VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Top Vatican officials expressed concern that, with the Synodal Path, the German bishops were giving up their role as shepherds and were allowing participants to adopt positions in contrast to the faith of the universal Church, particularly regarding sexuality and women’s ordination.
The bishops met on November 18 with the heads of Vatican dicasteries to discuss the Synodal Path, which the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics launched in 2019 in response to the clerical abuse scandal. The Vatican published the texts of presentations on November 24.
The meeting, at the end of the bishops’ “ad limina” visits to Rome, was chaired by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state. Formal presentations were made by Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.
Cardinal Ladaria focused his remarks on Pope Francis’ letter to German Catholics in 2019 about the Synodal Path and on how the local church and the universal Church flourish together. “If they find themselves separated from the entire ecclesial body, they weaken, rot and die. Hence the need always to ensure that communion with the whole body of the church is alive and effective,” the Pope had written.
Cardinal Ladaria acknowledged how, because of the abuse crisis, many Catholics “feel deeply betrayed by men and women of the Catholic Church”, and “no longer have any trust in us bishops”.
Praising the efforts of the Catholic Church in Germany to protect children and vulnerable adults, and acknowledging that the Synodal Path was meant to strengthen those protections, the cardinal said that the texts adopted thus far seem to draw a direct connection between the structure of the Church and the abuse crisis.
“It goes without saying that everything that can be done to prevent further abuse by clerics against minors must be done, but this must not lead to reducing the mystery of the Church to a mere institution of power or to a prior consideration of the Church as a structurally abusive organisation that must be brought under the control of super controllers as soon as possible.”
Cardinal Ladaria also objected to the Synodal Path’s treatment of sexuality, which gives the “general impression” that in Church teaching on sexuality “there is almost nothing that can be salvaged, that it all must be changed”.
“How can one not think of the impact this has on many faithful who listen to the voice of the Church and try to follow its indications in their lives,” he asked the bishops.
On the role of women in the Church, he said, the texts of the Synodal Path seem to imply that “the fundamental dignity of women is not respected in the Catholic Church because they cannot have access to priestly ordination”.
However, he said, Church teaching “is not that women in the Catholic Church cannot have access to priestly ordination; the point is that one must accept the truth that ‘the church in no way has the faculty to confer priestly ordination on women,'” because, as St John Paul II taught, Jesus chose only men as his apostles.
While Cardinal Ladaria said the Synodal Path’s decision to request Pope Francis reopen the question, rather than insisting the Church change its teaching, was appreciated, the fact remains that the discussion is out of sync with the teaching of the universal Church.
Both Cardinals Ladaria and Ouellet expressed concern that the entire Synodal Path process has eclipsed the role of the bishops as successors of the apostles, called to guide the local churches and “authenticate the witness of the other disciples of the Lord”.
Cardinal Ouellet also praised the seriousness with which the church in Germany was trying to confront the abuse crisis and its attendant crisis of trust, and he lauded the involvement of the laity in the Synodal Path, although he said they seemed to “have played an equal if not preponderant role”.
While saying he knows the bishops do not want to create a schism and are committed to making the preaching of the Gospel more credible in Germany, he said much of the Synodal Path seems to have responded more to “very strong cultural and media pressure” than to the Gospel.
“We seem to be facing a project for ‘changing the Church'” itself, even beyond the suggested “pastoral innovations in the moral or dogmatic field”, Cardinal Ouellet said.
The Synodal Path, he said, seems already to be damaging “ecclesial communion, because it sows doubt and confusion among the people of God. Every day we receive spontaneous testimonies complaining about the scandal caused to the little ones by this unexpected proposal in breach of Catholic Tradition”.
Cardinal Ouellet also told the bishops he found “surprising” the attitude taken by the Synodal Path “toward the definitive decision of St John Paul II concerning the impossibility for the Catholic Church to proceed with the ordination of women priests”.
Questioning that decision, he said, “reveals a problem of faith with regard to the magisterium and a certain intrusive rationalism” that has more to do with personal opinions rather than faith.
And, he said, along with other questionable positions adopted by the members of the Synodal Path, the position on women’s ordination “undermines the responsibility of the bishops” to guide the Church and “appears to be strongly influenced by pressure groups”.
Photo: Curia officials – Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state; and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops – meet on November 18, 2022, with the bishops of Germany making their “ad limina” visits to the Vatican. Other heads of Vatican dicasteries also attended the meeting across the street from the Vatican at the Augustinianum Institute for Patristic Studies. (CNS photo/Vatican Media)
The distressing and perplexing situation
created by the scandals in the German church
is not addressed with sufficient apologies, which
ultimately is for restoration of trust; instead the
exercise of deflecting attention from this seems
to be by adopting a quasi- compassionate view
which as one Dominican scholar Father Nelson
Medina has termed correctly a “‘modernist heresy”;
which he says does not go away quickly, and which
emerges.
Another factor is the COMPROMISE position which
appears, and which uncorrected (70 Bishops disliked
the position of the German Bishops and said so,
including Cardinal Pell), is that it supplies fodder
for more problem people to surface, and
“annoy everyone”.
Akita (Sr Sasagawa) , “worthy of belief” [the then
Cardinal Ratzinger] spells this out, among other
warnings. The church has too many compromises
in the making, and this also leads to heretical
positions, if not downright apostasy, which accent
on “rights” of homosexuals [who seek the same
pleasures of heterosexual relationship] .
The German birthrate is around 1.6. This is not
going to change with accent on homosexual relation-
ships, in which there can never ever be any “falling in love”
(anima/ animus), nor conjugal love which gives rise
to family.
This, educated German Catholics know well.
Most importantly Germany is part of the European union which
is pro-choice, despite the fact that every country without
exception in Europe, has a fertility rate of less than 2, some
substantially lower. Further it could be said on projected
numbers, they with the rest of Europe have TERMINAL CANCER
in demographic terms.
This means less Catholics, [and less vocation],
and in time, loss of the parent culture.
It is true that Jesus appointed only men as disciples. If he had appointed women to do what the disciples were told to do — that is, visit towns and villages in 1st-century Palestine to spread the Gospel — those women would have been locked up, or worse. But that practical consideration does not apply in most of our 21st-century world. Besides, as the Catechism points out, even though Jesus was male in his human nature, God is not either male or female. So the arguments advanced by St John Paul II against ordaining women as priests are not convincing. As for the supposed infallibility of the ‘magisterium’ — the very first Pope (the apostle Peter) was ‘manifestly in the wrong’ about the obligations of gentile converts (Galatians 2.11)! It should recalled also that Church on earth was wrong for centuries in not condemning slave-ownership as sinful. So the Church in Germany is to be applauded in its handling of the synodal process.