Ostensibly a row about the right of priests to bless gay unions and divorced couples who have remarried outside the church, and to allow trans people to alter their baptismal certificates, Germany’s Catholic laity is actually also embroiled in a row with the Vatican that touches on far more profound and far-reaching reform of church governance, a challenge to episcopal, and ultimately papal, authority.
As the church worldwide celebrates the tenth anniversary of Pope Francis’s (86) elevation to leadership of an ideologically divided church, from his left in Germany comes insistence that the church make official the sort of blessings which are already being extended by many dioceses unofficially, in breach of what one senior Vatican cardinal called “the actual doctrine of the church.”
The Synodal Path, a 230-member assembly of bishops and lay Germans, has also ordered the country’s bishops to lobby in Rome for an end to the priestly celibacy obligation and back ordination of women.
Pope Francis, despite his more inclusive style, social justice focus and de-emphasis of the sexual culture wars, would prefer such issues to be dealt with by the major two-part synod that will bring bishops and laity to Rome in October 2023 and October 2024. It will discuss the future direction of the church and ways in which it can rejuvenate its mission. And so, in January, top Vatican cardinals, with Francis’ explicit approval, said they would accept no overhaul of church governance in Germany that gave lay-people the potential to overrule bishops. He had in 2022 told its Catholic bishops that the country already had “a very good Evangelical church” and “we don’t need two.”
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Consultation with the laity is one thing, but the Vatican will believe it cannot allow ordinary members to assume the authority to instruct bishops. It is not a democracy. But the German church, deeply shaken by sexual scandals and which has lost a fifth of its members since 2000, believes survival depends on giving give lay-people more of a voice. It will not be silenced.