The continuing crisis in the German Church

Two perspectives on the troubled Catholic Church in Germany:

In the Archdiocese of Hamburg, where schools open this week, parents have protested guidelines for sex-education in Catholic schools. Catholic teaching has traditionally insisted that parents, not schools, should be responsible for teaching their children about sexuality. But the parents are particularly unhappy with the content of the guidelines, which accept a “woke” approach and call for “recognition of the diversity of sexual identity in the schools.”

The parents took their complaints to the Vatican, and received a response from Msgr. Matthias Ambros, the undersecretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education. He assured them that the teaching of the Church “remains unchanged,” pointing to a 2019 document that unequivocally rejected gender ideology.

That response would be reassuring to the unhappy parents—except that it came without any admonition to archdiocesan officials, no indication that the Hamburg guidelines would be changed. And again, school opens this week.

On the positive side, in the Archdiocese of Cologne, Cardinal Rainer Woelki assured an interviewer from Die Tagepost: “There will be no German special path.”

Cardinal Woelki is one of the few German bishops who have stoutly resisted the centrifugal forces of the “Synodal Path” that their episcopal conference has explored over the past several years. (Perhaps not coincidentally, a few years back, when Woelki offered to resign in the face of charges that he had mishandled abuse complaints—charges that were eventually investigated and dismissed—the president of the German bishops’ conference urged Pope Francis to accept the resignation.) The cardinal now expresses confidence that the Vatican will not allow the more radical initiatives of the Synodal Path. The question remains, however: If the Vatican flashes a red light, how many German bishops will speed right through it?

Meanwhile German Catholics continue to leave the Church by the tens of thousands. Cardinal Woelki suggests that a large part of the problem is a simple failure to evangelize. He reminds Die Tagepost:

The Acts of the Apostles reports that after a sermon by Peter and John, many listeners became believers. Was this only possible in the early days of the church? Do we believe that the Holy Spirit grew old after 2000 years and that something like this can no longer work today? I don’t believe that. Perhaps he just wants to be asked.