19 29, March, 2020 catholicweekly.com.au Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, president of the German bishops’ conference. PHOTO: CNS, HARALD OPPITZ, KNA is co-managing the “synodal path” with the German bish- ops’ conference – recently let the cat out of the bag. Gobsmacked that buck- etloads of German money at the 2019 Amazonian synod did not produce the desired results, the Zentralkomitee responded to Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation on Am- azonia by deploring the ab- sence of a papal endorsement of married priests and women deacons. And it did so in baldly Wit- tenbergian terms: “We very much regret that Pope Fran- cis did not take a step forward in his [exhortation]. Rather, it strengthens the existing po- sitions of the Roman Church both in terms of access to the priesthood and the participa- tion of women in ministries…” “...the existing positions of the Roman Church...” Well, well. That formula at least has the merit of candour, if not theological heft. But please note what is going on here. The “Roman Church,” it seems, is but one among any number of local Churches. Which implies that the Bishop of Rome, its head, is but one Pray for priests. Start now A paradigm drift to apostasy? Y ale University’s Car- los Eire masterful- ly demonstrated in Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450- 1650 that there was no one “Protestant Reformation” but rather several religious move- ments, often in disagreement with each other, that shat- tered western Christendom in the 16th century. Still, Martin Luther’s pro- test at Wittenberg on 31 Oc- tober 1517, has long been taken as the starting gun for “the Reformation,” and vari- ous Protestant denominations celebrate “Reformation Day” on the Sunday closest to that date. So “Wittenberg” can serve as a synonym for other efforts to distance Christian commu- nities from the authority of Rome and the papacy. Which suggests that what’s afoot in German Catholi- cism today is “Wittenberg” in synodal slowmotion. In this instance, there is no nailing of contested propositions to church doors. Rather, the gears of a vast, well-funded ecclesiastical bu- reaucracy are grinding away toward outcomes that seem baked into the process from its inception: a German revi- sion (meaning abandonment) of the discipline of clerical celibacy; some form of in- stalled, or ordained, role for women in German Catholi- cism; a German substitute for the Catholic ethic of human love; a German “democrati- sation” of Church governance – in short, the dreams of the Catholic RevolutionThat Nev- er Was, realised at last from Cologne to Berlin and from Hamburg to Munich. This is the “synodal path” on which the Church in Ger- many has launched itself. The anti-Roman and an- ti-papal subtext to all this has typically been disguised or flatly denied by Cardinal Re- inhard Marx and other Ger- man Catholic bishops. But the Central Commit- tee of German Catholics – the lay Politburo (to use a more accurate and related title) that among the bishops who form the episcopal college. And that flatly contradicts both Scripture (see Matthew 16:13- 19) and the authoritative tra- dition of the Church as ex- pressed in the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitu- tion on the Church. There has been consider- able commentary suggesting that the German Church is in a de facto state of schism, a term I’ve used myself. But I’m now wondering whether that’s quite right, and whether the more appropriate description for what’s going on along this German synodal path is apostasy: an arrogant determination to break with settled Catholic doctrine in the name of a contemporary intelligence superior to what Vatican II’s Dogmatic Consti- tution on Divine Revelation called Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. That, it seems to me, is what’s implied by the formu- la used in the Central Com- mittee’s smackdown of Pope Francis. In light of this, those who believe that the Catho- lic Church does “paradigm shifts” might want to re-con- sider. For what’s happening along the German synodal path is a true paradigm shift: a shift toward the notion of the Catholic Church as a federa- tion of local Churches, each of which legitimately espouses its own doctrine, moral teach- ing, and pastoral practice. That, however, is not Ca- tholicism. It is Anglicanism. And anyone who knows any- thing about world Christian demographics knows that lo- cal-option Anglicanism hasn’t turned out very well. It is astonishing that, con- fronted by unmistakable em- pirical evidence that liberal Protestantism has collapsed around the world, German Catholic leaders, ordained and lay, seem determined to create a nominally Catholic form of liberal Protestantism through a slow-motion “Wit- tenberg.” But perhaps this sad busi- ness is not all that surprising. Almost 20 years ago, Cardi- nal Joseph Ratzinger told me that “organised Catholicism in Germany is a task force for old ideas.” At the time, we both understood him to mean the tried-and-failed ideas of the 1970s. It now looks, however, as if those “old ideas” have a 16th-century pedigree. George Weigel is the Dis- tinguished Senior Fellow and William Simon Chair in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington O ur priests hold the shrinking Church in Australia together. Without our priests, we don’t have access to most of the sacraments. And with- out the sacraments, there isn’t a Church at all. There are around 3000 priests in Australia today, but they aren’t the happiest bunch of men. The sexual abuse crisis has demoralised many of them. They’ve often been poorly formed, and sometimes their pastoral experiences have left them shattered. We don’t Our clergy have suffered. Sowe need to understand their situation and get solidly behind them, with love and prayer need to look too far to find stories of priests struggling with pornography, addictions, theft, illicit affairs with men and women, and occasional- ly suicide. Some leave the priesthood after a long slow withdrawal from the very things that at- tracted them initially. Some become affluent ‘bachelor priests’ who do just enough and no more, staying safely in a not-too-demanding metro- politan parish and enjoying their regular holidays. Then there are the ones in between, who are often lone- ly and beset by doubts about their worthiness and the ef- fectiveness of their ministry. Guys – so simple – you’re not worthy (no-one is). Your job is to administer the sacra- ments with humility and love and faith. If you’re doing that, you’re doing a good job. Let God do the measuring. The first thing that every Catholic in Australia must do is to pray for their priests. Don’t worry so much about new vocations; pray for the vocations we already have. Pray for them as if the future of the Church depended on them, because it does. What else can the Church in Australia do to help its priests remember who they are, and who they were called to be? They need more time and encouragement to be priests – to be men who can 1300 554 552 www.girafferemovals.com.au •
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[email protected] George Weigel Columnist What else can the Church in Australia do to help its priests remember who they are, and who they were called to be? They need more time and encouragement to be priests – to be men who can summon God down from heaven and give Him to other people.” COMMENT