The crisis in the Catholic Church in Germany declared itself 45 years ago with the “Königsteiner Erklärung,” a declaration of the bishops regarding Humanae Vitae in 1968. Therein they toned down the Church’s teaching, leaving it up to the conscience of individuals to decide whether to use contraception or not. The Austrian bishops did the same in the “Mariatroster Erklärung.” In 2008 therefore, Cardinal Schönborn, the head of the Austrian bishops’ conference, spoke about this as the “sin of the European episcopate.” These declarations have set the tone for the decades to come, and the faithful have in consequence become increasingly Protestant and heterodox in spirit.
A few days ago, a document from the archdiocese of Freiburg was leaked. The scandal was even greater than it should have been, since it first sounded like an official pronouncement. However, what came to light is bad enough. Zollitsch, who is head of the German bishops’ conference and archbishop of this diocese, which is the second-largest in Germany, explained that this paper had been issued without his permission, and was an unfinished working-paper for the diocesan pastoral conference, meant to discuss the improvement of the pastoral care for the divorced-remarried. The paper allows Catholics who are divorced and remarried to have access to the sacraments without repentance involving a change of life-style. All they need to do is have a few pastoral conversations, i.e. speak with a priest about the faith and the reasons their marriage broke down, in order to be allowed to receive communion again. (more...)
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