Joachin Meisner Hertz
(ZENIT News / Frankfurt, 14.09.2022).- In an interview with the French newspaper La Croix, the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, revealed that the texts of the recent Synodal Assembly of the German Synod “will soon be translated into several languages and will be able to influence the debate in other parts of the world.”
In one of her questions, the interviewer, Delphine Nerbollier, stressed that the text on sexual morality, which emanated from the Synodal Assembly last September 8, did not get a majority and asks Cardinal Marx to explain why it did not get the two-thirds required. To which the Cardinal replied: “This text is controversial and needs more debate in the universal Church, but it’s important and we cannot drop the subject. It’s a change of paradigm and of perspective on sexual morality and social ethics. It’s a process. We are going to talk about it again in the Episcopal Conference. I would like to recall that this text was accepted by more than 80% of the Synodal Assembly’s members and by 62% of the Bishops.”
Asked if the July 2022 press release of the Holy See Press Office influenced the Bishops’ voting, Cardinal Marx said no. “I don’t think this statement influenced, because it didn’t contribute any new element. None of us wants to substitute the Pope, annul Canon Law or rewrite the Church’s Dogma. What we want is to ask questions, debate, move the discussion forward. We are part of the universal Church. We have the mission to contribute all the elements we consider important.”
Finally, in regard to the contribution of the German experience to the World Synod, the German Cardinal admitted that “some persons in Rome and in other places look at the German synodal path with some apprehension.” He recalled that they have “received, for example, letters of Bishops of Poland, the United States and the Nordic Episcopal Conference.” And this leads him to think that “that is why it’s important that we present very well argued and theologically worked texts.” Hence he reveals that they will be translated to influence other parts of the world.
