In an open letter, reform movements accused three Bavarian bishops and Cologne Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of harming “the entire Church.” Stefan Oster from Passau, Rudolf Voderholzer from Regensburg, Gregor Maria Hanke from Eichstätt and Woelki had declared in the previous week that their dioceses would not give any money for a new decision-making body with the participation of lay people.
“Your blocking attitude is a deliberate affront to the vast majority of your brothers in the episcopate and it is a deliberate provocation of many members of the Catholic Church in Germany, not just in our four dioceses,” write representatives of “We are Church” from the affected dioceses and the “lay responsibility Regensburg”.
The four bishops thus manifested their “own special path and the long-standing and increasingly obvious division within the German Bishops’ Conference,” it said in the letter published on Monday. The blocking of the financing is an “imprudent, irresponsible and short-sighted episcopal exercise of power”. The installation of a synodal committee is blocked by the refusal of church tax money. The initiators went on to write: “How authoritarian and autocratic do you understand your pastoral ministry? With whom in your diocese have you consulted? And would it not be consistent if you absolutely did not want to support the urgently pending reform steps, your bishopric for the diocese entrusted to you to hand over?”
As a continuation of the synodal path reform process, it was actually agreed to install a synodal committee so that ordained representatives of the Church and lay people could discuss and decide together. Since there must be unanimity at the German Bishops’ Conference (DBK) for the financing, it is now unclear how things can continue. One of the reasons given by the four conservative bishops for their rejection was that they should wait for the world synod planned by the Pope before setting up another body in Germany.