One hundred and forty-four German-speaking Catholic theologians
around Europe have called for changes in the Catholic Church, including
female and non-celibate priests, acceptance of homosexuality and
contraception.
While the “progressive” wing of anti-Catholic dissidents
have been calling for these changes for at least four decades, this time
they say that it is all part of an effort to protect children from
clerical sex abuse.
The group, representing about a third of all German theology
professors at universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, issued
their call for “reforms” last Friday, according to a report in the
German daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung.”
The crisis of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy sweeping Germany
and other European countries is an indication that “deep reforms are
needed,” said the letter.
These include “recognition of freedom,
maturity and responsibility of individuals,” and parishioners
participating in “democratic structures at the direction of their
community.”
“The Church needs married priests and women in the church office,”
the letter continued.
The Church must have “confidence in the
decision-making and responsibility … especially concerning the area of
personal life choices and individual lifestyles.”
This means that Catholics should be allowed to divorce and remarry,
and that the Church should “not exclude” those whose “love, loyalty and
mutual concern” are expressed “in a same-sex partnership.”
“Self-righteous moral rigor of the church is not good,” the letter
continued. This moral rigor is a “perversion of the biblical message of
freedom in a rigorous moral [law] without mercy.”
The letter also warned against the growing trend, popular among the
younger, post-Vatican II generation, toward more traditional liturgical
practices, including a revival of interest in Latin and Gregorian Chant
and sacred polyphony in the Mass.
“The service must not freeze in traditionalism,” said the theologians.
One UK parish priest and popular blogger said the demands are
business as usual for the graying remnants of the 1960s revolt.
Fr. Ray
Blake, who writes from his parish in Brighton, said, “The movement to
the ‘left’ it strikes me, is a really a continuation of the very things
that have caused our problems.”
“It is [a] position favoured by the liberal establishment, an embracing of the modern world.”
The “progressive” wing of the European Church, Fr. Blake said, has
always had these “democratic” yearnings for the Catholic Church. In this
theological school, the authority of “popes, saints, lay theologians
and personal whim are all the same, except that personal whim tends to
win out.”
“It is attractive at first, but then, as in liberal Protestantism, it
cuts mankind off from God. Scripture, Tradition, the magisterium, the
hierarchy are not there to reveal God because ultimately even God is a
human construct.”
Peter Seewald, a German journalist and author of two books on Pope
Benedict XVI, said the German letter is nothing more than a “rebellion
from the nursing home.”
Calling the letter’s authors the “chief priests of the zeitgeist,”
Seewald said, “Here is a concerted action of neo-liberal forces at work
to accelerate the rebuilding of the Catholic Church of their nature.”
The letter was welcomed, however, by Father Hans Langendörfer, a
Jesuit and secretary of the German bishops’ conference, who responded by
saying that the professors only “wish to contribute to the conversation
about the future of faith and the Church in Germany.”
Father Langendörfer said that the theologians have been engaged in
“beneficial” “structured dialogue” with the German bishops for 20 years
and that the letter includes “ideas often discussed together.”
“In a number of issues, the memorandum is in tension with theological
beliefs and Church determinations of a highly binding nature,” he said.
“The relevant issues require urgent further clarification.”