Germany: the Popes Response to Those Calling for Reform in the Church, by Alessandro Speciale, Vatican Insider, September 26, 2011

Germany: the Pope's Response to Those Calling for Reform in the Church

By Alessandro Speciale
Vatican Insider
September 26, 2011

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/the-vatican/detail/articolo/papa-pope-el-papa-germania-germany-alemania-8411/

Germany: The Pope's response to those calling for reform in the Church

That the situation the German Pope would find in his homeland would not be easy, was not a surprise to anyone. Even the book distributed by the German Bishops' Conference to the press after the trip did not hide the existing problems: from the age-old problem of declining vocations to that ever more urgent of drop-outs in the Church - 180 thousand only in the last year, more than those who 'entered' through baptism.

A situation that was further complicated by the pedophilia scandal that exploded last year: not only because the Church lost "credibility” within the community in general, but also, and perhaps especially in the eyes of the Pope, because it rekindled those requests for structural reforms that have been smoldering for decades, but were dormant in recent years.

From the obligation of celibacy to the role of women in the Church, from the choice of bishops to sexual morality: requests that precipitated from the famous memorandum "A necessary turning point," signed by one third of Catholic theology professors - the new 'colleagues' of Professor Ratzinger - and again in a document signed by leading politicians of the conservative party CSU.

And also issues deeply felt by the community, such as the situation of remarried divorcees - an issue that was also raised by the German President Christian Wulff, who lives this situation personally - or communion for 'mixed' Catholic-Protestant couples. All of these were raised in one form or another, before Pope Ratzinger in the many meetings had during the trip.

All this, according to critics, was done in silence and with the substantial complicity of the German bishops, not only guilty of failing to respond quite strongly to this alleged ‘insubordination’ but of actually having launched a broad "Dialogue process" with lays and their demands.

Many expected that the Pope would bend under the pressure. But instead - as predicted by someone who knows the Pope well, the German Cardinal Walter Kasper - he "took the bull by the horns."

And he did it from day one, when at the Olympiastadion in Berlin he said that those who look to the Church "stopping at its external appearance" can only foster "dissatisfaction and discontent" because they do not see "their superficial and erroneous ideas of 'Church' and their 'dreams of the Church' fulfilled."

Since then, in the four days that followed, this was the music that echoed often in the ears of Catholics and German bishops.

At the Central Committee of German Catholics - the powerful organization of lay people, many of whose members are prominent politicians - the Pope recalled that exterior richness can hide a wealth of interior poverty, even in the Church: "In Germany, the Church is well organized... but we must say that there are more structures than Spirit." He added: "The real crisis of the Church in the Western world is a crisis of faith. If we do not achieve genuine renewal of faith, all structural reforms will remain ineffective."

For seminarians, he used the group "We Are Church" - the international movement for reform in the Catholic Church – as an example and reminder that "in the community of believers, yes, there are so to say the legitimate demands of the majority, but there can never be a majority against the Apostles, against the Saints. In this case it would be a false majority."

To the faithful gathered for Mass in Freiburg, has reaffirmed that "the Church in Germany will continue to be a blessing for the Catholic community worldwide", only if it remains "closely united with the Successor of St. Peter and the Apostles," in other words the Vatican.

However, the sense of this insistence is clear only with the last major leg of the journey, the meeting with Catholics involved in the community, always in Freiburg, just before boarding the flight to Rome.

To quote a proverb, according to the Pope, those who call for reforms in the Church "look at the finger and not the moon." They ask for changes in the structures but this is of secondary importance, what matters is what gives them life.

Indeed, Benedict XVI was even more radical: when it gives "the organization and institutionalization" too much importance, the Church is becoming accommodating and is adapting to the "criteria of the world," betraying its mission.

This is why, paradoxically, secularization - that at first drained it of its temporal power, then of its privileges and now, also of many parts of its social status - should be welcomed, because "to meet its real task, the Church must constantly make the effort to break away from the worldliness of the world."

Only when it is "freed from its political and material burden" in fact, "can the Church better focus on the entire world in a truly Christian way, it can be truly open to the world. It can live its call to the ministry of worship of God and to the service of others with more ease."