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Faction Fighting in the Vatican: Pope Pressured to Punish Reformist German Bishops

2023-03-25T18:47:48.238Z


It was done by an influential Cardinal Gerhard Müller. The war grows between the openers and the conservatives in confrontation with Francisco.


"Blessing homosexual couples is blasphemy and Pope Francis should take disciplinary action against German bishops who support same-sex unions and hold other heretical views," says one of the Church's most prominent

cardinals

. Gerhard Ludwig Muller.


Müller is also German, a famous theologian flirted with conservatives and traditionalists opposed to the Argentine Pope.

A new book by Cardinal Müller will be published at the end of this month.

Theme: the Pope.

There are great expectations.

In his demand for punishment, Müller refers to the access of women to the priesthood, the farewell to compulsory celibacy, the blessing of homosexual couples and other taboo subjects that have ceased to be taboo in the last three years, turned into banners of renewal

that raised by the German Catholics

in their own Synodal Way.

Müller has practically had no new commissions since July 1, 2017, when the Pope did not renew his appointment as guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy as prefect of today's Department for Doctrine, after five years of misunderstandings between the German cardinal and Jorge bergoglio.

Müller was the heir to that strategic position of Joseph Ratzinger, who as Pope Benedict XVI promoted him in 2012 as his successor in the Doctrine of the Faith.

His figure is today opposed by all the adversaries of Francisco as the theologian faithful to doctrinal orthodoxy.

Müller refuses to enter into the conspiracies against the pontiff, although both do not mutually swallow but respect each other.

Sometimes they talk, "but the Pope always does the opposite of what I tell him," Müller jokes.

Pope Francis attempts a path of openness in the Catholic Church.

Photo: REUTERS

meeting in the vatican


Bergoglio and Müller are destined in the coming months to deal with the arrival of the Synod of Synods, which will take place from October and will last until 2024.

There will be

two world assemblies in continuity in which the great problems of the Church will be dealt with

, especially those that divide it.

A climactic moment of the last phase of Bergoglio's pontificate will have arrived.

The most controversial issues already have his standard bearer.

The Church of Germany is the richest in the Catholic world after the North American.

Both represent

opposite poles

.

To the left, stubborn German reformism.

Increasingly conservative line in the United States.

The clash is inevitable

and the scenario is the Vatican, which since October will host the world assembly of bishops convened by Francis, the Synod of Synods, which in 2024 will have a second final meeting.

The moat opened by the disputes is increasingly wide and endless.

The differences between Rome and Berlin, despite the efforts of the Vatican, are so evident that there is open talk about how to avoid a schism that, according to the German clergy, is a risk that does not exist.

Pope Benedict XVI promoted Cardinal Gerhard Müller as successor in the doctrine of the faith.

Photo: AFP

The fight for gay couples


But the president of the German Episcopal Conference, Monsignor George Balzing, went on television in his country a few days ago to ratify that the

blessing of homosexual couples

will continue to be guaranteed to those who request it in Germany.

A new act of war.

The Catholic doctrine, stamped in the Catechism, establishes that not the tendencies, but the homosexual acts are

an objective disorder

condemned as a sin.

The Pope recently, through Cardinal Pietro Parolin, his Secretary of State, ratified to the German episcopate the prohibition to modify doctrine and rules unilaterally.

Monsignor Balzing said on television that "the practice of blessings exists and we want to bring it to light."

“Bishops must ask themselves if a love relationship between two people is a good thing.

If so, people can receive God's blessing, it seems logical to me.

The president of the German Episcopate plunged his finger further into the sore spot and praised the Belgian bishops "who have already implemented this practice", a contagion that embitters and worries

the Pope.

When asked if this is not

an open challenge

to the constituted power in the Church, Monsignor Balzing replied that for four years laymen and religious at all levels have extensively discussed the most difficult issues of the German Church and that "our action will not change.

A challenge.

The Vatican has already responded several times that the practice of homosexuality is a sin, disorderly and immoral conduct, which cannot be transformed into something good simply because the couple asking for a religious blessing wishes it to.

Two years ago the Vatican, which responded to the doubts by confirming the ban on priests blessing "sexual practice outside of marriage."

In addition, there is no indissoluble marriage except between a man and a woman, "a couple open to the transmission of life."

The core of the scandal for the Pope is that homosexual unions and their claim to be blessed somehow represent an imitation of analogy with "the nuptial blessing evoked over man and woman."

The storm has been intensified by the experiments of the Flemish Church of Belgium, which has in fact broken the barriers imposed by Rome and proceeds in complete autonomy to bless homosexual couples.

Cardinal Jozef de Kezel and other Flemish bishops have adopted a liturgical text for cases of blessings between homosexuals asking God to bless and perpetuate "the commitment of love and fidelity."

Controversies

are the order of the day and Cardinal Parolin, head of the Roman Curia, admitted that there is a tear but that "dialogue with the churches in Germany and Belgium continues.

"

Despite the fact that the dialogue is between the deaf and the paths of the Vatican and the German Church follow an inevitable path of collision, Monsignor Baetzing, on behalf of the German bishops, assures that "no schism is on the horizon and nobody is thinking about these devastating hypotheses ”.

The German synodal path that began three and a half years ago with the papal blessing, had its final meeting of bishops, clergy and laity a few days ago while the number of faithful (200,000 in 2022) who abandon Catholicism

grows

.

A gay marriage with the blessing of a church in Cologne, Germany.

in May 2021. Photo: EFE

It is worth noting that similar losses are recorded by Protestants, while non-believers grow dramatically and the process of social secularization spread throughout the world.

women priests


The Vatican flatly rejected the project of the German Church to establish a permanent Synodal Council.

Rome warned that the foreseeable scenario of discussions between laity and clergy would limit the authority of the bishops.

A few months ago, the Bishop of Mainz, Monsignor Peter Kohlgraf, declared himself in an interview with the Catholic agency KNA in favor of the priestly ordination of women.

The Church continues to postpone the other half of heaven.

It's actually the most difficult and unfair problem facing institutional Catholicism: keeping women off the altar.

“There are good reasons for women's access to the priesthood and we cannot leave the issue out of the discussions,” Kohlgraf said.

Canon law establishes the immediate excommunication of the bishop who ordains a woman as a priest, who would also suffer excommunication.

It would be a schismatic disobedience of the rules.

The president of the German Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Baetzing, came to the aid of Bishop Khalgraf, stating that he considers a woman priest "imaginable" in the future of the Catholic Church.

“A deaconess would be the first step,” Baetzing explained.

"I feel it in our parishes."

“The Church cannot ignore the issue.

I think we need the strength of women and we must have confidence in them," said the head of the German bishops.

Monsignor Baetzing also spoke out for the end of celibacy for priests.

This is an arduous but minor problem, since it refers only to the discipline of Latin rite priests, who make up more than 90% of the world's ecclesiastical army of half a million priests.

Those of the Eastern rite can marry and also those of the Latin rite who receive a special dispensation from the pontiff.

The huge problem is

how to manage such a change.

Renouncing celibacy is not popular today among priests because celibacy guarantees them that the Church will take care of them from seminary to grave.

Forming a family involves enormous organizational problems if a new system of priests with a wife and children spreads.

It is already known that this Pope will not authorize the marriage of Latin rite priests, the access of women to the priesthood, the blessings of homosexual couples and not to mention the question of other sexual gender variants.

But the synodal path that the German Church calls for has a future and Francis himself knows it even though he deals with the real times of the Immobile Church, which are slow, sometimes very slow, as the women can testify, who cannot put a stop to it. a safe foot at the altar, as they have always had the right because they are the majority of the Catholic people.

Vatican correspondent

BC


look too

The 10 years of Pope Francis: in the fullness of power and the weapon of the Synods to contain rebellions and promote changes

The 10 years of Pope Francis: a stormy future and no trips to Argentina

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-03-25

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