On Monday, the Permanent Council of the Bishops’ Conference adopted the statutes of the reform body Synodal Committee, said the spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference, Matthias Kopp. One of the central reform projects of the Catholic Church in Germany is the planning of a Synodal Council in which bishops and lay people will discuss and make decisions together.
“Things have developed further from the last general assembly to the conversation in Rome and now,” explained Kopp to the German Press Agency. In order to prepare the Synodal Council, the Bishops’ Conference and the lay body Central Council of Catholics have founded a Synodal Committee.
However, a ratification of the committee’s statutes planned last February during the spring general assembly of bishops was effectively blocked by Pope Francis: three high Curia cardinals from the Vatican wrote a very clear letter to the bishops’ conference, whereupon chairman Georg Bätzing removed the vote from the agenda. But now the ratification has taken place.
Relationship a bit relaxed
Observers attribute this development to the fact that the greatly cooled relationship between the German bishops and the church headquarters in Rome has recently relaxed somewhat. In March, Bishop Bätzing and a delegation were welcomed back to the Vatican for the first time in a long time. Both sides agreed to see each other regularly in the future and to coordinate closely on reform issues. Church circles said that the bishops had assured the Vatican that they would not decide on anything significant that had not previously been approved by Rome.
The Vatican has repeatedly made its position clear: It considers a body in which lay people – non-clergy – make decisions on an equal basis with bishops to be incompatible with canon law. The German bishops, in turn, have assured that they do not want to violate canon law. The vast majority of bishops believe that a much greater participation of lay representatives in church decisions is absolutely necessary in order to counteract the decline of the church. They point out that the Catholic Church in Germany loses hundreds of thousands of members every year.
“fragile ceasefire”
Four of the German bishops do not want to go down this path and do not want to continue to work on the Synodal Committee. They confirmed this in a joint statement on the website of the Archdiocese of Cologne. They are Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki from Cologne and the bishops Gregor Maria Hanke from Eichstätt, Stefan Oster from Passau and Rudolf Voderholzer from Regensburg.
The canon lawyer Thomas Schüller told the dpa that Bätzing’s talks in Rome had brought about a “fragile truce”: “No matter what is decided in the Synodal Committee, it must be approved in Rome,” summarized Schüller. “So Rome has its thumb on it. The synod members are being advised as if under probation, without knowing whether they can hope for Roman favor and mercy.”
