Pope Francis, on Wednesday January 5, received a manifesto, backed by almost 6,000 Catholics, challenging the German “Synodal Way.”
Newsroom (07/11/2021 09:00 AM, Gaudium Press) A group of pilgrims presented Pope Francis with a “reform manifesto” critical of the German Synodal Path, reported the German Catholic news agency KNA. The manifesto offers a nine-point alternative plan for the Catholic Church in Germany, arguing that the Synodal Way will fail to produce genuine reform.
On the sidelines of the pope’s Jan. 5 general audience, representatives of the “Neuer Anfang” (“New Beginning”) initiative handed him a pamphlet containing their own statements on themes that are dealt with in the Synodal Path consultations, launched by the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics.
A member of the group said they had handed the manifesto directly to the pope because its views had no chance of being accepted by Synodal Path members in Germany.
In their manifesto, they thanked the pope for initiating a world Synod of Bishops on synodality and said the “Synodal Path in Germany is getting out of hand.”
“The joy of the Gospel” appeared to be getting lost in the “bickering of politicized groups,” the text said. “In its fixation on external structure, the Synodal Way misses the heart of the crisis; it violates the peace in congregations, abandons the path of unity with the universal Church, damages the church in the substance of its faith, and paves the way towards schism.”
The manifesto and a “Letter from the Pilgrim People of God to the Pope” stem from an initiative launched by Bernhard Meuser, a German publicist, and Martin Brüske, a theologian who teaches in Switzerland.
The “Faith Manifesto,” signed by around 6,000 people from Germany and other European countries, contains nine theses. They include the legitimacy of the Synodal Path, the unity of the church, power, women, marriage, laypeople and priests as well as abuse. The manifesto sharply criticizes the demands of the Synodal Path, which amount to a “self-secularization of the church,” as Meuser told KNA. “We reject its claim to speak for all Catholics in Germany and to make binding decisions for them,” it says. “The lay people involved in the Synodal Way are representatives of associations, societies, and committees with the addition of arbitrarily consulted third parties.”
“The proposals and claims of this movement, which is legitimized neither by vocation nor representation, testify to a fundamental distrust of the sacramental Church, constituted, as it is, by apostolic authority; their proposals will, once implemented, ultimately effect a committee‐oriented, outward and permanent ‘lay’ redistribution of power and secularization within the Church.”
The manifesto contains a set of proposals: Any reform must take place in unity with the universal church; there must be no separate national paths; power in the church must serve and be legitimate and transparent.
“There is indeed also abuse of power in the church,” it says. However, it adds that it does not want “a church of officials and functionaries.”
The sacramentality of the church must be preserved, as must the difference between clergy and laypeople, the manifesto says. Women’s abilities must be more strongly recognized; however, their non-admission to the priesthood is not discrimination, it adds. It also supports the special status of traditional marriage as a sacrament and opposes the blessing of same-sex couples.
The text was also published on the website of the Arbeitskreis Christliche Anthropologie (Christian Anthropology Working Group), which held a study day last November during which German Cardinal Walter Kasper accused the Synodal Way’s organizers of downplaying the need for evangelization.
In June 2019, Pope Francis sent a 19-page letter to German Catholics urging them to focus on evangelizing in the face of a “growing erosion and deterioration of faith.” The manifesto, which says that the pope’s letter was “simply ignored” by Synodal Way organizers.
The authors of the “New Beginning” manifesto argue that the Synodal Way overlooks Pope Francis’ appeal in his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium for all the baptized to recognize that they are “missionary disciples” called to engage in evangelization.
“Only a church that makes spiritual maturity and independence a central goal is able to respond substantially and sustainably to the experience of abuse and cover‐up in all its variants,” the text says.
The Synodal Way was originally expected to end in October 2021, but was extended to February 2022 due to the pandemic. Organizers announced in the fall that the initiative would be extended again to 2023.
