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(LifeSiteNews) – Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishop’s Conference (DBK), has demanded that Catholic Church teaching on homosexuality and the role of women “must be changed.”
Bätzing made the comments in a May 22 interview which dealt extensively with his desire for change in the Church, along with his disappointment at Pope Francis for not ushering in enough change.
Meanwhile Bishop Bätzing is forging ahead with radical attempted changes to Church teaching in Germany via the Synodal Way, looking to “change” teaching on many areas of sexuality, including opening the door to approving “practiced homosexuality,” female deacons, along with advocating masturbation and contraception.
Pope Francis ‘disappoints’ Bätzing for not changing Church enough
“The Pope disappoints me too, but in the sense of a deception,” said Bätzing. “Even in the Catholic Church, the Pope is not the one who could turn the Church upside down, even with all the rights that are due to him, which we wish for. He does what he can.”
READ: Cardinal Pell: Pope ‘will have to speak’ against dissident German Synod
Alluding to the current Synod on Synodality, Bätzing suggested this was part of the Pope’s plan to do “what he can” in the process of “change”:
He sets a process in motion where all these questions come up on the table. For the World Synod in 2023 and when it comes to questions like “Can the groups also take part, can LGBTQ people take part too?” he always says: everyone.
Yet, despite his disappointment at the lack of change in the Bergoglian Vatican, Bätzing said he would not follow Father Andreas Sturm, former Vicar General of the Diocese of Speyer, in leaving the Church in frustration. The head of DBK instead said that “I have the impression that a lot is changing at the moment,” while noting that if “nothing would change,” he would leave the Church.
Church teaching on homosexuality
In response to a question posed about his previous opposition to “blessing” same-sex couples – because such an action would sever him from the Church – Bätzing responded that this does not still apply. “No, I would not say so,” he said. “That was the beginning of a process in the diocese, a conversation process, discussion process, which led to a resolution in the diocesan bodies.”
Such a process has led to decisions, said Bätzing, including giving “queer people” a “say in decision making” and “ensuring that there are blessings for those who ask for blessings. And we link the whole thing, so that we are not alone in Frankfurt, Limburg, to what is going on in the Synodal Way, because this question is called up there.”
“I will not discipline anyone who performs a blessing,” revealed Bätzing, adding that he has not performed any same-sex “blessings” himself, partly out of “obedience” to Francis, but “mainly because of public attention. Then the attention would be on what I am doing and not on what the two in front of me want.”
The “teaching of the Catholic Church must be changed on these points,” said Bätzing, in reference to homosexuality and the role of “women.”
Role of women in the Church
Agreeing that “homosexuals are discriminated against, women are discriminated against” in the Church, Bätzing revealed that while he publicly might hold the Catholic teaching on female ordination, he privately disagrees:
Can women be ordained priests? There I try to keep the balancing act in such a way that I say, I state, that is my task, what is the teaching of the Church, and at the same time I perceive that this teaching no longer finds acceptance among the faithful, not only in a social context, among the faithful. The sensus fidelium, that is, the sense of the faithful continues. This is a sign that we must take up theologically and that leads to change. And that’s what I’m committed to. So, I don’t sit in the armchair and say this is the way it is now, but I really give a lot of my energy to that. And I believe that change will happen.
The 61-year-old president of the DBK outlined a process of change to bring about the eventual revolution of female ordinations, mentioning the necessity of councils in the process.
While “female priests” were unlikely even given the radically liberal nature of Germany’s Synodal Way, Bätzing said that the “bulk of the iceberg lies below.”
To create “equal rights for women in all offices,” he outlined that women must be brought into “all leadership positions that they can hold in the church.”
I would like to take over, have, bring women into all leadership positions that they can hold in the Church, knowing that that doesn’t defuse the question of sacramental ministry and whether women become priests, it [rather] exacerbates it.
Such a process is already being enacted by Pope Francis in recent years, with his two 2021 motu proprios Spiritus Domini and Antiquum ministerium, by which he opened up male liturgical roles and ministries to women, thus rewriting Canon Law. Writing shortly after the release of Spiritus Domini in 2021, liturgist and theologian Dr. Peter Kwasniewski warned that the Pope’s altering of Canon Law to push women through the liturgical ministries “fits snugly into this larger pattern of rupture from Catholic tradition.”
Bishop Bätzing’s consistent record on promoting a rejection of Church teaching, particularly on homosexuality and female ordination, has prompted a number of high-ranking clerics to voice concerns. Cardinal George Pell recently called on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to “intervene and pronounce judgement” on Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich and Bishop Georg Bätzing for their “wholesale and explicit rejection of the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual ethics.”
READ: Over 70 bishops warn German bishops that ‘Synodal Path’ will lead to ‘schism’
Shortly afterwards, Pell joined Cardinals Francis Arinze, Raymond Burke, and Wilfrid Napier in leading an open letter to the German hierarchy, warning that the Synodal Way would “inevitably” lead to “schism.” The cardinals were joined 70 Catholic prelates.
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