German Bishops: Paganism and Schism

Did you hear the latest out of Germany? A Synod of German bishops and lay leaders of the Catholic Church, perhaps predictably, voted overwhelmingly (168 to 28) to approve the blessing by Catholic clergy of what the synod calls “same-sex partnerships.” This vote was in response to a Vatican decree that explicitly prohibited such blessings. Of the 196 who voted at the synod, I don’t know how many were bishops. I believe there are 27 German dioceses, but there are certainly a greater number of bishops. But even so, this vote is a definite step toward schism. I find it especially troubling that the synod apparently believes, unlike Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, that truth is determined by majority vote. I certainly cannot confirm my suspicions, but I wonder how many of the voters are active homosexuals. 

To read a more detailed discussion of the synod’s vote, see the coverage by CATHOLICVOTE.ORG. There you will also learn that the synod went even further on related issues:

Friday’s statement included not only the approval of blessings for homosexual couples, but also advocacy for “more tolerance for contraception and masturbation,” Rocca reported. The statement amounts to “an appeal to the pope, acknowledging that many of its proposals ‘essentially fall within the teaching competence of the Bishop of Rome and can therefore not be undertaken by the Church in Germany.’”

The vote, of course, is openly heretical, since it contradicts 2,000 years of Church teaching. In a very real sense it returns us to the pagan world faced by the apostles as they fulfilled Jesus’ command to preach the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. In those days homosexuality and the sexual abuse of women and slaves was for many a way of life, especially among the upper classes. But St. Paul didn’t hesitate to challenge the zeitgeist by preaching the Gospel teaching that marriage between a man and a woman is a sacramental and sacred bond and that sexual activity outside of marriage is sinful. The difference today is that members of the Church in Germany are siding and sinning with the pagans while denying the truth of the Gospel. 

Where this will lead, I cannot say. But one hopes the Holy Father will be firm in repudiating the conclusions of the German synod. We shall see. I find myself thinking again of the words that a German theologian, Joseph Ratzinger, wrote in 1970, long before he became Pope Benedict XVI:

"From the crisis of today, the Church of tomorrow will emerge. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so will she lose many of her social privileges…she will be seen more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision…Undoubtedly she will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession…Alongside this, the full-time ministerial priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But…the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Chris, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world…

"The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to be the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness and well as pompous self-will will have to be shed…But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret."

Pope  Benedict’s view of the future Church is probably close to what we can expect in the years to come. Prepare your children and your grandchildren because they will have to live through it.

Middle East Synod of Bishops

You might not know about it because it hasn't received a lot of press in the secular media, but the Vatican is currently hosting a special synod of Middle Eastern bishops. The synod, which began today, will reflect on the theme, "The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness." Among the synod's objectives is to strengthen Christian identity and promote ecumenism among Christians in Muslim countries.

Shortly after the synod's opening liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the crowd in St. Peter's Square, telling them,

"This extraordinary synodal gathering, which will last two weeks, will see the meeting in Rome of the pastors of the Church that lives in the Middle East, a very diverse reality. In that land, in fact, the one Church of Christ expresses herself in all the wealth of her ancient traditions...In fact, in those countries, unfortunately marked by profound divisions and lacerations by age-old conflicts, the Church is called to be the sign and instrument of unity and of reconciliation, on the model of the first community of Jerusalem, in which 'the multitude of those who had become Christian were of one heart and one soul' (Acts 4:32)."

172 Catholic bishops from the Middle East, virtually all from Islamic countries, are taking part in the synod. The are joined by several dozen academics and other experts, plus a number of curial officials and 14 representatives of other Christian churches. In the words of the Holy Father they are confronted by "an arduous task since the Christians of the Middle East often find themselves having to endure difficult conditions of life at the personal, familial and communal levels."

These "difficult conditions" have caused Christians to flee the Middle East in huge numbers. Bishop Shlemon Warduni, an auxiliary bishop of the Catholic Chaldean Church in Iraq, expanded on the pope's comments when he stated, “The urgent reasons for this meeting are that Christians are fleeing from the Middle East, and extremist Islamism is invading the area. We need to find a dialogue with Muslims, and unity among Christians." This flight of Christians is particularly evident in Iraq where the Christian population has decreased from 1.2 million to 400,000 since 1987.

The working document for the synod is based on the responses to a detailed questionnaire submitted by the participants. The document states that  "Relations with Muslims are difficult principally because Muslims make no distinction between religion and politics, thereby relegating Christians to precarious positions of being considered non-citizens despite the fact that they were citizens of these countries long before the rise of Islam.”

Speaking of the synod earlier today, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, explained that...

"The Middle East is a region in which Christians are a minority, in some countries a very small one and without any political or social influence, and in [some] of these countries the situation of war or permanent tension weighs on hope for the future and marginalizes it. But it is also the region where Christianity was born, where it has very ancient traditional roots of extraordinary cultural and spiritual richness. Thus the problems of the Churches in the Middle East interest all of us and involve of us, and this is why the Pope convoked this assembly, which for the first time is dedicated not to a theme or a continent or individual country, but to a specific region of the world."

The following video provides an overview of the synod...

Pray for the Christians in the Middle East and for the success of the synod.