German Church leaders have offered markedly distinct responses to Querida Amazonia, the apostolic exhortation on the Amazon region released by Pope Francis Feb. 12.
Catholic officials in Germany paid close attention to the 2019 Vatican synod that preceded the papal document, because synod recommendations to relax clerical celibacy norms and ordain women as deacons closely mirrored calls made by some leaders of a two-year Church synodal process taking place in Germany.
Pope Francis’ document did not respond affirmatively to those suggestions.
The Central Committee of German Catholics, an influential lay group which is jointly managing the so-called synodal process with the German bishops’ conference, accused Pope Francis of a “lack of courage for real reforms” in his Amazonian exhortation.
The group has taken formal stances against Church teaching and discipline on a range of issues, and called for the ordination of women, the blessing of same-sex unions by the Church, and an end to clerical celibacy.
“With his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation to the Amazon Synod, Pope Francis continues the path he has chosen. He addresses the whole people of God and all people of good will in a clear and understandable, also emotional language,” said a statement published on the lay website on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, he does not find the courage to implement real reforms on the issues of consecration of married men and the liturgical skills of women that have been discussed for 50 years.”
The German lay site said that, following the publication of the working documents for the Synod on the Amazon the synodal deliberations last October, “expectations regarding concrete steps towards reform, especially with regard to access to the priestly office and the role of women, were very high.”
“We very much regret that Pope Francis did not take a step forward in his letter. Rather, it strengthens the existing positions of the Roman Church both in terms of access to the priesthood and the participation of women in ministries and ministries.”
While the lay committee’s apparently accepted that the pope has ruled out any meaningful change to clerical discipline, the head of the German hierarchy appeared to downplay the impact of Francis’s exhortation.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Münich, the outgoing head of the German bishops’ conference who attended the synod last year, released his own statement in response to the pope’s exhortation. Marx insisted that Francis did not close the door on German ambitions to end clerical celibacy, and called Francis’s letter, which has papal magisterial authority, “a framework for reflection.”
“Anyone who expected concrete decisions and instructions for action with the post-synodal letter from Pope Francis will not find them,” Marx conceded, while insisting that recommendations for change from the synod are “by no means off the table….”
Although the final synodal document was “formally presented” along with the pope’s response, Cardinal Michael Czerny, SJ, and Cardinal Lorenzo Baldesseri both emphasized during the Vatican press conference that it has no magisterial weight and does not authorize any diocesan bishop to ordain married men.
In contrast to the resignation and protests expressed, another German churchman welcomed the pope’s document.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith welcomed Querida Amazonia, saying the pope “does not want to fuel existing political, ethnic and inner-Church conflicts and conflicts of interest, but rather to overcome them.”
“The Pope does not draw from [the final synodal document] any dramatic and disconcerting conclusions,” Cardinal Müller wrote in his own response on Wednesday….
The above comes from a Feb. 12 story on site of Catholic News Agency.
Thanks to mandatory taxes, the German Church is flush with cash. Too bad they insist on flushing the faith as well. Cardinal Marx is leading the German faithful, or what’s left of them, into all kinds of trouble. He cares little about their souls, but I’m sure he has a big comfortable lifestyle, so at least there’s that…:(
These heretical German bishops do not want Christ, and Eternal Life with Him, in Heaven– which requires purification of sin, and holiness!
Maybe one day Cardinal Marx will see that the way to way to build the Church back up is not to reform it, but to live and teach the Catholicism handled down by our forefathers. We must never forget our job is to hand down the faith, not reform it. Reforming is protestantism. We already have the fullness of faith.
Well, one thing we should learn from the indigenous people of the Amazon is that I doubt they have an epidemic of breast cancer there that is exacerbated by the contraception pill, abortion and the bottle feeding of children, and I doubt any of them have Crohn’s disease. Recently it has been found that Crohn’s disease is unknown in cultures where all the women nurse their children.
As we force our women out into the workforce and our children into early daycare, whether they want to be there or not, we are suffering the terrible results.
And as far as that picture of the woman nursing a rat along with a child that was allowed in some of the church areas, I do not think any Amazonian woman is so unaware of the dangers of doing such a thing as to engage it. Whoever thought that up was misusing the people, whether it was one of their own or someone of another culture.
As Fr. Mitch Pacwa said about the Pachamama, “Stop it, just stop it.”