End of celibacy and female priesthood: the ultra-reformist German Church, a problem for Pope Francis

It is already a fact that the death, on the last day of 2022, of Benedict XVI, the German pope Joseph Ratzinger, has become the trigger of the confrontation between traditionalists and progressives in the Catholic Church, with the Argentine pontiff as the central figure.

Websites that focus on what even looks like a power struggle are full of them controversies, complaints and protests.

The situation of the German Church, which sponsors through a Synodal Path ultra progressive background changes It’s the immediate problem that worries Francisco the most.

The Synodal Path that has been going on for two years in the German Church, sets impossible priorities approved by the Pope.

In his latest interview, in which he also lamented the crisis situation in Argentina, on Wednesday he warned against the danger that the German Church he is walking a “very, very ideological” path.

“And when ideology gets involved in church processes, the Holy Spirit goes home because ideology trumps the Holy Spirit“, he explained.

alarming proposals

Some of the proposals that have the support of the majority of German bishops, to alarm even moderate progressives, who believe that the pontificate itself is thus inevitably sabotaged, favoring the opposition Francisco by the traditionalists.

The German synodal path supports the end of compulsory celibacy of the priests, access to the priesthood of the neglected women who make up more than half of the world’s faithful, the blessing of homosexual couples and unprecedented openings in genders that contradict the traditional doctrine that admit only two gendersthe man and the woman.

So far, with almost ten years of pontificate, there are few doctrinal reforms that Jorge Bergoglio has made. The two-year Synod on the family (2014-2015) only produced the prospect of a return to the Church for divorced and remarried Catholics, deprived of confession and other sacraments.

Between Rome and Berlin it is establishing itself an open dispute. The latest conflict is the request of the German bishops for a permanent synodal council, a body that the episcopate wants to inaugurate at the end of these three years of synodal progress.

German Catholicism is a growing concern in the Vatican. Monday of last week Sent a letter to Germany, approved by the Pope, signed by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, by the holder of the doctrine of the faith, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, and by the prefect of bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet.

The risk of a schism

The highest leaders of the Holy See formally expressed the majority of German bishops your worries and outlined the boundaries they form the red line impossible to cross. Beyond are schism and apostasy.

The president of the German bishops, Monsignor Georg Batzing, immediately replied: “Your concern is unfounded.”

The Germans deny that their ultra-proposals for fundamental reforms in the Church are intended to promote a schism to create an autocephalous Church, separate from Rome.

Batzing’s answer reveals this a dialogue between the deaf is established. The German Church wants make decisions on very sensitive issues that surround the universal Church.

Celibacy, female priesthood, more openness to sexual innovations, starting with the blessing of homosexual couples, who are forbidden by Rome but openly practiced in German churches.

The latest clash occurred after a letter from the bishops of Cologne, dated December 21, asked the Vatican questions about the role of the new body, the Synodal Council.

There was a sharp response from Rome. The bishop’s authority cannot be challenged by a new structure.

The debate ignited when the Pope received, after the general audience on Wednesday 5, a document entitled “New Beginning: A Manifesto for Reform”. Six thousand German Catholics sign the letter which thoroughly questions the Synodal Path that the German Church has undertaken and proposes an alternative project in nine points.

They maintain that the synodal journey “will not be able to bring about a true reform, it violates peace in the congregations and abandons the path of unity with the universal Church, which damages the substance of the faith and opens the way to a schism.

The hostilities are open and they put the Vatican itself inside it. The minority that contests the Synodal Path leans on the Pope in recognizing that a “fundamental reform” of the Church is needed in Germany.

is addressed an impressive exodus of Catholics. More than 220 thousand faithful formally left the Church in 2020 and the phenomenon that was already serious in the last two years has worsened. In 2019, 9.1% of Catholics attended mass and the percentage dropped to less than 5% in 2021.

The faithful of the “New Beginning” contest the legitimacy of the Synodal Path of the Church in Germany. “We refuse that they claim to speak in the name of all Catholics in our country and to adopt binding decisions”. The Pope believes the same.

Already in July of last year the Holy See had declared that «to protect the freedom of the people of God and the exercise of the episcopal ministry, it is necessary to specify that the Synodal Path in Germany it does not have the power to bind bishops and faithful assume new ways of government and new doctrinal and moral proposals”.

In reality, the declaration was a warning to the majority of German bishops not to undermine the balance between the reality of a particular Church and the faculties of the universal Church.

If both are separated from the whole ecclesial body “they weaken and die”. Hence “the need to always keep alive and effective communion with the whole body of the Church”.

What dramatizes the comparison is that it is scheduled for next June the Synod of Synods world championship, which will take place in the Vatican. In this event the Pope pours all the aspirations of him to set topics and rules of the main open questions.

The importance of the meeting and the need to control the opposing tendencies that will come have advised Francis to broaden his horizons and to convene a second part of the Synod of Synods in 2024, as happened with the Synods on the Family which resolved in 2014 and in 2015 . .

Vatican correspondent

ap​