The Nordic bishops had warned the Church in Germany against "following the spirit of the age" in the synodal path: Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK), now responds to the criticisms of the reform process.
The president of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK), Bishop Georg Bätzing, has rejected the criticisms from the Nordic Bishops' Conference concerning the synodal path. In his response published on Tuesday, Bishop Bätzing emphasized that German Catholics, "starting from the truly catastrophic and deeply shameful fact of sexual abuse and its cover-up," are seeking "with great care and well-founded theological references, new paths for ecclesial practice." In doing so, they do not lose sight of the universal Church and carefully differentiate between questions and reform demands that need to be integrated into the context of the universal Church, particularly within the universal Church's synodal path.
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Bätzing rejected the accusation of following the spirit of the age too closely. It cannot be a matter for anyone to lightly orient the Church's actions according to the fashion of the moment. The synodal path is based on the principle, "in the good tradition of the Church and in close connection with the declarations of the Second Vatican Council," that God "also reveals Himself anew in this world and in human history, that His action and essence are therefore also discernible in a condensed manner in the events of history." Questioning the signs of the times has nothing to do with following the spirit of the age.
The DBK president appreciates the concern of the Nordic bishops. However, it seems to him that the "expressed and suggested fears" do not correspond to the actual deliberations, discussions, and decisions of the synodal path. The German reform process, as Pope Francis wishes, is precisely about the "synodal search for life-generating potential in the life and action of the Church today." A simple "business as usual" would destroy the Church. Conversion and reorientation are necessary. "Those seriously engaged in the synodal path have no doubt that it is about unreservedly appropriating the Deposit of Faith transmitted by the Church," stated Bätzing. But this foundation of the doctrine of faith must not be understood in such a way that "every ecclesial practice, every regulation, and every social form of the Church, which have been developed throughout history and under very specific temporal circumstances, already represent in themselves this immutable deposit." The synodal path orients itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Magisterium and theology, as well as on the sense of the faith of the faithful and the signs of the times as central sources of faith.
Nordic and Polish bishops' conferences skeptical of the synodal path
The Nordic Bishops' Conference is the second bishops' conference to have addressed the DBK through an open letter. At the end of February, the president of the Polish bishops, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, had already addressed his German counterpart, expressing his "deep concern" regarding the results discussed in the German reform dialogue. He thus contradicted key arguments and decisions of the synodal path. "Faithful to the teaching of the Church," one must not yield to "the pressure of the world or the models of the dominant culture," stated the Archbishop of Poznan. At the end of March, Bätzing responded to Gadecki. The Church in Germany is not taking the "path of conversion and renewal lightly, and even less so outside the universal Church," said Bätzing in his response. The text of the response letter was not published. The DBK president emphasized in his letter that the synodal path seeks ways out of the systemic causes of abuse. He would like to discuss this with his Polish colleagues.
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