Several German bishops have warned that the ongoing controversy between the majority who voted in favour of allowing couples in interchurch marriages to receive the Catholic Eucharist together in individual cases and the seven bishops who later wrote to Rome asking for clarification on the issue is harming the Catholic Church in the country.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told the German Church’s official website katholisch.de on 23 April that the controversy has “caused serious damage within the bishops’ conference”.
The decision was passed at the conference’s spring plenary on 22 February by a two-thirds majority. On 22 March, seven bishops, including Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, Germany’s largest diocese, sent a letter to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome asking for clarification as to whether the issue was within the competence of a local bishops’ conference.
Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier has accused the seven bishops of “wrecking” the “sign of appreciation” the bishops had planned with their handout on Communion for couples in interchurch marriages. He was “deeply saddened” that “in the country of the Reformation of all places” the bishops could not agree on the issue. Bishop Gebhard Fürst of Rottenburg-Stuttgart assured the German dailies Stuttgarter Nachrichten and Stuttgarter Zeitung that “in our diocese, the bishops’ conference’s handout on Communion for mixed-marriage couples is already the basis of our pastoral work”.
Pope Francis has now called conference president Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Cardinal Woelki, and Bishop Felix Genn of Münster, well known for his mediation skills between bishops, to Rome. Meanwhile Cardinal Woelki told domradio.de that “the matter should be de-emphasised”.
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