No quibbling

adminonJanuary 18, 2022January 5, 2022Leave a Comment

According to Archbishop Heiner Koch, the increasing calls for "marriage for all" represent a break with a centuries-old understanding of marriage. It goes around more than only around a controversy over the term.

Opening marriage to same-sex couples would mean a qualitative reorientation of the concept of marriage, Koch told the Catholic News Agency (KNA) over the weekend. The Berlin archbishop heads the Commission for Marriage and Family of the German Bishops' Conference and referred explicitly to statements made by the new president of the Catholic Women's Association of Germany (kfd), Mechthild Heil.

She had said in the middle of the week: "Legally, marriage and same-sex partnership are almost equal; we are now only arguing about the term."More and more people support the concept of marriage also for these partnerships.

Church is not homophobic

Koch went on to stress that the bishops' position was "in no way motivated by homophobia". A distinction between marriage and a legal institution for same-sex couples does not mean discrimination; on the contrary, it "adequately takes into account the diversity of life forms".

The archbishop added that the German bishops view marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman with openness in principle to the transmission of life. This view is "entirely in the spirit of the fathers and mothers of the Basic Law". The lasting bond between husband and wife, based on fidelity, represents a "most precious space for the education of their children".

Opening the term would confuse

Especially in view of this importance for society, the special protection of marriage has found a prominent place in the Basic Law, he said.

In contrast, a same-sex civil partnership "cannot produce children from itself," the archbishop continued. Opening up the concept of marriage leads to a division in the understanding of marriage and contributes "to a general and not least legal confusion".

Uta Ranke-Heinemann © Horst Ossinger

Uta Ranke-Heinemann doubted the Trinity of God and the redemption of Christ on the cross. The theologian sharply criticized the papal ban on pills and condoms. The controversial theologian has now died in Essen.

She was the world's first professor of Catholic theology and soon became a vocal critic of the Roman Catholic Church: Uta Ranke-Heinemann, the eldest daughter of former German President Gustav Heinemann, has died. She died Thursday morning in Essen at the age of 93, her son Andreas Ranke told the German Press Agency. She had fallen asleep peacefully in the presence of family members.

In 1945, she was the only girl to attend the Burggymnasium in Essen, where she achieved a top school-leaving certificate. She studied Protestant theology. In 1953, she converted to Catholicism in search of greater religious tolerance, earned a doctorate and became the first Catholic theology professor. "But with the Catholics, I went from the frying pan into the fire," she later said.

From contraception to the Virgin Mary

The peace activist soon came into conflict with the official church in the dispute over the papal ban on contraception. That African women would be threatened with hell for using a condom during sex with their HIV-infected husband, Ranke-Heinemann called a "deadly misleading of humanity".

In 1999, the pacifist was persuaded by Gregor Gysi in the kitchen of her house to run for president of Germany – a candidacy that was hopeless from the start – on behalf of the Left's predecessor party, the PDS. Johannes Rau (SPD) won the election.

The break with the church came in 1987, after Ranke-Heinemann contradicted the church dogma of the virgin birth. She did not want Mary's virginity to be understood literally, but as "models of imagination at the time". The then Bishop of Essen, Franz Hengsbach, withdrew her teaching license. She lost her chair in Essen, but got a chair for history of religion independent of the church.

Critical of the church to the end

At the same time, Ranke-Heinemann wrote about religion and church. In particular, "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven," about church sexual morality, topped the bestseller lists in several countries. No and Amen" is considered her main theological work, which she later subtitled "My Farewell to Traditional Christianity". The only positive thing she had left of Christianity was the "hope of a reunion with the beloved dead", she wrote in it.

Ranke-Heinemann did not deviate from her church-critical positions even later on. The election of her former fellow student Joseph Ratzinger as pope did nothing to change this situation. "I am disappointed," she declared just over a year after Benedict XVI took office. "I had hoped he would finally abolish celibacy."

Young people at the opening mass of the youth synod in the Vatican © Paul Haring (KNA)

What will Germany look like in ten years?? And how will the church in particular have changed by then?? Bjorn Szymanowski deals with this question. He is thinking about how the church can involve young people.

Interviewer: How do you know what young people will think in ten years' time??

Bjorn Szymanowski (theologian at the Center for Applied Pastoral Research): There is a still quite young discipline, the so-called future research or also Futurology. In the meantime, this is a very solid scientific craft at universities in Germany. That can be taught, that is practiced there. They work with data from history, from the past, observe which technological, which social innovations are currently in the pipeline. The futurologists then ask themselves which futures are more probable than others. And on this basis, one can then very well assess the direction in which all this could develop.

Interviewer: How likely is it that young people will live in a post-Christian society? And what does that mean?

Szymanowski: Post-Christian society is first of all a very sober, sociological finding. In 2019, just over 52 percent of Germans were members of one of Germany's two major churches. And that will change.

Some studies expect about ten million people to leave churches in the next ten to 15 years. Faith and church membership are not one and the same, that's clear to me. But you don't have to be clairvoyant to say that Christianity will no longer be taken for granted culturally in the future and that Christianity will then be moved to a post-position. We are already experiencing this in many places, even in the East, but in the future it will also develop into a phenomenon for society as a whole.

Interviewer: And if this is a phenomenon that affects society as a whole, what does the world of young people look like??

Szymanowski: I can only outline that very briefly here, there could be a lot to say about it. But as a very central highlight, I would say: On the one hand, family forms are changing, partnerships are changing, they are becoming more pluralistic, the classic nuclear family of father-mother-child is becoming increasingly rare. Instead, there are alternative, more complex forms: Single parents, same-sex partnerships with children are becoming more common.

Forms of relationships will also change in the future. They will still be monogamous in the future, that can be said quite well, but monogamous will not mean "forever". And "relationship" will then not mean "between man and woman" either. That's when you talk about serial monogamy between different genders. And this then of course also totally challenges the church's teaching on marriage, for example.

Interviewer: So on the one hand, there could be post-Christian youth in 2030. But we still have a Christian church, a Catholic church, so that's probably the amption. What is the relationship then between the two?

Szymanowski: Let's take 2030 as a cipher for the future. Then many, many thoughts of the Christian faith will be strange to young people. This is what post-Christian society means. And that also expresses the fact that religious socialization will continue to decline in every generation. We can already observe that now. And in the future it is then just no longer plausible out of itself that there is such a thing as a God or why this God should actually be important for my life. This makes access to the religious, to the church, much more pragmatic.

So in the future, it will no longer be culture that decides that religion is important, but perhaps the suitability for life, the aesthetics, the emotionality. Religion must then fit or not.

Interviewer: And that means that the church would have to get involved a bit more. Or what do you say??

Szymanowski: Yes, but the question is how to do it. And this is what we have seen at least in the last two days (at the Youth Pastoral Forum of the Youth Pastoral Office of the German Bishops' Conference on 4 and 6 September). to 5. November, anm. d. Red.) learned. There are no patent remedies, but if you have to break it down to principles, I would strongly emphasize two core messages here.

For one thing, youth pastoral ministry in the future must be willing to learn much more from younger people. It needs the creativity and the competencies of young people in order to remain fit itself. Given the speed of change in our society, there is no other way.

It is also not enough to simply listen and perceive, but it needs formats of real participation, in which young people can co-decide about the youth ministry of tomorrow. And not just once, but permanently. And that is why the Youth Synod of 2018 was a very important event, but precisely not the end, but the beginning of this more participatory youth ministry.

The interview was conducted by Gerald Mayer.

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