Catholic Day struggles for reforms: Steinmeier supports

Created: 05/26/2022Updated: 05/26/2022 15:31

Georg Bätzing, Chairman of the German Bishops' Conference.

© Marijan Murat/dpa

Does Catholicism still have a future in Germany?

This question drives the Catholic Day in Stuttgart.

Virtually everyone recognizes the need for reform.

But there are “massive countermovements” internationally.

Stuttgart - Calls for fundamental church reforms dominated the first two days of the Catholic Day in Stuttgart.

"In the situation where we are now, we cheat many people of a bridge to God, and that's what I suffer from," said the chairman of the German Bishops' Conference, Georg Bätzing, in a discussion on Thursday.

"I draw strength from it to do everything in my power to change it." In the case of sexual abuse, it took the church a long time to protect not the perpetrators but the victims, admitted Bätzing.

"I can't believe it myself, how long people only looked at the perpetrators."

The Catholic Day with 1500 events is taking place again for the first time in four years.

However, much fewer participants than usual are expected by Sunday, around 25,000.

Among them are 7000 contributors alone.

90,000 people came to the 2018 Catholic Day in Münster.

The causes of this decline are likely to be the corona pandemic on the one hand, and the crisis situation of the church with the abuse scandal, which is still being processed only slowly, on the other.

Former Bundestag President Norbert Lammert (CDU) pointed out that recently, for the first time, a majority of the German population is no longer a member of one of the two major churches.

Many people left the church because they thought they could live their faith without it.

Addressing Bätzing, Lammert said: "You will not want to completely contradict my impression that alongside those who have not had any ties to the institution of the church for a long time, those who have had such a tie are now increasingly leaving."

Against this background, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke out in favor of reforms.

He wanted to "encourage those who are actively committed to the renewal of the Catholic Church in Germany," he said.

"I can tell you that not only I, but many people are looking at the work of the Synodal Path with curiosity and expectation."

The Synodal Path is a reform process in the Catholic Church in Germany that has been ongoing since 2019.

It deals with four subject areas: Catholic sexual morality, dealing with power, the position of women and the priestly duty to be celibate.

Bätzing said that there were "massive counter-movements" in the world church against the German attempts at reform.

"I get all the nice letters and I answer them kindly, politely, but hopefully decisively," he said.

Most recently, conservative bishops from the USA and other countries had protested against the synodal path in an open letter.

The President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Irme Stetter-Karp, rejected the accusation that German Catholics were heading towards secession.

"It's relatively easy to accuse us of division and on the other hand not being willing to enter into a dialogue with us." The Vatican only accepts the bishops as dialogue partners and not the lay people represented in the ZdK.

An eye-catcher at a central open-air service on Ascension Day in Stuttgart was a record-breaking large Martinsmantel made of hundreds of pieces of fabric.

At the closing service on Sunday, the cloak is to be shared again and given away - based on Saint Martin as the diocesan patron and the motto of the Catholic Day "sharing life".

The 1100 different pieces of fabric were designed and sent in by children and young people.

dpa