Factional clashes in Vatican: Pope under pressure to punish reformist German bishops

“Blessing gay couples is blasphemy and Pope Francis should take disciplinary action against German bishops who support same-sex unions and hold other heretical views,” he says. one of the most eminent cardinals of the ChurchGerhard Ludwig Müller.

Müller, a famous theologian who flirted with conservatives and traditionalists opposed to the Argentine pope, is also German.

A new book by Cardinal Müller will be published later this month. Theme: the Pope. There are great expectations.

In his call for punishment, Müller refers to women’s access to the priesthood, compulsory bachelor parties, the blessing of same-sex couples and other taboo topics that have ceased to be taboo in the last three years, turned into renewal flags flown by German Catholics on its Synodal Path.

Müller has practically no new commissions since July 1, 2017, when the Pope did not renew his appointment as guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy as prefect of today’s Department for Doctrine, after five years of misunderstandings between the German cardinal and Jorge Bergoglio.

Müller was the heir to that strategic position of Joseph Ratzinger, who as Pope Benedict XVI promoted him in 2012 as his successor in the doctrine of the faith.

His figure is today opposed by all of Francis’ opponents as a theologian faithful to doctrinal orthodoxy. Müller refuses to enter into conspiracies against the pontiff, although both do not swallow each other but respect each other.

Sometimes they talk, “but the Pope always does the opposite of what I tell him”, jokes Müller.

meeting in the Vatican

Bergoglio and Müller are destined in the coming months to deal with the arrival of the Synod of Synods, which will take place from October and will last until 2024.

will be two world assemblies in continuity in which the great problems of the Church will be addressedespecially those who divide it.

A culminating moment of the last phase of Bergoglio’s pontificate will have arrived. The most controversial issues already have their standard bearer.

The Church of Germany is the richest in the Catholic world after the North American one. Both represent the opposite poles. On the left, stubborn German reformism. Increasingly conservative line in the United States.

the crash is inevitable and the setting of the Vatican, which from October will host the world assembly of bishops convened by Francis, the Synod of Synods, which will have a second final meeting in 2024.

The moat opened by the disputes is always wider and without end. The differences between Rome and Berlin, despite the Vatican’s efforts, are so evident that there is open talk of how to avoid a schism which, according to the German clergy, is a risk that does not exist.

The fight for gay couples

But the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Monsignor George Balzing, went on television in his country in recent days to confirm that the blessing of homosexual couples will continue to be guaranteed to those who request it in Germany. A new act of war.

Catholic doctrine, imprinted in the Catechism, establishes that it is not homosexual tendencies, but homosexual acts an objective disorder condemned as a sin. The Pope recently, through Cardinal Pietro Parolin, his Secretary of State, ratified the ban on the German episcopate from unilaterally modifying doctrine and rules.

Monsignor Balzing said on television that “the practice of blessings exists and we want to bring it to light”.

“Bishops must ask themselves whether a loving relationship between two people is a good thing. If so, people can receive God’s blessing, it seems logical to me.

The president of the German episcopate stuck his finger even further into the sore spot and praised the Belgian bishops “who have already implemented this practice”, a contagion that is bitter and The Pope is worried.

When asked if it isn’t an open challenge Monsignor Balzing replied to the power established in the Church that for four years laymen and religious at all levels had been discussing extensively the most difficult questions of the German Church and that “our action will not change”. A challenge.

The Vatican has already responded several times that the practice of homosexuality is a sin, a disorderly and immoral conduct, which cannot be transformed into something good simply because the couple requesting the religious blessing so desires.

Two years ago the Vatican, which answered the doubts by confirming the ban on priests from blessing “sexual practice outside marriage”. Furthermore, there is no indissoluble marriage except between a man and a woman, “a couple open to the transmission of life”.

The crux of the scandal for the Pope is that same-sex unions and their claim to be blessed are in some way an imitation of the analogy with “the nuptial blessing evoked on man and woman.”

The storm has been intensified by the experiments of the Flemish Church of Belgium, which has in fact broken the barriers imposed by Rome and proceeds in complete autonomy to bless homosexual couples.

Cardinal Jozef de Kezel and other Flemish bishops have adopted a liturgical text for cases of blessings between homosexuals asking God to bless and perpetuate “the commitment of love and fidelity.”

THE controversial they are on the agenda and Cardinal Parolin, head of the Roman Curia, admitted that there is a tear but that “the dialogue with the Churches in Germany and Belgium continues”.

Although the dialogue is deaf and the paths of the Vatican and the German Church follow an inevitable path of collision, Monsignor Baetzing, on behalf of the German bishops, assures that “no schism is on the horizon and no one thinks about these devastating hypotheses”.

The German synodal journey, which began three and a half years ago with the papal blessing, had its last meeting of bishops, clergy and laity a few days ago while the number of faithful is growing (200,000 in 2022) abandon Catholicism.

It is worth noting that similar losses are recorded for Protestants, while non-believers are growing dramatically and the process of social secularization is spreading throughout the world.

women priests

The Vatican has categorically rejected the plan of the German Church to establish a permanent Synodal Council. Rome has warned that the foreseeable scenario of discussions between the laity and the clergy would limit the authority of the bishops.

A few months ago, the bishop of Mainz, Monsignor Peter Kohlgraf, in an interview with the Catholic agency Kna, declared himself in favor of the priestly ordination of women. The Church keeps putting off the other half of heaven. It’s actually the most difficult and unjust problem facing institutional Catholicism: keeping women away from the altar.

“There are good reasons for women’s access to the priesthood and we can’t leave the issue out of discussions,” Kohlgraf said.

Canon law establishes the immediate excommunication of a bishop who ordains a woman as a priest, who would also suffer excommunication. It would be schismatic disobedience to the rules.

The president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Monsignor Baetzing, came to the aid of Bishop Khalgraf, stating that he believes a woman priest is “imaginable” in the future of the Catholic Church.

“A deaconess would be the first step,” explained Baetzing. “I feel it in our parishes”.

“The Church cannot ignore the issue. I think we need the strength of women and we have to trust them,” said the head of the German bishops.

Monsignor Baetzing has also spoken out for the end of celibacy for priests. This is a difficult but minor problem, since it concerns only the discipline of priests of the Latin rite, who make up over 90% of the world’s ecclesiastical army of half a million priests. Those of the Eastern rite can get married and also those of the Latin rite who receive a special dispensation from the pontiff.

The huge problem is How to handle such a change. Renunciation of celibacy is not popular among priests today because celibacy guarantees them that the Church will take care of them from seminary to grave. Forming a family involves enormous organizational problems if a new system of priests with wives and children spreads.

It is already known that this pope will not authorize the marriage of priests of the Latin rite, the access of women to the priesthood, the blessings of homosexual couples and not to mention the issue of other gender variants.

But the synodal journey that the German Church invokes has a future and Francis himself knows it, even if he compares himself with the real times of the immobile Church, which are slow, sometimes very slow, as women can testify, who are unable to stop to it a sure foot on the altar, as they have always had the right to because they are the majority of the Catholic people.

B. C