'I am truly disturbed at this ploy to turn against our Catholic faith, Holy Mother Church, and ultimately Christ Himself,' writes Father Tyler Johnson.
Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, a heterodox, pro-LGBT vice president of the German Synodal Path, enabled accused sex predators and allowed them to have access to young people, according to a report commissioned by his diocese.
'But what is really alarming and dismaying is that the consecrated and commissioned shepherds of the Church, the bishops, have in such large numbers apparently easily forgotten the oath they first swore before their ordination to the priesthood and then at their episcopal consecration before all the people – and before God's Face.'
The eight orthodox bishops who voted against the document were Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki and Bishops Gregor Maria Hanke, Matthias Heinrich, Stefan Oster, Dominikus Schwaderlapp, Rolf Steinhäuser, Rudolf Vorderholzer, and Florian Wörner.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the former head of the German bishops and a member of the Pope's Council of Cardinals, said he was 'very disappointed' by this voting result.