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The Vatican on Thursday slammed the brakes on a German progressive movement that aims to give lay Catholics a say on doctrinal issues such as homosexuality and women priests, saying it risked causing a split in the universal church.
In a brief but stern statement, it said the so-called “Synodal Way” could not assume it had the authority to instruct bishops on doctrine or morals.
The movement, a regular gathering of equal numbers of bishops and ordinary German Catholics, has been open in its demands that the Vatican allow priests to marry, allow women to become priests and the Church to bless same-sex relationships.
The German church, though far from the largest in the world, wields enormous influence because of the vast wealth it derives from publicly collected church taxes. Its largest diocese, Cologne, is richer than the Vatican.
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Pope Francis greets the faithful after Palm Sunday Mass at the Vatican, Sunday, March 20, 2016. In his Palm Sunday homily, Pope Francis condemned what he called indifference to refugees flooding Europe, comparing it to authorities washing their hands of the fate of Jesus before his crucifixion. (Giuseppe Lammy/ANSA via AP)
The movement “does not have the ability to oblige bishops and the faithful to accept new forms of government and new approaches to doctrine and morality,” said the statement, which was not signed but experts say could not have been issued without a green light from Pope Francis.
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“It would not be lawful to initiate in the dioceses, before a concerted understanding at the level of the universal Church, new official structures or doctrines that would constitute a wound for ecclesial communion and a threat to the unity of the Church,” it said.
The move has alarmed conservatives and moderates in Germany and the world church, who fear it could lead to a mass schism similar to what happened in the Anglican and Protestant churches after they introduced similar changes in recent decades.
St. John Neumann Catholic Community Church in Reston, Virginia. (Google Maps)
At a congress in February, the 115 clergy and 115 lay people of the Central Committee of German Catholics also voted in favor of allowing priests to marry and said that sex within a same-sex marriage should not be considered wrong.
The Catholic Church teaches that priests must be celibate, that women cannot be priests because Jesus chose only men as his apostles, and that while same-sex attraction is not a sin, homosexual acts are.
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Germany’s synodal path also says that non-clergy should have a greater say in the appointment of bishops, a sensitive demand in a country where many of the faithful are frustrated by church officials’ inept handling of clerical sexual abuse cases.
Light from the windows shines on rows of empty church pews in a church sanctuary with no people in it. (iStock)
The statement said that if national churches go their own way, they risk “weakening, rotting and dying”.
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Any possible changes would have to be part of the universal church’s own synodal path, the statement said, citing consultations currently taking place around the world ahead of the bishops’ meeting in Rome next year.
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