A German bishop publicly distanced himself Monday from a document on “the diversity of sexual identities” in schools issued by the country’s bishops’ conference.
Bishop Stefan Oster published Nov. 10 a 4,000-word critique of the text “Created, Redeemed, and Loved – Visibility and recognition of the diversity of sexual identities in schools,” arguing that it diverged from traditional Catholic anthropology.
Oster, a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, was appointed Bishop of Passau, southern Germany, in 2014, at the age of 48. He is known for online evangelization, focused especially on young people.
He is one of four German diocesan bishops who openly criticized the country’s controversial “synodal way,” a 2019-2023 initiative that sought sweeping changes to Catholic teaching and practice.
In an evaluation of the new document entitled “Do we still believe what we believe?” Oster criticized its underlying vision of the human person and said it did not reflect his views.
“Even though the cover of the booklet says ‘The German bishops,’ the text does not speak on my behalf,” he wrote.
The 48-page document was issued Oct. 31 by the German bishops’ conference’s commission for education and schools, after reportedly heated discussions among bishops.
The document was prepared in response to two resolutions approved by synodal way participants.
One of the resolutions called for “a re-evaluation of homosexuality in the Magisterium,” while the other focused on “dealing with gender diversity.”
The document was also drafted in light of a rising number of students in German Catholic schools identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, or under the broader term “queer.”
The text was also informed by an online survey of more than 2,000 students, teachers, and parents at German Catholic schools, which concluded that the “vast majority” were in favor of addressing the “diversity of sexual identities.”
Around 20% said they had experienced or observed discrimination against students identifying as LGBT.
The document presented five guidelines: fostering holistic development, respecting human dignity, promoting justice, assuming responsibility, and keeping “the question of God alive.”
It also made specific recommendations for students, teachers, religious educators, pastoral workers, and school leaders. It ended with a glossary of terms, such as “heteronormativity,” “rainbow family,” and “sexual self-determination.”
In an introduction to the text, Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers, chairman of the bishops’ schools commission, said Catholic schools were called to be “places where personal self-awareness and holistic development are deepened, especially from a Christian perspective.”
Oster commented: “According to this, schools should now position themselves in such a way that they can become something like midwives for the journey of discovery toward — as it is programmatically called — ‘holistic personality development.’”
“The irony here is that we are dealing with a paper that bears the title ‘The German bishops’ — without any mention whatsoever of our Christian understanding of ‘holistic’ personhood and becoming a person.”
In his introduction to the document, Timmerevers explained that the text aimed to offer pedagogical and pastoral guidelines, rather than “a comprehensive moral-theological analysis and assessment of the diversity of sexual identities and the associated lifestyles of queer people in schools (young people, teachers, and parents).”
Oster took issue with this distinction, arguing that the text was “heavily theological” and therefore implied that established doctrinal positions were “by no means helpful” when considering issues of sexual identity.
Oster, whose diocese has offered a pastoral support service for Catholics who identify as queer since 2022, said the document did not address what it meant to be redeemed, despite the word featuring in its title.
“Nowhere is the term ‘redeemed’ explained, but rather it is taken for granted: basically, all people in all their diversity, as can be read and as is evident throughout the text, are already redeemed,” he wrote.
“This redemption clearly refers to being created in all diversity, while at the same time the text explains that ‘the diversity of sexual identities is a fact.’ There is no mention anywhere of the task of human self-realization in Christ and through Christ.”
“Instead, findings from the human sciences are emphasized all the more clearly, without specifying what these might be. The problem with this is that the human sciences perceive human beings in their concrete existence — and, by virtue of their methodology, have no access to the genuinely Christian view of humanity with its prerequisites of faith, relationship with God, need for redemption, grace, sin, salvation, and the task and invitation to become more like Christ.”
Oster also said he was concerned that transgender identity was “presented as a phenomenon that naturally arises among young people.”
“As far as I can see, this is not critically examined at any point; rather, the text seems to strike an affirmative tone throughout with regard to transgender youth to achieve the goal of healthy identity formation in the development of a personality — in this case, a transgender personality,” he wrote.
“Recently, however, this phenomenon has been taken up many times and has been extensively critically examined in the media, in political debates at home and abroad, in popular literature, in specialist literature, and in countless online forums. For example, there is no warning in the text against too quickly affirmatively supporting the development of adolescent transgender identity.”
Oster noted that countries such as the U.K., Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Denmark had restricted surgery or hormone therapies for young people who identified as transgender.
“If the intention of this ‘bishops’ paper’ was to be at the forefront of socio-political discourse, then the text is already significantly outdated, particularly on this point,” he wrote.
“Unfortunately, this is precisely an issue where vulnerable young people would be particularly in need of protection and require especially sensitive support.”
According to German Catholic media, “Created, Redeemed, and Loved” had a difficult path to publication.
In early summer, a draft was presented to the bishops’ conference’s permanent council, which brings together diocesan bishops five or six times a year. The German Catholic news agency KNA reported that the discussion was “very controversial,” with some critics calling for the text to be abandoned.
In his critique, Oster said he had read a draft and proposed that it be supplemented with reflections on Christian identity.
“The response was essentially negative,” he said. “I then emphatically reiterated that we should not simply abandon what was most important to us in such fundamental matters.”
Oster added: “This back-and-forth and the entire text ultimately highlight a huge underlying problem, which, in my opinion, is also the fundamental problem in the debate on the issues addressed by the synodal way — even among us bishops.”
“I am convinced that, especially in the West, we are living in a time when the decisive debates and controversies revolve around anthropology, the doctrine of man. For us as the Catholic Church, this involves understanding man as a sacramental being, that is, as a finite reality in which and through which the infinite God can reveal himself as truly present.”
The bishop suggested that the majority of people, including in the Catholic Church in Germany, took a “developmental perspective” on questions of identity and sexual ethics, believing that Catholicism would eventually embrace changes such as women priests and liturgical blessings for unmarried couples.
“I, on the other hand, consider these boundaries to be fundamental and not gradually shiftable. In my opinion, crossing them would ultimately lead to a different Church,” he said.
“For a different doctrine of man leads to a different doctrine of revelation, of the sacraments, of salvation — and thus necessarily to a different doctrine of the Church and its existence — and ultimately even to a different understanding of the Triune God.”
Oster concluded that the schools document was, in his view, “well on the way to a desacralized understanding of human beings.”
Other German bishops who have commented publicly on the new document include Bishop Thomas Maria Renz, who said the text’s fundamental purpose was to oppose discrimination against students identifying as LGBT.
Renz, an auxiliary bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart and deputy chairman of the schools commission, stressed the document’s limitations in comments to Die Tagespost newspaper Nov. 4.
“What it cannot do is provide a comprehensive, humanities-based presentation of complex, personality-shaping developments in the various phases of adolescence with regard to sexual identity,” he said.
“First, this is not the task of the Church, and second, it is such a volatile and controversial topic among experts that the Church can only find itself on thin ice if it takes an overly credulous stance in the heated professional discussions.”
“That is why I am convinced that a distinction must be made between ‘acceptance of those who feel differently,’ which is essential for Christian schools in particular, and a naive approval of everything that young people may feel one way or another during certain phases of their personality development and maturation for a certain period of time.”
Pope Leo XIV received Bishop Oster in private audience Sept. 8, before the document’s publication. They discussed the current situation of the Church in Germany.
Divisions have also emerged among the German bishops over guidance on blessings for unmarried and same-sex couples issued in April by the bishops’ conference and the lay Central Committee of German Catholics.
Dioceses that rejected the guidance, including Oster’s Passau, argued that it went beyond the provisions of the 2023 Vatican declaration on blessings, Fiducia supplicans.