"Sex, Women, Power. The Three Challenges Germany Is Issuing To the Church"

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Can we just scrap the German church and start over?

What they are arguing for has been argued for and rejected for decades.

It seems the German church is an exception and is caught in a mini time warp.
 
I don’t know that I would say “The German Church” any more than I would say, “The American Church”. Yes, there are several bishops and priests and lay people in the churches in Germany who are going off the rails. But there are plenty doing the same in the US.

It really gets on my nerves when people (mostly media) are so sloppy and slanted that they have to make it ‘all or nothing”.

So please stop hating on “the German church’ and direct your prayers to changing the minds and hearts of the SOME who are going astray, as well as strengthening the minds and hearts of those in Germany who are maintaining orthodoxy often in the face of great tribulation.
 
stpurl said:
Yes, there are several bishops and priests and lay people in the churches in Germany who are going off the rails. But there are plenty doing the same in the US.
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And if no action is taken by the Pope and Vatican in such matters where do we go from here?
 
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IanM said:
And if no action is taken by the Pope and Vatican in such matters where do we go from here?
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That’s a good question but not an easy answer. Personally i think the days of compromise are over.
 
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silentwitness said:
That’s a good question but not an easy answer. Personally i think the days of compromise are over.
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An answer of some sort and action are necessary to avoid the question that will undoubtedly follow a lack of same i.e. “Do we have a functioning papacy?”
 
IanM said:
An answer of some sort and action are necessary to avoid the question that will undoubtedly follow a lack of same i.e. “Do we have a functioning papacy?”
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I know that Germany has a system where the church is entitled to taxes from Catholic Germans. I wonder if Pope Francis favours that type of model. Maybe on an EU level? He seems to be close to certain Bishops of the church in Germany.

I think there are dangers with that model, especially when secular media and education can have such a strong influence in shaping Catholic minds.
 
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I wish I knew. Things have been, in many places ‘off the rails’ for decades now. And even when things have been addressed by the Pope/the Vatican, they often remain ‘off’.
 
I agree.
And lest people wonder, consider the state of the Church in France all through the Napoleonic years. All kinds of atrocities, all kinds of suffering, years where the people were denied access to the Church and sacraments.
And the Church in China. All kinds of atrocities, people denied the sacraments, and as with France “State sponsored’ churches, etc. etc.
Meaning that the bishops and priests went ‘off the rails’ (by kowtowing to ‘the state”.)

Also how about England under the Tudors? Virtually every bishop there went along with Henry’s decision to make himself ‘head of the church’ and to establish the Episcopal/Anglican church.

The Pope is not a micromanager. Bishops have autonomy. The Pope can speak with them, remonstrate, etc. Comes right down to it, there is really not much he can do regarding ‘individual’ bishops unless the abuse is incredibly egregious. And the fact is that especially through the 20th and 21st century, the ‘teachings’ coming out until very recent years could be twisted, because of their equivocal nature, into ‘appearing’ that they COULD be interpreted in an authentic Catholic way. It may be a bit more blatantly ‘off’ but there are still those who INSIST that these things can be a ‘doctrinal development’ or ‘legitimate point’ or ‘exercise of free speech’ or whatever. Thing is, usually it might take a few decades, but a lot of individual and even ‘many’ bishops going off (think the Arian heresy) can be corrected but not ‘in a New York minute’. A lot of times it will take a saint (like Athanasius) or a great Pope who by the Holy Spirit will know the time and the action to take to stop things —for a while—but there is never going to be a full perfection until the Second Coming.
 
I think the Holy Father allows these things to happen because healthy dialogue and hearing opposing views is healthy. It forces us to examine our faith and doctrines, and they can come out the stronger for it. Otherwise as the Holy Father says we become “self-referential”, a sort of mutual self-glorification society,

The Church needs to be messy. We will only be pure and whole after our stint in purgatory. And if one reads the Church fathers and Saint Paul’s Epistles, heresy and wrong opinions have been with us for 2000 years, and will continue to be with us until the Second Coming. Somehow, in spite of 2000 years of some people trying hard to reshape dogma and doctrine, the Church has survived with… her dogma and doctrine.
 
OraLabora said:
I think the Holy Father allows these things to happen because healthy dialogue and hearing opposing views is healthy. It forces us to examine our faith and doctrines, and they can come out the stronger for it. Otherwise as the Holy Father says we become “self-referential”, a sort of mutual self-glorification society,
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Dialogue usually doesn’t result in anything useful and it’s not like this a new topic that hasn’t been dealt with before. It’s pretty obvious what their position is and the scope of their motives.
 
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Why does the Church “need to be messy”?

I could understand you saying that the Church, in making things pure, could get a little dusty in the action of making clean. But that’s a far cry from ‘needing to be messy”.

When I redd up the house, I could just barrel through, slop the Clorox in the mop bucket, fling around the duster, splash everywhere—I could be a right mess. OR I could carefully measure things, take my time, work hard but smart, put down drop clothes, etc. My house would be just as clean and I would look pretty pulled together and tidy.

I guess I’m saying that I understand that the Church, while pure and spotless now, can have part of her struggling to stay clean and needing lots of extra help. . .

But I don’t think that part of Her existence necessitates that she NEEDS to be messy.
 
stpurl said:
Why does the Church “need to be messy”?
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Because she is a hospital for sinners and not a refuge for the perfect…as St. Benedict says, she must welcome each sinner as if Christ Himself were walking through the doors. All the baptized, and all those who want to be. Everyone wherever they are on their long road of conversion. The righteous, the sinners, the simple-minded, the erroneous, the heretics, the ill, the mentally disturbed, those who think they know better, the doubters, the rebellious, the criminals and prisoners, the LGBQT, the bigots, and I could go on. All are on a walk with Christ at varying speed. All progress and regress at various times. Some like Mother Theresa are locked in a nearly life-long darn night of the soul.

The Church is an instrument of salvation for all of the above. She needs to admit them all so she can let Christ and the Holy Spirit go to work on them. Sometimes it will fail, other times triumph. They have always been with us and always will. Without them, the Church is no longer an instrument of salvation but instead becomes an instrument of those who perceive themselves as “righteous” to self-glorify.

The place where the Church will be pure, is where she will be the Church Triumphant, that is, heaven.
 
I think we believe the same overall message but have a slightly different take. I believe the Church is pure NOW but not all of her members are. I don’t believe the Church “has to get messy’ but that rather those who are ‘messy’ come to her to get clean.
 
In any event, bishops tend to retire or pass away and may or may not be replaced by a bishop with the same ideas as the bishop who just left. It’s not like the people choose the new bishop or that the outgoing bishop gets to choose a guy who will think just like him.
 
stpurl said:
I think we believe the same overall message but have a slightly different take. I believe the Church is pure NOW but not all of her members are. I don’t believe the Church “has to get messy’ but that rather those who are ‘messy’ come to her to get clean.
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I guess it boils down to whether one sees the Church as the Bride of Christ (which it is), or the People of God (which it is also), or the Priesthood of all Believers (ditto).

In the end, we end up with an institution and buildings full of messy people 😉

From the hierarchy on down; and the hierarchy can be just as bad as us, from loosey-goosey on doctrine down to the sexual scandals that have rocked the Church.

The latter of course requires strict measures, to protect the most vulnerable members of the Church. But that’s another topic.
 
OraLabora said:
The Church is an instrument of salvation for all of the above. She needs to admit them all
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I agree totally. But surely, the inmates should not be allowed to run the asylum? How did we get from “The city of God” to a hospital for sinners?
 
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