The study, co-funded by the bishops' conference, is gauging the attitude of Catholics around the world toward the four main themes of the German initiative: power, the priesthood, women in the Church, and sexuality.

Only 44% strongly supported the abolition of mandatory priestly celibacy and 42% firmly backed the admission of women to the diaconate and priesthood. Less than 38% strongly agreed that "the Catholic Church should reassess its stance on homosexuality."

The survey had 599 participants from 67 countries. Continue reading

Even as Catholics in Germany plan a national protest against the Vatican's ban on blessing on same-sex couples, Bishop Georg Bätzing has insisted that the protestors "are not schismatics".

"Our bond with Rome and the Holy Father is very tight," said Bätzing, just days before the May 10 protest.

The nationwide protest event was organised after Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) made a decree stating that Church does not have the power to bless homosexual unions.

German Church leaders say the Vatican's ban on such blessings is unchristian because it openly excludes people based on their sexual orientation.

The CDF document was discussed at the country's ongoing "Synodal Way", which expressed disagreement.

Bishop Bätzing said blessing same-sex couples was one of many topics discussed at the Synodal Way's forum on sexual morality.

The multi-year process brings together bishops and lay people to discuss four main topics: the way power is exercised in the Church; sexual morality; the priesthood; and the role of women.

The 60-year bishop said that the German Church started the "Synodal Way" in response to the clerical abuse and plummeting membership.

Record numbers of German Catholics have left the Church in recent years, with 272,771 people formally deserting it in 2019.

Bishops and cardinals outside of Germany have been increasingly critical of the debates in the country.

Retired Cardinals Camillo Ruini of Italy and George Pell of Australia are among those who have raised concern about the Synodal Way, which they fear is leading to a "de facto schism".

"There is a percentage of the German Church that seems to be resolutely heading in the wrong direction," said Pell, who currently resides in Rome.

Bishop Bätzing also commented on the debate in Germany over whether Protestants should be invited to receive Holy Communion in Catholic churches.

The Limburg bishop said that the current debate was not about a general invitation to Protestants to receive Communion, but rather about the Church's approach to individual non-Catholic Christians who wish to receive the Eucharist.

He said: "I personally respect such a decision and do not deny Communion when someone presents themselves who believes what we Catholics believe and desires to receive the Lord."

Sources

• La Croix International
• Catholic News Agency
• CathNews NZ Pacific

Bishop Georg Bätzing said it was necessary to respect the "personal decision of conscience" of those seeking to receive Communion.

CNA Deutsch reported that Bätzing responded to a question about a controversial proposal for a "Eucharistic meal fellowship" between Catholics and Protestants.

The proposal was made by the Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (ÖAK) in a 2019 document entitled "Together at the Lord's Table."

The ÖAK adopted the text under the co-chairmanship of Bätzing and the retired Lutheran Bishop Martin Hein.

Asked how he would respond if a Protestant came to him seeking the Eucharist, he told reporters: "I have no problems with it and I see myself in line with papal documents."

The 59-year-old bishop added that this was already a "practice" in Germany "every Sunday". He said priests in his Diocese of Limburg would not face negative consequences if a case were reported to him.

He underlined that one should not "simply invite everyone."

A general invitation to receive the Eucharist was not permitted. But Bätzing said it was important to show "respect for the personal decision of conscience of the individual" seeking Communion.

"I do not deny Holy Communion to a Protestant if he asks for it," he said.

The ÖAK document raised concerns at the Vatican. It prompted an intervention by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in September 2020.

In a letter to Bätzing, the doctrinal congregation emphasized that significant differences in understanding of the Eucharist and ministry remained between Protestants and Catholics.

"The doctrinal differences are still so important that they currently rule out reciprocal participation in the Lord's Supper and the Eucharist," it said.

"The document cannot therefore serve as a guide for an individual decision of conscience about approaching the Eucharist."

The CDF cautioned against any steps towards intercommunion between Catholics and members of the EKD.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Reporter

CathNews New Zealand

After meeting with Francis on Saturday, Bätzing said he felt "strengthened by the intensive exchange with the Holy Father to continue on the path we have taken.

"The pope appreciates this project, which he associates closely with the concept of ‘synodality' which he coined."

"It was a matter of concern to me to make it clear that the Church in Germany is following this path and always knows that she is bound to the universal Church."

Bätzing traveled to the Vatican on Saturday, the day after figures were released showing the Catholic Church in Germany lost a record number of members in 2019.

The statistics showed 272,771 people left the Church last year. In 2018, 216,078 people left the Church in Germany.

In Bätzing's diocese of Limburg, 9,439 people left the Church in 2019 - 1,459 more than in 2018.

"We must find answers to urgent challenges facing the Church, ranging from coming to terms with sexual abuse of minors to the dramatic numbers of people leaving the Church," Bätzing said on Saturday.

Bätzing says a 28-page letter Francis wrote this time last year to "the pilgrim people of God of the Church in Germany encouraged them and gave indications ... he will continue to accompany us attentively."

The letter was prompted by the German bishops' decision to launch a two-year synodal way. This would bring together lay people and bishops to discuss four main topics: the way power is exercised in the Church; sexual morality; the priesthood; and the role of women.

The German bishops initially said the process would end with a series of "binding" votes. This raised concerns at the Vatican that the resolutions might challenge the Church's teaching and discipline.

In his letter, Francis suggested synodal way participants faced a particular "temptation."

"At the basis of this temptation, there is the belief that the best response to the many problems and shortcomings that exist is to reorganize things, change them and ‘put them back together' to bring order and make ecclesial life easier by adapting it to the current logic or that of a particular group," he wrote.

Other topics Bätzing and Francis discussed in their private audience included the situation of the Church in Germany, the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19).

The first synodal assembly took place in Frankfurt at the end of January. The second meeting is expected to go ahead despite the pandemic in September.

Francis urged the synodal way and the German Church to be attentive to the poor, the elderly, refugees and others in need, according to a press statement issued by the German Bishops' Conference after Bätzing's audience.

Francis also "specifically asked that the implications and experiences of the coronavirus pandemic be considered as we continue to move forward," says Bätzing.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholic News Agency

The policy agreed to by over three quarters of the bishops will allow the non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive Communion in certain circumstances.

The policy says one of the most important conditions enabling spouses to receive Communion is that they "share the Catholic faith" on the Eucharist.

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki and six other bishops disagree with the new policy.

They wrote to the Vatican asking for clarification. They said they don't think the issue is within the competence of a local bishops' conference. They think it is a universal Church matter.

Last week six of the bishops and their secretary, a Jesuit priest, went to Rome to ask Pope Francis to rule on the matter.

They met with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), the Congregation for Bishops and with the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity.

Archbishop Luis Ladaria, the CDF prefect, then reported to Pope Francis giving him a summary of the conversations.

He returned to the delegation saying Francis wished them to continue discussion of the issue among themselves. He explained Francis is hoping for "a possibly unanimous arrangement."

Francis has sought to decentralise church decision-making in favor of local solutions. He emphasises conscience and case-by-case solutions to pastoral problems.

Source

• Crux Now
• Catholic Culture
• The Sacramento Bee
• La Croix
• Image: Zenit

Liturgiam authenticam insisted on greater fidelity to the Latin original in liturgy translations.

The conference president Cardinal Reinhard Marx has called Liturgiam authenticam, a "dead end". Read more

The decrease reflects a continuous downward trend, with only 122 diocesan priests ordained in 2005; five decades ago, in 1965, the number was 500.

While there were almost 20,000 Catholic priests in Germany in 1990, today their number has already dropped to 14,000.

The drastic decline is set to continue, judging by the figures: last year also marked the first time in history that the number of new seminarians dropped to double digits.

Only 96 new students were registered in 2015. At the same time, 309 priests passed away, and 19 left the priesthood.

The crisis of vocations to the priesthood is not just one of sheer numbers.

A recent academic study showed that amongst the current clergy, more than half - 54 percent - go to confession only "once a year or less."

Further official numbers, published in July, confirm that the precipitous decline of the faith is not just restricted to the number of vocations: average church attendance in Germany is down from 18.6 percent in 1995 to 10.4 percent in 2015.

The number of people departing the Church has increased within the same time frame, having peaked at over 200,000 annually in recent years.

The German bishops have mostly responded to the ordinations' crisis in a twofold way.

They've first abandoned the traditional parish structure in favor of larger "pastoral areas," which take different names in different dioceses.

In these, lay people, both paid and unpaid, play an increasingly important role in administering the Church.

Secondly, several dioceses in Germany have large numbers of foreign priests working for them, mostly from Poland and India.

Not all of these priests are fluent in German and/or familiar with cultural norms and traditions - which in turn occasionally leads to conflict.

Some disagree with the bishops' response, saying the drop indicates the need for reform, and others suggesting it's been artificially induced in order to change the Church.

Source:

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: www.liturgy.co.nz

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki discussed the synod in a recent interview with EWTN Germany.

The archbishop was asked about if there had been a "German-Polish" war at the synod.

Archbishop Gadecki described such talk as a "huge exaggeration".

"The issues represented by the Germans come not only from Germany, but also New Zealand, the French-speaking part of Canada, Switzerland," he said.

"So, it is not only the German side.

"Content-related differences do not comply with languages, but one bishop is of this opinion, the other bishop holds that opinion.

"Conjuring up images of a Third World War at the synod is a little funny."

New Zealand's episcopal representatives at the synod were Cardinal John Dew and Bishop Charles Drennan.

New Zealand lay people Dr John Kleinsman and Sharron Cole also participated in the synod.

During the synod, Bishop Drennan blogged about the positions taken by those raised under communism or who had been trained in seminaries under professors who grew up under communist regimes.

"Ok, inevitably the brutal experience of communism marks the person deeply but can paralysis of thinking lead anywhere?," Bishop Drennan wrote.

"Isn't dynamism inherent to the role of being successors to the apostles?"

Archbishop Gadecki stressed that the synod is "not the final voice of the Church".

"The synod is only a movement towards collegiality between the Pope and the bishops occurring with and under the Pope.

"The synod is useful only insofar as it serves this collegiality."

He also criticised the synod's final document for not clearly offering a real doctrine of the love of God, "which is the starting point, of sin and grace, practically, also of salvation".

"Many synod fathers returned with astonishment, affirming that they have tried to point out that the document does not speak very openly of sin — as if we were ashamed," the archbishop said.

"In order not to hurt the sinner, we have to make use of euphemisms, delicate language that says a certain behaviour is not compliant with rules, with norms."

It has been predicted that Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation on the family will be released this month.

Sources

• National Catholic Register
• Catholic News Agency
• NZCBC
• Pompallier's People blog
• National Catholic Register
• Image: Catholic World Report

The auxiliary Bishop of Hamburg, Bishop Hans-Jochen Jaschke, spoke of this on a German television talk show "Nachtcafe".

Bishop Jaschke mentioned the meeting between the German bishops and the Pope on November 20 last year.

The hypothesis of ordaining married men as priests in order to celebrate Mass in far-flung regions with a scarcity of clergy, especially in Latin America, came up.

Francis "made no sign of refusal", Bishop Jaschke said.

The bishop added that the Pope "is not a dictator" and will act so as to make such measures "universally acceptable" to the Church as a whole.

But the fact that Francis wants to proceed in this direction would seem to be a certainty, wrote Vatican commentator Sandro Magister.

Magister has previously written that married priests is a likely topic for the next synod of bishops.

Meanwhile, last week, a conference on priestly celibacy took place at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

The first speaker was Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the congregation for bishops, who spoke about "Celibacy and Christ's nuptial bond with the Church".

The secretary of the Congregation for Clergy, Archbishop Joël Mercier, spoke of Blessed Pope Paul VI's 1967 encyclical "Sacerdotalis Caelibatus" as "entirely valid in our own time as well".

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin also spoke at the conference, addressing the topic "the priest ordained ‘in persona Christi'".

Sources

• L'Espresso
• L'Espresso
• Image: Jewish Voice from Germany

Björn Odendahl said this on Katholisch.de in an article entitled "The Romantic, Poor Church".

"Of course the Church is growing there. It grows because the people are socially dependent and often have nothing else but their faith," he wrote.

"It grows because the educational situation there is on average at a rather low level and the people accept simple answers to difficult questions [of faith].

"Answers like those that Cardinal Sarah of Guinea provides."

Continue reading

Pope Francis spoke to the German bishops in audience on November 20 and offered a blunt assessment of their nation's church.

The Pontiff said he hoped the Jubilee Year of Mercy might revive the sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist in a country where "one can truly speak of an erosion of the Catholic faith".

In Confession, the Pope said, "is the beginning of the transformation of each individual Christian and the reform of the Church".

Francis called for a better understanding of the Eucharist and for the German Church to model itself on the early Christians rather than place its faith in institutions.

The Pope praised the German church's charitable initiatives and assistance to refugees.

But he noted the decline in Mass-going from the 1960s to a situation now when Sunday Mass attendance by German Catholics is often below 10 per cent.

"The sacraments are always approached less often. The sacrament of Penance is often missing. Fewer and fewer Catholics receive the sacrament of Confirmation or contract a Catholic marriage," he said.

"The number of vocations to the ministerial priesthood and to the consecrated life has significantly diminished. Given these facts, one can truly speak of an erosion of the Catholic faith in Germany."

Pope Francis said Germany's bishops should be inspired by the biblical couple of Priscilla and Aquila, who travelled with St Paul and strengthened the early Church.

"The example of these ‘volunteers' can help us reflect, given the trend towards a growing institutionalisation," Francis said.

"We always inaugurate new facilities, from which, in the end, the faithful are missing," he said.

"It is a sort of new Pelagianism, which puts its trust in administrative structures, in perfect organisations."

Francis called on the bishops to pray, undertake new forms of catechesis and evangelisation and take seriously their role as teachers of the faith.

Paralysed resignation is not the answer to the crisis, added the Pope, who also warned against worldliness.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Catholic World News
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Patheos

Cardinal Reinhard Marx told a German newspaper the German Church "cannot wait" for synodal statements, as marriage and family ministry has to be undertaken now.

The German bishops therefore want to publish their own pastoral letter on marriage and family after the synod, the article stated.

"We are not just a subsidiary of Rome," Cardinal Marx said.

"Each episcopal conference is responsible for the pastoral care in their culture, and has to proclaim the Gospel in its own unique way.

"We cannot wait until a synod states something, as we have to carry out marriage and family ministry here."

As far as doctrine is concerned, the German episcopate remains in communion with the Church, the cardinal said.

But on individual issues of pastoral care, "the synod cannot prescribe in detail what we have to do in Germany".

Cardinal Marx and the majority of German bishops favour German Cardinal Walter Kasper's proposal to allow some divorced and civilly remarried Catholics to receive Communion after a period of penance.

Cardinal Marx hopes the synod will result in "a further discussion", and said that it must find a text that "would lead to further progress" towards finding a common theological position on fundamental issues.

But he said theological questions regarding marriage, the family and sexual morality could not be answered during the three weeks of the synod.

Recently, in a book-length interview, Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, said detaching the Church's Magisterium from pastoral practice amounted to a form of heresy.

"The idea of placing the Magisterium in [a] jewellery box and detaching it from pastoral practice, which could evolve at the mercy of circumstances, fashions and passions, is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology," Cardinal Sarah said.

"So I say solemnly that the African Church will strongly oppose any rebellion against the teaching of Jesus and the Magisterium."

Sources

• National Catholic Register
• The Tablet
• Image: John Thavis

In a statement, the bishops said the Great War's dimensions were "shocking".

The conflict from 1914 to 1918 left 16 million dead and 21 million wounded.

The centenary of the outbreak of the war was on July 28.

The German bishops said the conflict was of "previously unimaginable proportions", in which poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction were used.

It added that Europe's Christian Churches had also played their part in "war-mongering" at the outbreak of fighting.

"Although the Catholic Church had distanced itself from nineteenth-century nationalism by virtue of its universal character, many bishops, priests and faithful took the side of those welcoming the war as a chance for spiritual and moral renewal," they said.

"We know today that many people, including those high up in the Church, brought guilt upon themselves, failing in the national blindness to perceive the suffering of the war's victims, and realising too late the consequences of absolute loyalty to their respective nations."

In their statement the bishops paid tribute to Catholic priests and military chaplains who worked for peace and reconciliation, and to Pope Benedict XV, who "repeatedly urged" the warring parties to go to the negotiating table rather than take up arms.

Nationalism, if taken to extremes, still posed a threat to peace today, the German bishops stated.

"Our times demand an effective response in asserting the common interests of the human family against destructive self-interest," they said.

Pope Francis referred to World War I in his Sunday address at the Vatican on July 27, one day before the centenary.

The Pontiff begged humanity not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

He also lamented the modern conflict between Israel and Palestine and the violence in Ukraine and Iraq.

The Pope begged for the world to avoid the carnage that took place a century ago, which then-Pope Benedict XV called a "useless massacre".

"Brothers and sisters, never war, never war!" Francis pleaded.

Sources

• The Tablet
• New York Daily News
• Image: Salon.com

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, chairman of the German Episcopal Conference, says that in reflecting on the opposition to the plan from Archbishop Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he remembers that "a prefect is not the pope."

"As President of the Bishops' Conference I have, in recent years, after our spring and autumn meeting, traveled to Rome to explain our position," Zollitsch said in a Dec. 29 interview with the German newspaper Die Welt that has been partially translated by Dutch blogger Mark de Vries.

"If a prefect of one the various congregations would then oppose this position, I would think to go slowly," he continued. "A prefect is not the pope. I look for dialogue, and for me that is the way of collegiality and the dialogue in the church."

Zollitsch, who has led the German bishops since 2008, is referring to a plan by the prelates to allow remarried Catholics to make a "responsible decision in conscience" to receive sacraments after consulting their priest.

That plan, first fully disclosed by the Germans in November, was rebuked by Müller in October in a 4,600-word article in the Vatican's semi-official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

Defending current practice that divorced Catholics must seek an official annulment from the church before remarrying, Müller said the "entire sacramental economy" could not be swept aside by an "appeal to mercy" on the matter.

The doctrinal official's article seemed to take a different tack than the pope, who told reporters accompanying him on his plane back from Rio de Janeiro in July that church law governing marriage annulments also "has to be reviewed, because ecclesiastical tribunals are not sufficient for this."

Speaking to the German newspaper, Zollitsch said Müller could not take re-examining the church's handling of issues of divorce and remarriage "off the table."

"How can this topic be off the table?" Zollitsch, the retired ordinary of the Freiburg im Breisgau asked. "35 to 40 percent of marriages end in divorce these days."

Source

• NCR

The head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has said the bishops cannot do that because mercy is not a valid principle to use in pastoral care where the sacrament is concerned.

Doctrine? Maybe. Faith? Not so much.

In any case, the bishops are going ahead with their plan. They are affirming what Pope Francis has said, that Roman officials do not "outrank" diocesan bishops, but must serve as aids to the bishops' ministry.

The Germans have recently made another move in defiance of Roman commands that deserves attention and belated emulation.

The First Sunday of Advent, was to be the day on which German-speaking Catholics would begin using a new translation of the liturgy. Like the one that has been used for two years in English-speaking churches, it would be more Latin than local.

The English version uses English words in Latin sentence order, Latinate repetition and vocabulary that comes from Latin rather than English roots; presumably the German is similar.

However, the German bishops recently announced that they would not introduce the new version because of wide opposition to the translation's sins against the German language.

Something that English-speaking bishops were afraid to do in the previous papacy is now being done by Germans apparently emboldened by the pastoral approach of Pope Francis.

The new translation two years on

Sunday was the second anniversary of the imposition of the English version.

How have we fared after two years with it?

Congregations have gotten used to their responses, though children probably sometimes think that the Holy, Holy, Holy prayer is to the Lord God of communion wafers.

But what of those for whom the greatest changes were introduced, the priests?

Surveys have shown that a huge majority of priests are still, after two years, united in their dissatisfaction with the maltranslation.

Many say that trying to use it actually hinders their prayerful leading of the liturgy.

If anything, their discomfort has grown as they have struggled to proclaim prayers whose tortured word order and repetitions are close to gibberish if spoken aloud before a congregation that cannot go back over the words to figure out the grammar.

How does one proclaim a sentence that begins with the object of the verb rather than the subject, something entirely possible in Latin, but which English-speaking priests now know is at least strange in their language?

Rewriting to make sense of it

The answer is that increasingly priests are not trying.

A pastor in the United States said that the only good thing he could say about the new translation is that it forces him to read the prayers on Saturday so that he will know how to revise them for proclamation on Sunday.

The majority of priests in his diocese admit among themselves that they engage in the same editing process, turning the prayers into real English. In other words, many congregations do not hear the new version.

Two years ago I wrote: "Priests who want to help their communities pray will gradually, but increasingly, begin to rework and reword the translation we have been given.

Instead of an authorized new translation from Latin such as was approved by the world's English-speaking bishops in 1998, we will now get an unauthorized plethora of ad hoc translations from Gibberish. I am not saying that should happen, but it shall happen."

Well, it has happened. What's next?

Time to implement the 1998 version, officially or unnofficially

The 1998 translation that was meant to correct the hastily done 1973 translation has already been approved unanimously by all the English-speaking bishops' conferences of the world, but was suppressed by curial officials who were not even English speakers.

So, why should not some conferences declare that translation valid for use in their countries? Failing that, individual bishops might take that initiative on their authority as leaders of worship in their dioceses.

Otherwise, my next prediction will come true.

Priests will increasingly on their own initiative begin using the 1998 translation once they get a copy, available for downloading after only a few minutes' search on the Internet.

Or, they will dig out their 1973 Sacramentaries, even in dioceses like that in which my friend the pastor serves and where the bishop thought he had confiscated them all in order to prevent just that sort of thing.

It is time for English-speaking bishops to learn from their German confreres and take back responsibility for the life and worship of their people.

Fr William Grimm is publisher of ucanews.com based in Tokyo.

Image: ucanews.com

"We already have our own guidelines, and the pope has now clearly signaled that certain things can be decided locally," said Robert Eberle, spokesman for the archdiocese of Freiburg in a news article published by the Catholic News Service.

"We're not the only archdiocese seeking helpful solutions to this problem, and we've had positive reactions from other dioceses in Germany and abroad, assuring us they already practice what's written in our guidelines," he said.

Eberle's comments followed the disclosure by Bishop Gebhard Furst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart Nov. 23 that the bishops' would adopt proposals on reinstating divorced and remarried parishioners as full members of the church during their March plenary.

Fuerst told a meeting of lay Catholics earlier that the bishops had already drafted reform guidelines and aimed to approve them at their next plenary meeting in March.

Readmitting twice-married Catholics to full membership in the Church is a pressing concern for Pope Francis, who has called a special synod of bishops next October to consider ways to do this despite Catholicism's rejection of divorce.

Fuerst was the most explicit of several German bishops to rebuff Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, head of the Vatican doctrinal office, who last month ruled out any change after Freiburg archdiocese in Germany unveiled its own reform proposals.

Catholics who divorce and remarry in a civil ceremony are barred from receiving communion under Vatican doctrine that applies to the worldwide Church. Many of them see this as a sign of rejection and drift away from the faith.

Sources

Catholic News Service
National Catholic Reporter
Reuters
Image: Reuters

After being accused of lavish spending, Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg has travelled to Rome to meet officials at the Vatican, where Pope Francis has made it clear he prefers Church leaders to adopt a simple lifestyle.

Controversy over Bishop Tebart-van Elst has focused on cost overruns on his luxurious new residence complex and related renovations, now priced at $NZ50 million.

The bishop reportedly can afford this expenditure because German dioceses have untaxed secret reserves called the "bishop's chair", known only to the bishop and a few advisors.

In some older dioceses, "bishop's chair" reserves include age-old property holdings, donations from former princely rulers and funds from German states over the past two centuries.

As pressure increases for transparency in the Church's financial affairs, some dioceses are now revealing the extent of their "bishop's chair" funds.

Cologne, the largest and reportedly richest diocese in Europe, announced "in connection with the current discussion about Church finances" that its archbishop had reserves equal to $NZ268 million in 2012.

The small diocese of Trier, Germany's oldest, had a reserve of $NZ136 million and said part of its earnings went to pay damages to victims of the clerical sexual abuse scandals that rocked the German Church in recent years.

The increasing exodus of disillusioned Catholics from the Church in Germany has even alarmed the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose spokesman said the situation in Limburg was proving a burden to the Catholic Church.

Christians in Germany pay a church tax, which in 2012 raised more than $NZ8 billion for the Catholics and more than $NZ7 billion for the Protestant churches.

A Catholic who formally resigns from the Church no longer has to pay this tax.

Sources:

Reuters

The Tablet

Associated Press

Image: Vatican Insider

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the president of the German liturgy commission Ecclesia celebrans (the equivalent of the English Vox Clara), presented the new translation.

His report said: "In comparison to the current German-language missal, whose high textual quality stands without question, the translation of the commission is marked by a style that can be designated as tighter, more sober and concentrated."

Continue reading

But some Catholic doctors, who say the bishops relied on inaccurate medical information, question the assertion that this pill can function solely as a contraceptive.

The bishops came to their decision during a meeting of their episcopal conference just one month after two Catholic hospitals had been criticised for refusing to treat a victim of sexual assault.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, the president of the conference, said the Church would remain firmly opposed to the use of any drugs that cause abortions.

In Spain, Dr Justo Aznar said he would write to the German bishops "to give them some scientific light about this topic".

"One could use the morning-after pill if we had the certainty that it was just a contraceptive, because in the case of rape that would be a positive thing," said Dr Aznar, head of pathobiology at La Fe Hospital, Valencia.

But he said there is scientific evidence that the pill also has an anti-implantation effect and is therefore also abortifacient. "I would say that approximately in half of the cases it acts as a contraceptive and the other half it has an anti-implantation effect."

Dr Simon Castellvi, president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, said that "the morning-after pill works as an anti-implantation product in 70 per cent of the cases where the woman is fertile".

Dr Catherine Vierling, who studied medicine at the Universities of Paris and Strasbourg, said: "There is absolutely no such pill with a 100 per cent guarantee that it will not cause an abortion."

But Dr John Haas, a bioethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center and a permanent member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the morning-after pill could be used ethically if it was first determined that the woman had not ovulated.

Once it was determined that ovulation had not taken place — and that pregnancy could not have occurred — the standard morning-after pill could be used for its contraceptive effects.

Sources:

Spiegel Online

Catholic News Agency

Catholic News Agency

Image: Spiegel Online