Birth in the back pew

adminonDecember 20, 2021January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

A man holds his baby in his arms in a church © Andrew Angelov (shutterstock)

In the back row of a Karlsruhe church, a woman gave birth to a baby on Easter Sunday. The sacristan Detlef Kempfer would like to hear from the three again. The child is to be given his middle name "Oskar" as his name.

In the back row of a Karlsruhe church, a woman gave birth to a baby on Easter Sunday. The sexton of St. Boniface Church, Detlef Kempfer, said Tuesday he saw the couple at a streetcar stop in front of the church. The woman had propped herself up and was already in labor. "But no one should have a baby on the street."Other people would have gone to get kebabs and not taken care of the expectant parents.

Everything happened very quickly in the church

In the church, it went very quickly until the boy was born and the rescue service had brought the family to the hospital. "It all went bump in the road," Kempfer said. First the diocesan newspaper "Konradsblatt" (ie 15/2021) had reported about it.

The sacristan would like to hear from the three of them

About 25 minutes lasted the whole incident, said Kempfer. He does not know the name of the family, nor where they live. "I stood there for a while and thought about whether that really happened." He would be happy to hear from the three again, said the sacristan.

Child to be named Oskar

"According to the father, the child will now be named after the obstetrician," the "Konradsblatt" further reported. "But since no one in the little family's African homeland would understand the name 'Detlef', the boy is to be given the second name of the sacristan. Oskar."

Francis man to become archbishop of washington

Archbishop Wilton Daniel Gregory © Bob Roller (KNA)

The U.S. church, shaken by the abuse scandal, faces a new beginning. Francis could hardly have made that clearer than with the appointment of Wilton Gregory, a black man, as archbishop of Washington.

Now it's official: the first black president in Washington is followed by the first African-American as archbishop in charge of the influential capital diocese. On Thursday, Pope Francis said "Yes he can" and named Wilton Gregory, the previous archbishop of Atlanta, as the new chief shepherd on the Potomac River.

The filling of the empty bishop's chair in Washington is considered the most momentous personnel decision the pope has had to make in the U.S. to date.

Decision 'good for church, city and country'

In doing so, he overrode previously vocal opposition in conservative church circles that wanted to prevent Gregory's appointment. Gregory is considered a disciple of Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who died in 1996 and helped him into the office of auxiliary bishop when he was only 36 years old.

Like Bernardin, he sees church teaching as a "seamless garment" – ies such as poverty, the environment, the death penalty and abortion are all contextualized for him. In doing so, Gregory disqualified himself after the conservative turn under Pope John Paul II. for higher orders. Insiders at the time viewed the talented churchman's appointment to Atlanta as a banishment into exile.

"You can bet Cardinal Bernardin is doing a happy dance in heaven," Jesuit Thomas Reese comments on the pope's expected decision. This is "good for the church, the city and the country". Archbishop Gregory can proclaim the Pope's message of justice, reconciliation and peace with gentleness, empathy and social competence like hardly anyone else.

Restore trust in the archdiocese

Above all, many believe the African-American, who grew up in Chicago, can restore the faith of the faithful in the archdiocese, which has been shaken by the abuse crisis. Shockwaves are still reverberating in Washington over the resignation of 78-year-old Cardinal Donald Wuerl over his handling of the case of predecessor Theodore McCarrick, who in 2018 became the church's first cardinal to step down over his abuse.

A different reputation precedes Archbishop Gregory. His time as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2001 to 2004 included the revelations of child abuse in Boston by clerics. Gregory made some enemies in the hierarchy because, as co-author of the new guidelines for dealing with abuse cases, he focused on uncompromising clarity.

Even before the Boston Globe revealed the scandal, he had cracked down as bishop of Belleville in the U.S. state of Illinois, removing five priests from office. When the crisis took on new urgency with the McCarrick case and the Pennsylvania abuse report, Gregory spoke of "a cloud of shame" hovering over the church. People are rightly angry, he said, because their church is "seen as a haven for criminal behavior".

Archbishop of Washington also has political influence

Terry McKiernan of the organization BishopAccountability praised Gregory as someone who could lead with credibility. "I have a good impression of him."While Gregory's return from 14 years of "exile" in Atlanta to the spotlight of the U.S. church is seen by the pope's supporters as strengthening his course, conservative Catholics fear the worst. The arch-conservative blog "The Church Militant" criticizes the appointment of a bishop "with a long history of pro-homosexual initiatives".

With about 650.000 Catholics in 139 parishes in the District of Columbia and suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, the Archdiocese of Washington is one of the most prosperous in the country. It is growing while others are shrinking. Washington is the seat of the bishops' conference, the "Catholic University" and the "National Shrine".

Above all, the Archbishop of Washington also has political influence. He sets the political tone like no other shepherd in the U.S. With Gregory, the Catholic Church in the U.S. may sound more like Francis. If he were to become a cardinal, he would not only be the first African-American church leader in Washington, but also the first black cardinal in the United States.

By Thomas Spang

A vigil of the initiative "Maria 2.0" in front of the cathedral of Munster © Andre Zelck (KNA)

The initiative of five women from Munster has developed into a nationwide wave of protest: The movement "Maria 2.0" demonstrates in hundreds of places against a male-dominated church.

The five Munster women from the Holy Cross parish did not expect such a response themselves. Her call for a church strike against male dominance among Catholics has spread like wildfire and unleashed a nationwide wave of protest. Women in hundreds of places took part in the initiative "Maria 2.0" and insist on a renewal of the church, especially after the abuse scandal. Quite loud is the call for the ordination of women to the priesthood.

Also men and many older ones involved

"The frustration and the longing for a new beginning in the church is great," says co-initiator Lisa Kotter with regard to the response. Many older people and a third of them men also participated in the "grassroots campaign". The small group, which was surprised by the overwhelming response, cannot give exact figures; it is estimated that several hundred initiatives took part. There is also an international response, as the extensive list of press articles on the website "Maria 2.0" shows.

Until next Saturday, the women will not enter any place of worship or perform any volunteer service. On Sunday, services were held in many places on their own initiative in front of the church doors – a statement for changed power structures and against the obligation of celibacy for priests.

"Untimely discrimination"

For example, in front of the cathedral in Munster, where well over 500 women gathered for a vigil. During a service of the word without communion, initiator Kotter denounced the "untimely and unjust discrimination of half of God's baptized children" in the church. At the end, participants marched to the nearby bishop's house and chanted, asking for the coming of the Holy Spirit.

In Freiburg, about 400 activists dressed in red demonstrated in front of the cathedral, while Archbishop Stephan Burger ordained six men as priests in the church. "I too can be a priest!"Jesus has always met the women on eye level" another: "The time of a man-dominated church must end", says demo co-organizer Eveline Viernickel.

Divided echo among the bishops

Burger makes it clear in his sermon and in handouts distributed to service participants that while he can understand the disappointment and frustration of women, his hands are tied by church law. Rome has repeatedly made clear that there can be no women priests, archbishop says. And Pope Francis had also recently stressed that he did not want to decide "in the foreseeable future" on a possible permission to ordain deaconesses. "I cannot resolve this tension, I have to endure it," says the bishop. Speaking directly to protesters, the archbishop stresses he is glad for the commitment of women Catholics. "I will do everything I can to further promote women locally. I understood their message."

"Our patience is at an end," meanwhile, Claudia Lucking-Michel, deputy president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), told ZDF television. Her children and friends kept asking her how she could belong to an organization that excluded women.

With the church leadership bumps "Maria 2.0" to a divided response. "The German bishops understand the unrest," said the press spokesman for the German Bishops' Conference, Matthias Kopp. But reforms can only come about "piece by piece". Strike is not the right means.

Also topics of the Synodal Way

Munster's Bishop Felix Genn did not want to evaluate the action week on request. But he pointed to the German bishops' decision to talk about celibacy, the church's sexual morality and the "necessary reduction of power" among clerics in a broad debate. This so-called Synodal Way takes up the ies of "Mary 2.0" on.

Conservative groups in particular, such as the Forum of German Catholics, are massively critical of the strike. Pope John Paul II. had definitively determined 25 years ago that the church had no authority to ordain women as priests. The forum called on women to leave the Catholic German Women's Association and found a new faith-based organization.

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