture is palpable, church unity remains a supreme value. From a Catholic point of view, the Protestant way of splitting up into more than 300 different denominations in the World Council of Churches remains taboo.

Delicate appointment in Rome

In this mixed situation, a sensitive date is now due in Rome in November, which is also to be prepared in Fulda: the “ad limina visit”. The German bishops sit there in large groups with the Pope and the heads of the most important central authorities, the dicasteries.

And in their luggage they have two resolutions of the synodal path that attack current Catholic teaching: The request to the Pope to delete homosexuality from the list of serious sins in the catechism. And a 32-page argumentation paper intended to restart the debate about women’s priesthood. The paper dismisses all reasons for excluding women from ordained ministries as not mandatory and also doubts that the 1994 ban on discussion on this issue issued by Pope John Paul II is binding on the church.

Who submits it to the Pope?

Strong stuff by Roman standards. In Fulda, the divided bishops now have to clarify who will present this in what form and submit it to the Pope. And certainly the conservative bishops will not be deterred at such an appointment from making it particularly clear to the pope their loyalty to the teachings and from characterizing the entire synodal path as a national aberration of the Germans. A narrative that – Martin Luther sends his regards – is popular among conservatives in Rome and is accordingly often overused.

For pandemic reasons, the autumn plenary assembly will not take place in the seminary as usual, but again in the large hall of the Fulda City Palace. As the traditional seating arrangement envisages, Bishop Bätzing, the chairman of the bishops’ conference, will be framed by the two cardinals Reinhard Marx from Munich and Woelki from Cologne. And the latter, by its sheer presence, will remind those present that the Synodal Path is not the Church’s only major construction site.

Personnel Ackermann

Woelki’s handling of the abuse reports in the archdiocese is considered by most to be the main reason for the unprecedented wave of resignations in 2021 (359,000 resignations). The fact that the pope has not yet decided on his resignation is probably also due to the strong support that Woelki enjoys in Roman circles as an opponent of reform in the synodal path. The ecclesiastical political calculations to strengthen this conservative heavyweight in “German lands” currently seem to be even stronger than the knowledge of Rome’s mistakes in dealing with abuse.

When it comes to dealing with abuse, an important personal matter will have to be decided in Fulda: The abuse commissioner of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, wants to give up his post after twelve years. Whether the associated tasks – which most bishops regard as thankless – will be spread over several shoulders or whether there will be a single successor is still an open question. In any case, there doesn’t seem to be a flood of applicants for this position.

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