“What irritates me is that besides scripture and tradition new sources of Revelation are being accepted [by the German synodal path] – and it moreover frightens me that this is, once again, happening in Germany – as that is what happened during the Nazi dictatorship when the so-called “German Christians” saw Hitler’s rise to power as Revelation,” Koch explained.
Founded in 1932, the “German Christians” were a Protestant religious movement which sympathised with Adolf Hitler. Members had to be “racially pure Germans”.
In 1933 they won the majority of votes in the Protestant Church Election.
Koch’s comparison of the synodal path with a Nazi movement during Hitler’s war was immediately sharply criticised by the German bishops’ conference and has led to a feud between Koch and conference president Georg Bätzing. The cardinal’s comparison was “unacceptable” Bätzing told journalists and demanded an apology from Koch.
Should the cardinal not apologise, he, Bätzing, would “lodge an official complaint with the Holy Father”, Bätzing spelled out.
Koch replied, “I merely assumed that nowadays we could learn from history, but as Bishop Bätzing’s and other people’s vehement reactions show, I must accept that my attempt to do so failed.” He then added, “I will also have to accept that recollections of the Nazi period are obviously taboo in Germany.”
An outraged Bätzing declared on 30 September in Bon that “Cardinal
Koch has not in essence apologised for his unacceptable comments and
has on the contrary exacerbated the situation”, meaning that he must
“now as before clearly distance himself from the comments hemade.”
Moreover, Batzing went on, with his remark “that recollections of the National Socialist Regime are obviously taboo in Germany” Koch had suggested that Germany was “not prepared to face up to the terrible heritage of the Nazi Regime”.
Koch’s comments were at once widely criticised not only by churchmen. It was highly regrettable that a comparison with “the darkest hour in German history” was being used to take sides in an inner-church conflict, the German government’s commissioner for anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, lamented.
On the weekend of 1-2 October, Koch was due to visit a parish near Stuttgart and had been invited by the town of Schwäbisch Gmünd to sign its Golden Rule Book but after receiving hate mail and threats of violence, the town cancelled the visit. Koch thereupon cancelled all visits to Germany in the coming days.
Cardinal Koch later apologised for offending people and said he never intended to imply that supporters of the German church’s Synodal Path were doing something similar to what a group of Christian supporters of the Nazis did in the 1930s.
At a meeting Oct 4 in Rome with Bishop Bätzing, “Cardinal Koch expressly emphasised that it was completely far from him to want to impute the terrible ideology of the 1930s to the Synodal Path,” said a the bishops’ conference in a statement the next day.
“Cardinal Koch asks for forgiveness from all those who feel hurt by the comparison he made.”
Felix Klein, the government’s commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and the fight against antisemitism, also criticised Cardinal Koch for resorting to a “comparison with the darkest hour in German history” to voice is concerns about the Synodal Path.