(ZENIT News / Rome, 29.02.2024).- It was in the Spring of 2019 when the German Episcopate decided to undertake a Synodal Way in response to the scandals of abuse by members of the clergy, which shook the Catholic Church in the country. Soon the Synodal Way was only the pretext (and the instrument) to change not only pastoral discipline but also doctrine: sexual morality, women’s ordination, episcopal and priestly authority were put on the table with loaded interventionism from a progressive sector of the German laity, specifically, the Central Committee of German Catholics. Celibacy was put at the center of all the evils in the Catholic Church, beginning with that of abuses.
However, a Report on sexual abuses in the German Evangelical Church (GEC), presented on January 25, 2024, cast doubt on the principle of the “Catholic” German Synodal Way, on which the reforms were based. The Forum Study revealed something unexpected: that the amount of persons abused and of Ministers of Worship or Protestants Pastors involved (who are not celibate) is greater than what was thought.
Bu there are many more details: the bad management practice, the lack of protocols, the sluggish collaboration by the parties implicated in providing data for the Report, the lack of complaints to the civil authority, the protection of Pastors, the preponderance of abuses on men (64.7% of the victims were men and about 35.3% women) by men (99.6% are men) . . . For Katharina Kracht, professor and member of the Advisory Council of the German Evangelical Church’s study on abuse, the narrative that the Catholic Church is more affected by sexual abuses than the GEC is no longer sustainable. In other words, there is not a “Catholic abuse.”
Hans Zollner, a critic of the way the Catholic Church is handling the issue of abuse and former member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, shares Kracht’s opinion. In an interview with Katholisch, he said: “it was known that sexual abuses were not a specifically Catholic problem, and that the structure of the Catholic Church and celibacy could not be considered the only cause of abuses. What matters is how power and abuse can be exercised in a system.” And when asked, then, if the idea of the German Synodal Way to lower celibacy is wrong, he answered: “it’s too myopic to think that married priests or more women in the leadership of the Church would avoid abuses on heir own. There is no monocausal connection between certain ecclesiastical structures and abuse; it’s much more complex. This can also be seen in cases of abuse in Switzerland, where lay Catholics have had, for quite some time, more power in the Church. Not even this was able to avoid abuses and coverup. These are more fundamental questions.”
Hence, has celibacy really been the cause or has that idea simply been transmitted? The reality is that there are effects of perception in the line that celibacy presents as cause. And this has vocational consequences. The President of the German Catholic Episcopate and Bishop of Limburg, Monsignor Georg Bätzing has been able to see this, who, for the first time in the Diocese’s history doesn’t have a single candidate for Priestly Ordination this year. Things are not to be celebrated in Germany: in 2021 there was a total of 62 new priests (48 Diocesan and 14 Religious) whereas in 2022 there were only 45 Ordinations (33 Diocesan and 12 Religious). It was in fact Bätzing who in 2020 said that classic Catholic sexual morality . . . was a risk factor,” when commenting on a Report on abuses in his own Diocese.
An editorial in Die Tagespost of last February 2, picked up very appropriately the effect that the Report on abuses in the German Evangelical Church has ended by having in the German Synodal Way: the synodal house of cards is falling. Not only does the fall have consequences for the Synod itself — intervened recently also by the Pope –, but also for the economy of the Dioceses. The largest have announced increasing cuts in the pinguid contributions reaching their coffers through the ecclesiastical tax. Many Catholics are leaving the Church and the reason is that they are practicing Catholics who don’t want to finance what goes against their faith.
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