Last week on Sunday Pope Francis warned German Catholics against implementing reforms while speaking to journalists on a flight back from Bahrain, warning also against another Protestant Church in Germany.
As reported by Deutsche Welle, and the German Press Agency, Pope Francis said another new Protestant Church “won’t be as good”.
This is not the first time the Pontiff has cautioned against Germany’s Synodal Path, even as some critics claim his own liberal reforms have encouraged the movement as well as other liberal trends in western Europe, such as bishops in Belgium who recently issued a document permitting the blessing of same-sex unions.
That said, the Vatican appears to be disturbed by recent developments in Germany. Back in July, the Holy See said the initiative in Germany “does not have the power to oblige bishops and the faithful” to “new ways of governance and new approaches to doctrine and morality”. This comes as some cardinals have criticised the Synodal Path.
German Cardinal Walter Kasper called it a failure, for instance, in an interview with Communio: International Catholic Review. This is not the first time Cardinal Kasper had criticised the Path, having warned in the summer that it is ignoring Pope Francis’s admonitions, and if it continues to ignore them could “break” its own neck.
Meanwhile, German prelate, Cardinal Gerhard Cardinal Müller said in an interview with Infovaticana that – as regards the Synodal Path – “one would not know exactly whether to speak of tragedy or comedy with respect to this event.”
He argued that “the texts, very abundant but not very deep, do not deal with the renewal of Catholics in Christ, but with a surrender to a world without God.” The ongoing theme of sexuality “is not understood as the gift of God granted to human beings as created persons”, and instead “as a kind of drug to numb the basic nihilistic feeling with the maximum satisfaction of pleasure.”
Speaking on EWTN with Raymond Arroyo in October, Müller said of the Synod on Synodality, “I think the approach is wrong”. Müller even warned a successful synodal process “will be the end of the Catholic Church”.
For his part, Pope Francis said: “I am not saying go backwards, no; but go to the source of inspiration, to the roots.” Yet the German movement’s signature ideas have caused some alarm, and recently, its leaders even welcomed Pope Francis’s decision to extend the synodal process up to 2024.
Irme Stetter-Karp and Bishop Georg Bätzing said the extension “shows that Pope Francis considers synodality to be the decisive moment of change.” This came after a recent assembly of the Synodal Path backed a text calling for “a re-evaluation of homosexuality in the Magisterium”.
The Synodal Path clearly believes that the Church needs to embrace progressive ideology to help to prevent its decline. This has of course not been the case in mainline Protestantism where liberal trends have done nothing to prevent the collapse in attendance and membership but rather precipitated them.
Indeed, the success of Churches which hold to the truth – from the re-emerging Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches in central and eastern Europe, to the rise of Evangelical Protestantism in Latin America – show that the Path’s solution to decline is the wrong one.
Speaking over the weekend, Pope Francis warned against entering “contingent” discussions which move away from the “core of theology”. Yet, he is dealing with a reform movement which, in February, called for the Church to allow priests to marry, women to become deacons, and for same-sex marriages to be blessed.
While Francis may have rebuked the German reform movement on Sunday, many will attribute the Synodal Path’s newfound confidence to his own words and actions over the last few months and years.
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