CV NEWS FEED // A delegation of German Catholic bishops are reportedly going to travel to Rome “soon” in light of the Vatican’s request that the bishops cancel voting on creating a “Synodal Council” of laity and clergy.
As previously reported by Vatican News, last week the German Synodal Committee was set to vote on creating a “Governing and Decision-making Council” comprised of lay people and bishops “to continue discussions and make possible decisions on issues of ecclesiastical authority, the role of women, sexual morality, and priestly life.”
On February 16, 2024, the Vatican intervened before the vote on the Council took place.
Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent a letter, signed by Pope Francis, to the German bishops requesting that they refrain from voting on the Council. The Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández and the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops Cardinal Robert Prevost also signed the letter.
In response to the letter, the German bishops took the vote off their upcoming meeting’s agenda, but the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing expressed that they still intend to find a way forward with their plan of reform.
Pope Francis has repeatedly expressed opposition to this reform process, which is part of the “Synodal Path” launched by the German Church in 2019. In a January 2023 interview with Associated Press News, Francis expressed concern that the reform process was becoming “ideological,” and did not involve “all the people of God,” because it is led by “the elite.”
In his own letter to four theologians in November of 2023, Francis stressed that the council “cannot be harmonized with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church,” according to Vatican News.
The cardinals’ February 16 letter reiterated this position. As reported by Associated Press News, the February 16 letter “said such a joint council had no basis in church law and that any decision to create one would be null and void since it wouldn’t have any authority to approve any statutes, according to the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.”
AP News reported that while a date has not yet been set for talks between the Vatican and a delegation of German bishops, Bätzing has expressed that “a German delegation would soon be traveling to Rome.” Several visits to the Vatican have already happened within the past two years.
The February 16 letter sent by Parolin and the other cardinals noted that “if the statutes of the Synodal Commission were to be adopted before this meeting, the question of the purpose of this meeting, and the ongoing process of dialogue in general, would arise.”
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