Munich, 15 February, 2024 / 12:00 pm (ACI Africa).
Ahead of a high-stakes gathering of the German bishops next Monday, a lay group warned the prelates of moving “further and further away from the people of God” on their Synodal Way and its plan to establish a Synodal Council.
The German bishops are expected to discuss — and possibly vote on — the statutes for a Synodal Committee during their spring plenary assembly, which takes place Feb. 19–22 in Augsburg.
The initiative “Neuer Anfang” (“New Beginning”), a group critical of the Synodal Way, on Thursday asked bishops to reconsider — and reminded them that Pope Francis and the Vatican have repeatedly intervened against the process and plans for a permanent body to oversee the Church in Germany.
In their open letter published Feb. 15, the German Catholics also called on bishops to accept that the very foundations on which the Synodal Way’s controversial demands are based were “made of sand”: The claim that there was an allegedly “Catholic-specific dimension of sexual abuse” had been disproven by the Protestant abuse study.
Given this lack of legitimacy and questionable premise, the Neuer Anfang argued, bishops should rather tackle the real challenges facing the Church in Germany.
