Revise teaching on family, German bishops tell Rome

The German faithful are demanding a radically new approach from the Church on family issues and sexual morality. Last year the Vatican asked all bishops’ conferences to carry out a survey of Catholic attitudes, through a questionnaire that it circulated to all of them. The German bishops have sent a summary of the responses to Rome, and made the document public.

The bulk of the responses from the 27 German dioceses and archdioceses, to be brought before the Synod on the Family in October, call for change. “This summary is based on broad participation of the baptised, [showing] people have a great deal of interest in contributing their personal ideas and assessments to the … synod,” the summary says.

The 18-page document goes into the responses to each of the Vatican questionnaire’s questions. The Church’s teaching on the family and on sexual morality is seen as a “morality of prohibition”, the bishops say. It is not accepted because a “fundamental change and pluralisation of the definition of the family, as well as the privatisation of sexual morality and of human relationships as a whole” has taken place. Most people, moreover, are “unable to follow the language and content of the theological statements”.

The responses to the questions which deal with cohabitation before marriage, remarried divorcees, annulments and contraception, indicate a huge gap between what the Church teaches and not only what is practised in Germany but what people actually believe.

Most baptised Catholics do not consider remarriage after divorce irregular. “People in fact emphatically reject the terms ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ in this context because they are perceived as marginalising and discriminating,” the bishops say in their summary of responses. Most Catholics, including those who live in stable marriages, are “unable to understand” why the Church does not allow remarried divorcees to receive the Sacraments.

As remarried divorcees do not consider their former marriages “null and void”, moreover, they consider annulments “dishonest”.