Between tradition and openness

adminonDecember 21, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

Family in the garden © Harald Oppitz (KNA)

Bishops at the Synod on the Family © Cristian Gennari/Siciliani (KNA)

Catholic church wrestles with its family image. In October, the Synod of Bishops will discuss the relationship between doctrine and life. But the rifts are deep.

Perhaps the most important bishops' meeting since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) will soon begin in Rome. At the World Synod of Bishops on 4. to 25. October, some 300 bishops and other experts appointed by the pope will discuss the Catholic Church's future stance on marriage and the family, on "The vocation and mission of the family in today's Church and world".

Walking a tightrope between tradition and openness

It is already clear that it will once again be a balancing act – on the one hand, tradition and doctrine, and on the other, openness to secular ideas. A foretaste was provided by the preparatory Extraordinary Synod in October 2014 with its sometimes sharp controversies between the synod members. Particularly in the West, the gulf between church doctrine and the life practices of many Catholics is deep, and the bond between the church people and the magisterium on key ies is often almost nonexistent.

This is confirmed not least by the answers to a questionnaire sent by the Vatican to all dioceses. Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German Bishops' Conference and a synod member, is not the only one facing crucial questions about the future of the church this fall. Expectations at the grassroots level are also enormous.

The crux of dealing with remarried divorcees

In the focus of the German public is the dispute about the admission of remarried divorcees to the Eucharist.

Although it affects only a small minority of practicing Catholics, it advanced to become a barometer of the church's willingness to reform, especially in secular media. The synod's working paper again puts up for debate the possibility of inviting those affected back to communion in individual cases after a path of repentance and reconciliation. This path, however, must take place under episcopal supervision, he said. Last year, the synod fathers did not give the necessary two-thirds majority to do so. Similar sentiments applied to the idea of showing more ecclesiastical appreciation to homosexual couples who take on special responsibilities for their partners.

Different composition of the synod than usual

It is questionable whether the changed composition of the synod this time can influence a change of direction. In 2014, each local church sent only the president of its bishops' conference, giving a strong voice to more conservative African bishops, for example, who warn of an "ideological destruction" of the Christian family.

At the Ordinary Synod now, however, conferences send up to four bishops, depending on their number of Catholics. That could give a boost to Episcopal conferences in Western Europe, North America and South America, which tend to be more progressive, if not homogeneously aligned.

From Germany, Marx was joined by Archbishop Heiner Koch (Berlin) and Bishop Franz-Josef Bode (Osnabruck), all of whom expressed some openness to reform. But they also warn against exaggerated expectations that cannot be reconciled with the unchanging Catholic doctrine, and against trench warfare that in the end leaves only "victors and vanquished". Fear of a test of strength is great.

Pope Francis as a decision-maker

Pope Francis will have to weigh up the positions in the end. The Synod of Bishops is seen as the acid test of his pontificate. Here he can intervene magisterially, or he can give more space to the principle of collegiality between the pope and the bishops – a principle he holds in high esteem. Already the double convocation of a family synod showed his will for reform under the key word of mercy.

In this sense he expressed himself, with all restraint in the matter, again and again. He did not want to judge homosexuals, and remarried divorcees should not be lumped together, especially not if children from the new marriage are affected. Which positions he will include in his final document, however, remains open.

On his South American trip in July, the pope prayed that "everything that seems impure to us, causes scandal or frightens us" would be transformed by God into a miracle – like the water turned into wine in the biblical account of the wedding at Cana. His conclusion: "The family today needs such miracles."

Archbishop Philip Wilson © Peter Lorimer

Australian Archbishop Philip Wilson will appeal his conviction for covering up child sexual abuse cases. The trial against Wilson continues at the beginning of October.

The 67-year-old Wilson was arrested on 3. July initially sentenced to twelve months in prison. In mid-August, the penalty was changed to house arrest.

For the duration of the house arrest Wilson must wear electronic shackles. The court in Newcastle had found Wilson guilty of covering up allegations of abuse by altar boys against priest James Fletcher more than four decades ago when he was a young priest in Newcastle.

Will Wilson still be "released"?

Under prere from the now ousted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and large sections of the Australian media public, Wilson was on 30. July resigned from his post as Archbishop of Adelaide. The Catholic "National Council of Priests" appealed in a letter to Pope Francis to dismiss Wilson "for the good of the Church in Australia". Wilson had already suspended his office as archbishop immediately after his conviction.

A district court in Newcastle, Australia, on Thursday set the 4. and 5. October date set for appeal hearing, Australian media reported

Between half-truths and outright false reports

The freelance journalist and author Dr. Andreas Puttmann is a member of the Society of Catholic Publicists (GKP).

In the debate about Catholic hospitals and their treatment of rape victims, the Church is once again being swept into a misanthropic corner. Wrongly, finds the political scientist and publicist Dr. Andreas Puttmann. A commentary.

The rejection of an allegedly raped woman by two Catholic hospitals in Cologne is scandalous and shameful. Those responsible have apologized, and Cardinal Meisner, in his statement of January 22nd, has said that the Church has no need to repeat or paraphrase this. January the essential and necessary to it as also in principle to the church handling with rape victims, in appropriate way said. This need not be repeated or paraphrased here, but can – which is rarely true of official statements – be properly incorporated into the commentary:

Apology and correction from Joachim Cardinal Meisner.

On a completely different page are – in the truest sense of the word – the reactions in the media "leaf forest", in broadcasters and social networks. Even if one finds an initial indignation understandable, does not want to put every word spoken out of it on the gold scale and rejects a reflexive Catholic wagon mentality switching to unconditional defense (because it blurs origin and proportions of the injustice and stylizes the church to the actual victim), one can on the other hand quite frighten about the extent of the resentment, which unloads itself here once again over the Catholic church. Downright hateful, but above all stupid and uneducated are the interpretive patterns of many online commentaries and media brief experts on the topic of "Church and sex". On the occasion of the scandal, a Cologne tabloid devoted an entire page to "educating" its readers about what is permitted and forbidden by the Catholic Church, spreading half-truths and outright falsehoods such as the assertion that, from the Catholic point of view, sexual intercourse only serves to found a family, and that homosexuals are not permitted to take "communion.

In the "Kolner Stadtanzeiger," Joachim Frank unleashed a polemical all-out attack on "self-proclaimed 'pro-lifers,'" the "celibate caste of priests" and the "abysses of the Catholic-clerical complex," against "callousness, remoteness from life and unworldliness" and a "treacherous" talk of "curative treatment" to which a Catholic hospital must limit itself. The fact that the church cannot simply give its moral blessing to the "criminological indication", because it also grants dignity and rights to an innocent human being conceived in this way, simply means for him to "ignore the plight of the woman" and to "fade out" the consequences for the life of mother, child and family – a pure insinuation, because one can very well see and deeply feel the dramatic dilemma, but still come to a different moral consideration than the one which seems to be self-evident to the commentator. In this he can appear more "hardened" than the church he accuses is. Equally absurd is the insinuation that the church wants to "rehearse its power" in sexual morality and "show off". (Commentary by Joachim Frank) A little more respect for the seriousness of a conflicting ethical conviction should be expected from a theologian.

Insinuations and resentment cultivation by "rage journalists", but above all the equally unprofessional uninformedness, have become a tradition in public dealings with the Catholic Church. During the Williamson scandal, a top journalist blathered in an ARD special about a "Cardinal Lefebvre"; during the Pope's visit, ARD's Berlin bureau chief Deppendorf spoke of an "ecumenical encounter" between Benedict XVI. and the alleged Protestant pastor Wolfgang Thierse (actually Zdk member), after the death of John Paul the II. a WDR reporter talked shop in front of Cologne Cathedral about the "capital office" taking place there. Petra Gerster presented the German Catholic bishops entering a cathedral to ZDF viewers as a "joyless society of men" and reported on "Heute" news that the "arch-conservative hardliner" Bishop Muller had been appointed to Rome to head the successor organization to the Inquisition, responsible, among other things, for the equally "arch-conservative Pius Brothers" (who, however, reject Muller – but in arch-conservative darkness all cats are gray). In the abuse scandal, the "Frankfurter Rundschau" demanded that the Pope finally take a stand on the Odenwald School, while a talk show editor let the cat out of the bag at a politician's birthday party: "This finally gives us the opportunity to really finish off the Catholic Church.". A few months later, according to Allensbach, 47 percent of German citizens were convinced that child abuse was "widespread" among Catholic priests. This is how incitement of the people works.

So journalism schools, editors-in-chief and critical media consumers would do well to make it clear to (prospective) editors that you have to be as knowledgeable about church ies before writing and speaking as you are about pension insurance ies or offside rules, and that there is no exception to the imperative of journalistic fairness when it comes to the church. The latter, in turn, should ask itself whether the ethical instruction and guidance of its employees in the medical professions is perhaps in need of improvement after all, so that a professional ethical failure like the one that has now occurred in its two Cologne hospitals remains the absolute exception.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply