When Bishop Georg Bätzing was interviewed about the vote by German bishops to bless same sex unions, the interviewer challenged him about the rationale behind the determination of the bishops to take this schismatic path.
Bätzing stated:
“Homosexual couples, couples who are divorced and remarried, couples asking for a blessing – that’s something we are going to do here.”
The interviewer replied, trying to remind him of the context and the obvious implication of episcopal disobedience, and asked him point blank if they were going to defy the pope.
“Yes, you can do that here, but so far the Vatican has always said it was not allowed to bless homosexual relationships.”
“Does that mean you are going to quasi ‘defy the pope’?” asked the interviewer.
Bishop Bätzing was silent for a moment. He obviously wanted to avoid a straightforward answer of “yes” or “no”.
There was a moment of awkwardness. So he prevaricated and referred instead to the fact that such blessings had been happening already, surreptitiously, but now they were going to make it official.
“For a start, it must be said that the practice of blessing exists and we want to bring it to the light.“
And then he gave a quick summary of his reasoning for defying the Pope, scripture and tradition.
“And that means that we, the bishops, must position ourselves and say that whatever is good in a relationship between two people, can receive God’s blessing. That is only logical.”
This is a rather truncated restatement of the secular trope that when people are attracted to each other and want to have sex, this is “a good thing”.
This analysis or discernment is of course the point at which the German bishops, and indeed German progressive Catholic culture, have parted company with the Faith.
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