The Catholic bishops’ conference of Germany launched its “Synodal Way” Dec. 1, 2019, nominally to provide a platform for discussion and reflection on the shocking revelations of clergy sexual abuse that roiled the nation. The Synodal Way's supreme body is the Synodal Assembly. It consists of 230 members, made up of archbishops, bishops and auxiliary bishops, as well as an equal number of lay-members from the Central Committee of German Catholics. To be noted that 60 out of the country’s 67 bishops are supportive of the Synodal Way.
(1) Power and Separation of Powers in the Church - Joint Participation and Involvement in the Mission (2) Life in succeeding relationships - Living Love in Sexuality and Partnership
(3) Priestly Existence Today, and
(4) Women in Ministries and Offices in the Church
Back in 2019, in statements that alarmed the Vatican, the Synodal Assembly signaled its intent to challenge Church doctrine and discipline, and vowed to issue its own “binding” teaching on a range of sensitive matters. A plenary meeting of the Assembly on March 2022 in Frankfurt approved drafts in favor of same-sex union blessings; changes to the Catechism on homosexuality and the ordination of women priests; for priestly celibacy to be optional in the Latin Church; and for lay involvement in the election of new bishops.”
Pope Francis wrote a letter to all Catholics in Germany in June 2019, objecting to the Church in Germany’s course of action. He cautioned that a failure to heed his warning could result in “multiplying and nurturing the evils it wanted to overcome.”
But, more generally, the majority of German citizens seem to care little about the country’s “Synodal Way,” including many of the country’s 22.6 million Catholics, of whom many are lapsed or poorly catechized. “Most of them only read the headlines ‘Celibacy should be abolished!’ ‘Demand for the ordination of women as priests’; ‘Blessing of all sexual orientations,’” said Father Guido Rodheudt, a parish priest in Aachen. “The result is usually a loud yawning.”
Most critics are convinced that despite discussing changes to doctrine the German church has no intention of breaking from Rome or attempting to change doctrine without Rome’s approval, even if none of their proposals are accepted. The recent movement in Germany to bless same-sex couples in defiance of the Vatican as a sign that the German church is willing to break from Rome, but the German bishops’ conference opposed the blessings. The movement revealed the tension that sometimes exists between bishops and the progressive grassroots in Germany, but the synodal path is generally a place where those groups, among others, are seeking common ground.
Pope Francis has not made any official comments, although many people took a comment he made in November 2020 as a reference to the synodal path. He said: At times, I feel a great sadness when I see a community that, with good will, takes a wrong path because it thinks it is making the church through gatherings, as if it were a political party: the majority, the minority, what this one thinks of this or that or the other.... “This is like a synod, a synodal path that we must take.” I ask myself: “Where is the Holy Spirit there? Where is prayer? Where is communitarian love? Where is the Eucharist?” Without these four coordinates, the church becomes a human society, a political party.
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