Priests pour out their hearts to this woman (85).

Created: 02/19/2022, 06:00

By: Josef Ametsbichler

Ilse Sixt (85) leads her campaign against compulsory celibacy in the Catholic Church from her home computer.

It's a topic that has occupied her for over 50 years.

She doesn't give up.

People don't see the priest as a human being.

Ilse Sixt © Stefan Roßmann

Ilse Sixt (85) from Oberpframmern has been fighting against compulsory celibacy for over 50 years.

Your weapon: your e-mail program.

Her motivation: the silent suffering that the strict sexual morality of the Catholic Church can trigger in her pastors.

Many of those affected confided in her.

A home visit.

Oberpframmern

– Ilse Sixt's thumbs are in constant motion.

When she speaks, her hands crossed in her lap as if in prayer, the crests cross each other in the same beat, as if an invisible rosary were passing through.

"The Catholic faith is the most beautiful thing there is," says the 85-year-old from Oberpframmern, thinking about the mystery, the secret of faith.

"It would be so nice if they didn't break it."

Ilse Sixt: "This religion of fear: catastrophe!"

They are the forces in the Catholic Church that adhere to the compulsory celibacy, the sexual abstinence of their priests.

With all the psychological consequences.

"This religion of fear: catastrophe!" Says Sixt.

For 50 years, the deeply religious housewife has dedicated herself relentlessly to the fight for the spiritual salvation of pastors and monks and everything that she finds unjust about her church - for example, that women are not allowed to become deacons.

She is sitting in the office chair at the desk.

Next to it is a care bed.

Ilse Sixt has been married for over 60 years, her husband is 92, has dementia and needs help.

For a long time she took care of him alone, now there is a nurse who is traveling with him.

So there is time to visit the Ebersberger Zeitung.

Ilse Sixt: Your e-mail program is your most important connection to the world

With a flick of her wrist, Sixt wipes away the wafting soap bubbles that are set up as a screen saver on her computer.

Behind her is her e-mail program, her most important connection to the world.

If there is an article in the Münchner Merkur about distortions in the Catholic Church, Sixt sends a few lines as a letter to the editor.

"Christ was not only God and man, but was and is also a man," she recently wrote about the abuse report.

That the church denies its Savior and consequently its priesthood to be a man: for them a huge part of the problem.

A reform to save the church is needed.

"We can't wait any longer."

Ilse Sixt types e-mails three or four hours a day.

For years.

The 85-year-old not only sends this to the newspaper.

Next to her keyboard is a stack of index cards with the e-mail contacts of priests, parishes, bishops and cardinals written in curly handwriting.

From Oberpframmern via Munich, Bavaria and the Vatican to overseas.

An analogue directory of their digital network.

Cardinal Marx gets copies of her letters to the editor

Over 3000 addresses from which she selects suitable recipients for her messages, including some direct addresses where the addressee is only surprised how Sixt got it.

The Munich Cardinal Marx and other dignitaries, for example, receive copies of their letters to the editor.

Feedback: poor.

"You just have to read it, that's all you need," she says.

No point in protesting, she keeps writing.

On her own homepage she collects her letters to the editor, the books she has written and what else motivates her to be celibate and to go to church.

Also a papal letter to John Paul II. The access statistics show readers from half the world.

If a place comes up that hasn't been seen before, she googles the email address of the parish there and sends a message.

A new entry for the index.

There are two reasons why she is so passionate about her cause: Her unbreakable faith, of which she says: "I had to work hard for it." And that she is not only a sender, but also a receiver.

Ilse Sixt on celibacy: "It's not livable in the long run"

She tells of a long phone call with a monk from a monastery in Upper Bavaria, not long ago.

The man poured himself out on her because he was masturbating and therefore feared the agony of hell.

Sending him to confess would only get the priest on the other side of the curtain in trouble, Sixt decided – and without further ado he absolved the caller himself.

sacrament.

It helped him, she says.

She is silent about his identity in the sense of the confidentiality of the confessional.

The monk is by no means the only clergyman who, out of overwhelm, has thrown himself out with the housewife about celibacy.

"In the long run, that's not livable," says Sixt.

For nobody.

The Church is leading young people who want to be priests into a dead end.

In the 1960s also the Oberpframmern pastor, she says.

It all started with this encounter when she was in her mid-30s.

When he confided in her: "I can't take it anymore." Sixt says: "People see the priest, not the people." She wrote messages to the man, about his sermons, sometimes encouraging, sometimes critical.

And baked a cake.

But the pastor took away her fear of hell when the young couple Sixt, already parents of four children, decided to use contraception - which was considered a sin.

"Raise your four children and leave me my peace!", she quotes the pastor with a smile as saying when her confession was enough for him.

That sat.

In front of the crucifix in the hall, she says good morning to the Savior every day

Ilse Sixt compares her path to faith with climbing up a tree.

She kept falling down, but always caught the last branch.

Today the doubts are over.

“It's always around me – I'm always in the mood for prayer,” she says, thumbs in her lap in constant motion.

In front of the crucifix in the hall, she says good morning to the Savior every day.

He accompanies you through always and everywhere.

And sometimes gets a slight reprimand: "You know that you have to be there," when she once slipped and fell.

Ilse Sixt is currently unable to make it to the service with the walker.

To do this, she watches church services online.

And maybe she will then email the pastor how she found the sermon.

She has the addresses.

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