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Initiative "#OutInChurch. For a church without fear"
Photo: rbb
These are turbulent times for the Catholic Church.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has just been
accused of lying in the abuse scandal.
Now the spotlight falls on another permanent construction site: the institution's sexual morality, which has fallen out of time.
The #OutInChurch campaign starts this Monday, with which 125 people dare to go public and come out as non-heterosexual.
They are LGBTIQ+ people who work full-time or on a voluntary basis for the Catholic Church, including religious, pastoral assistants or religious education teachers.
People like you and me going about our daily business in Catholic institutions.
The story could end right here.
But according to the official Catholic doctrine, there is something that distinguishes these people from others and is apparently so unbearably divisive that they face the prospect of being expelled from the ranks of the orthodox on a daily basis - their sexual identity.
The gay Catholic pastor Frank Kribber is also part of the campaign.
"The bishops must be shaken awake so that they can no longer ignore the issue," says the 45-year-old.
»If nobody openly confesses, nothing will ever change in the church.«
Ever since he found out that he is homosexual, the priest has been tormented by the dilemma of belonging to an institution for which, in principle, he does not even exist.
"You mustn't be like that, it's not normal," he too thought at first.
»A priest is not gay.« In the meantime, the enthusiastic strength athlete with the tattooed arms no longer wants to feel guilty about his disposition.
Kribber speaks publicly about his sexual orientation for the first time, and he is correspondingly excited.
Is he afraid of losing his job as a prison chaplain?
Only to a limited extent, says Kribber.
He confided in the competent bishop, who was well disposed towards him in principle.
However, he did not receive any official license to practice homosexuality.
"The bishop reminded me that celibacy remains unchanged and wished me to keep doing my job well."
See filmmaker Giuliano Spagnolo's portrait of prison chaplain Kribber here:
If you listen to the long stories of suffering of those affected, it seems downright absurd that they are still working for the Catholic Church despite obvious discrimination.
"I haven't left yet because I care about this church," says the initiator of the #OutInChurch campaign, Jens Ehebrecht-Zumsande.
»I also stay out of defiance, because I don't want others to tell me that I don't belong.«
The gay religious education teacher from Hamburg does not want to leave the interpretation of who is Catholic and who is not to the conservatives: "There is nothing wrong with me." It is his declared goal to change something - and that works best within the system.
"I'm not going voluntarily."
Catholic sexual morality, which is fixated on procreation within the framework of marriage, knows no complex sexual identities. She differentiates between perceived and practiced homosexuality. The inclination in itself is not necessarily sinful, but the homosexual act is condemned. He contradicts the natural order because he begets no life, according to church doctrine. In line with dogma, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican banned same-sex blessings in March 2021. God cannot bless sin, it was said as a reason.
Many activists have their say in Hajo Seppelt's #OutInChurch accompanying TV documentary "Wie Gott meine uns" (How God created us).
Monika Schmelter and Marie Kortenbusch have been a couple for four decades.
"When I was newly in love with Marie, I was in despair," the former nun Schmelter recalls in the film.
"I'm not right, I'm sick," was her first thought.
The two got married in 2020 – and although they had long since retired, they did it secretly.
Just as they have secretly lived their relationship all these years.
"We led a double life," they say.
With jobs far away from home, constant self-control, permanent fear of being fired.
The reason for the stressful game of hide-and-seek was the fact that her employer, the Catholic Church, does not tolerate partners or same-sex married employees.
Because the General Equal Treatment Act does not apply to churches and other ideological communities.
The theologian Kortenbusch worked as a religion teacher at a Catholic school and feared that her church pension could even be canceled.
In the church, the fear of those affected is played with, as the canon lawyer Thomas Schüller explains: "The obligations of loyalty only apply to the active period of service, after that there are no more sanctions possible."
It is the structural injustices that #OutInChurch denounces. "We urgently need a socio-political debate about how it can be that in 2022 an institution violates fundamental human rights with its own labor law," says the head of the Ehebrecht-Zumsande department from the Archdiocese of Hamburg. »Church employment law must be changed so that no one can lose their job, career and livelihood because of their sexual identity.«
#OutInChurch has formulated its most important demands in a manifesto.
Co-initiator Bernd Mönkebüscher emphasizes the advantages of a campaign: “Demands are given more weight when they are made by many.
Individuals can be disciplined more easily, a group not so quickly.« The priest from Hamm experienced his own outing in 2019 as lonely: »I didn’t understand why no colleague joined and I think the main reason is shame ." The clergy felt ashamed when the congregation, sometimes even their own family, found out that they were gay.
"That shows how negative homosexuality is still perceived."
TV documentary "How God created us": January 24, 2022, at 10:25 p.m., The First. From 6 a.m. in the ARD media library
