The Synodal Way, which has come to an end, has made it clear with great matter-of-factness that the doctrine and the faith of the Church are considered negotiable. If this conviction is shattered by Rome, one can only hope that it will not tear the German Catholic Church apart.
A blessing service as part of a day of action in defiance to the Vatican’s ruling on same-sex unions in the Youth Church in Würzburg, Germany, May 10, 2021. (Gehrig/CNA Deutsch)
The consequences of the Synodal Way cannot be gauged yet. Much was decided: The dioceses in Germany are to enable the blessing of homosexual couples. They are to allow lay people to preach at Mass. They are to propagate an image of man that complies with gender ideology and ask the Pope to lift the obligation to celibacy and to examine whether women can be admitted into the ministry after all.
The discussion of all these topics was justified with the prevention of abuse. Officially, the Synodal Way had been established for this purpose. Since then, however, that purpose has merely served as an all-too transparent fig leaf. Whoever expressed doubts regarding the legitimacy of the process was reminded that the goal was, after all, the prevention of abuse.
But just how the discussion of lay preaching, for instance, would serve that goal, why the celibacy of priests should be lifted, even though the MHG-study*, to which the Synodal Way refers, explicitly sees no connection between abuse and celibacy (which is in line with other studies on the subject): none of these things were taken into consideration.
Instead, the abuse scandal serves as a vehicle for interested parties to enforce what some church officials, a part of the Federal Association Catholics and of Academic Theology, have demanded for decades: a comprehensive self-secularization, the abandonment of central beliefs and traditional faith practices. Here we also find the reason why it is so hard to explain what the Synodal Way actually consists of: anyone with a minimal understanding of religion must find this process absurd. For religions revolve around truth. But how is one supposed to vote on truth?
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