Bishops rebuke lay group for rushing ahead with reform agenda

THE LARGEST lay group in Germany has been branded by the country’s bishops as being “over-hasty” after it called for reforms to church teaching, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the bishops’ conference, criticised the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) following a position paper that called for church blessings for all same-sex partnerships and remarried divorcees. The paper, he said, contained demands that were “theologically unacceptable” if enacted “unreservedly”.

Both issues are due to be discussed in Rome at October’s synod on the family, and the German bishops have been pushing for the rules to be relaxed in certain circumstances. However, Marx spelt out that both demands required further theological clarification and not “over-hasty, flashy insistence”.

However Stefan Vesper, general secretary of the ZdK, which has several million members, said the position paper had begun with a “clear avowal” of sacramental marriage but added that many of the values which distinguish sacramental marriage were nowadays “also being lived in other partnerships and family forms”.