The Vatican may have come out swinging against the German Synodal Path, claiming the movement – designed to give lay members a say in running the Church – lacks the authority to instruct bishops on doctrine or morality, and warned of the dangers of schism, but the Path may have just got a huge shot in the arm after data revealed most German Catholics reject the Church’s stance on abortion.
The Synodal Path is a series of conferences of the German Catholic Church established to discuss theological and organisational questions. It is divided into forums on separation of powers; life in succeeding relationships (living love in sexuality and partnership); priestly existence, and the role of women. A majority at a conference in February endorsed women’s ordination, the public blessing of same sex partnerships, the reformation of teachings on sexual ethics, and allowing married priests.
The Synodal Assembly has also signalled its intent to challenge Church doctrine and discipline, and vowed to issue binding teaching on a range of matters. For his part, Pope Francis wrote a letter to German Catholics in 2019, objecting to the course of action. However, in 2021, a “Fundamental Text” asserted that “there is no one truth of the religious, moral, and political world, and no one form of thought that can lay claim to ultimate authority.”
Now a new survey – conducted by INSA Consulere pollster on behalf of German Catholic weekly, Die Tagespost – asked responders if it is good that the Pope and the Church speak out against abortion. A tiny proportion – just 17 per cent of surveyed Catholics – agreed with this, compared to 58 per cent who opposed it. The survey also found that just 13 per cent of Protestants were in favour of anti-abortion statements.
Even compared to the US, the numbers are striking. According to data from Pew Research Center in 2022 – on the eve of the Supreme Court decision which overruled Roe vs. Wade – 56 per cent of American Catholics say abortion should be legal in most or all cases, although this falls to 30 per cent for those who attend Mass weekly or more often.
By contrast, in Poland – on the other side of Europe’s cultural Iron Curtain – although data from one Kantar poll suggested just 13 per cent of Poles backed the strong position taken by the Constitutional Court on abortion – 62 per cent of Poles support abortion only in certain circumstances. Poland has seen a 90 per cent fall in legal abortions since the ruling. In ally Hungary, abortions have dropped by half since 2010 thanks to government policies.
The data from Germany therefore does not just speak to the cultural schism within Europe – dividing the Continent between a secular, multicultural and progressive west, and a religious, more homogeneous and conservative east – but to the real risk of schism within the Church. It should be noted that the Co-President of the Synodal Path has called for nationwide abortion provision.
Within Germany, the Synodal Path may be pushing against an open door. The lower house of the German parliament recently voted to remove the criminal code ban on advertising abortions. Meanwhile, the German Church has suffered from a devastating decline, with hundreds of thousands of members officially resigning. According to the German bishops’ conference, at least 359,000 Catholics left the church in 2021, a jump from 221,390 in 2020.
In historically Catholic Bavaria, 14,035 people left the Church in the first half of 2022 in Munich alone, almost double the number for the same period in 2019. Meanwhile, data revealed that just 4.3 per cent of Catholics said they go to church most Sundays. The secular trend is also impacting Protestants. While fifteen years ago, 61 per cent of Germans belonged to either a Catholic or Protestant church, today only about 26 per cent of Germans are officially registered as Catholics, with 23.7 per cent registered as Protestants.
German Catholics also pay a church tax, generally just under 10 per cent and making up nearly three-quarters of income for many dioceses, which could be a factor. While in the US, the decline in priestly vocations is partly offset by a growing Catholic immigrant population, in Germany – as well as France and the Netherlands – a statistically higher proportion of immigrants are Muslims, meaning less of a pool of potential new recruits for the priesthood.
While data in central and eastern Europe indicates that when the Church holds to its values it cements its position, and when it moves away from moral issues to social justice it loses out to other denominations, such as in Latin America, where Evangelical Protestantism is winning hearts and minds, the Synodal Path will likely see the new data on abortion as a win, even though most German Catholics are unlikely to be won over by a new liberal faith.
Indeed, the Protestant faith is more socially liberal, but its collapse has been even more devastating in northern Europe, including Germany and the UK. In the US, meanwhile, mainline Protestantism has also declined dramatically. Instead, it is the conservative brands of the faith – traditionalist Catholicism, Evangelical Protestantism, and Orthodox Christianity – which are winning people over. The Path will take the win, but it may be a pyrrhic victory.
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