For the background on the iniquitous change (enacted by the German Bishops' Conference itself, without having been prompted by any outside force), see our previous post.
***
Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau, Facebook
Entry, 22 July, 2015
The Church's Labor Law – a Few
Thoughts From Passau About This Matter
 |
| [A Map of the Dioceses of Germany: Passau, Regensburg and Eichstätt are neighboring dioceses in Bavaria, in the Southeast (lower right), next to Cardinal Marx's Munich-Freising.] |
The bishops of Passau, Regensburg,
and Eichstätt [Bishops Stefan Oster, Rudolf Vorderholzer, and Gregor Hanke]
are in the process of checking whether and, if yes, when they will implement
the revised Labor Law of the Church. Because of this, they are now variously
called by public commentators as being either backward or as being those who
put on the brakes; or as those who intend to dupe the other bishops; or as
representatives of the “pure teaching”; or as those who, because of this, are acting in a way that does not relate any more to
the life and the Faith of the people – which consequently helps to increase the
numbers of people who leave the Church, etc., etc. Thus, I would like to add a
few thoughts – from my own viewpoint, as well as from the viewpoint of Passau –
for the sake of differentiation.
The Church in Germany for decades
has been continuously losing the power to bind people to her and, thus, also
losing the substance of the Faith. The number of those who regularly attend
Mass is an important indicator of this phenomenon, though not the only one.
But, here in Germany, at least at the beginning of the 1960s, around 50% of the
Catholics came on Sunday to Mass: today
it is only around 10%. The decline is
very steep and continuous and it has obviously very little to do with the wider
political situation of the Church– whether it is selectively perceived as
being good or bad.
During this same period of time of
the dramatic decline of the numbers of Catholics going to Mass – namely from
1960 to 2014 – the number of the Church's lay employees has increased in all
areas, from around 100,000 to more than 700,000! Which means: Five times fewer
people going to Mass on Sunday, but seven times more employees than fifty years
ago.
[…]
It is clear that the general
detachment from the Faith does not stop at where we all now are; that means
that many of our co-workers are affected by it, too. We are all children of our
time in which a secularization is progressing. Today, I often read in public
documents that “the Church” (who is that?) should not enclose herself in her
“pure teaching,” but, rather, should go out “to the margins,” as Pope Francis
says. This public message is naturally also directed against me myself, who is
also publicly perceived as being “dogmatic” and thus as purportedly being far
away “from men.”
Concerning this last claim, I would
like to say: Probably no other church worldwide is so close to the margins of
society as our Church in Germany, especially in the form of Caritas which takes
care of handicapped persons, people in distress, the elderly, the sick, the
addicted, those in debt, and many, many more. Additionally, the Church has –
next to Caritas – many other institutions for people who often are also “at the
margins”: pastoral care over the phone, counseling in questions of family and
life, institutions for women in distress, the Church's aid organizations for
the whole world – and nearly everything is being offered for free, or financed
by us, or at least partly financed by us; and it is offered to all
independently of which confession the person belongs to or of whatever he might
be said to believe. There is thus an unbelievable amount that is done for the
people. Also in the Church of Passau. […]
Now, at the same time we also
realize: often, the work of Caritas and its employees, for example, are not any
more perceived as a service of the Catholic Church herself. If this would be
so, one could think that the Churches would get fuller again, because, through
our co-workers, people would feel : “They know a God Who truly gives them the
capacity to love and makes them free for true love! Their hearts are filled to
abundance with this God – I would like to get to know Him. Therefore, I will
seek Him, I shall go there, too.” That would be a kind of natural logic which
would – or could – follow from a [Catholic] witness stemming from a charitable
work. But this is obviously and simply not the case: in spite of a continuously
growing Caritas, that is to say, a continuously growing amount of (Christian?)
works of mercy in the service of love – still there is the decline? Is it,
then, that the powerful witness is not at all attractive? Or is it perhaps,
after all, not really an explicit Christian witness, but rather, the expression
of a good humanistic practice? Probably, the latter is the case. […]
The question in all of this is: How
can we make sure today – in a progressing secularization – that an institution
has an palpable Christian face which would differentiate it, for example, from
other kind of welfare institutions? […] To put it a little bit more
provocatively: Where does it exist any more, for example, that employees in our
Caritas institutions rejoice – or even
strive for it – that people whom they take care of, for example, allow
themselves to be baptized!? And to show joy because these employees are
themselves convinced that baptism is important [and indispensable] in order to
belong to Christ truly?
Let us move from here now, finally,
to the question of the Labor Law: The growing institution of the Church is more
and more presented with the following question: Is there in all these many
service institutions – where on the outside it says “Catholic” – any witnessed
“Faith” left? Do the people work here out of a Christian conviction which
permeates their whole life? Or, can there now work for the Church anybody at
all, just as long as he is merely acceptable professionally and economically?
For adequately addressing this question, the Church has a Labor Law: a
so-called Constitution. The Church is, within the legal system in Germany, a
“Tendentious Enterprise” [Tendenzbetrieb], as is also the case, for example,
with political parties and labor unions. She is permitted to require certain
attitudes – as they concern a larger world view – as part of their own labor
law regulations and conditions. As a comparison: If you, for example, work for
the Christian-Social Union [CSU – a Conservative Political Party in Germany]
and declare that the Social Democratic Party is making much better politics,
the CSU may appropriately terminate your contract.
Comparable aspects, and those who
go even further, have been granted to the Christian churches by the State and
they have been articulated in the Church's Labor Constitution. This governing
regulation, which has been valid up to now, has been recently and again
completely confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court – including the last
and hardest possibility: namely, to dismiss those people whose way of living is
in conflict with some demands of the Gospels. To these cases of dismissal also
belong, in our eyes, people who live in a registered partnership [same-sex
unions] and also those who are divorced and remarried.
In the course of this
consideration, it is important to say: Of course, the termination of contract
is indeed the last of all permitted possibilities which are available in a
grave case of conflict. And there is, of course, a kind of differentiated duty
to loyalty: He who works as a proclaimer of the Gospels or who stands at the
front in a leading position of a Church's institution, is more closely bound
than, for example, someone who works in the bureaucracy or in a technical
field. […]
Now concerning the revised new
Constitution [the new Labor Law] and why the three [above-mentioned] bishops
still more closely investigate it (at least in my eyes): First of all, the
revision of the Bishops' Conference also still does call the registered
partnership and the remarriage after a valid first marriage a “serious
violation against the duties of loyalty.” But, because of several of its
attendant formulations, which are in my eyes too vague, it makes nearly
impossible the option of any termination of contract due to conflicts with the
obligations of loyalty. […] In the
future, one will likely take even less heed to fulfilling the obligation of
loyalty and the conditions for employment that concern preserving the Christian
worldview of the employees. […]
Nevertheless: With the present
revision of the Text [Labor Law], we give away, in my eyes, out of our hands
the means by which we can at least half-way resist the ongoing and continuous
secularization in our institutions. […] We are thereby running the risk that,
with it [those vague and weak revisions], we shall undermine all our other
efforts to work on a stronger profile
and that we would thus continue, insistently, with the process of
self-secularization – and with the help of a law which we have now given
to ourselves!
[...]
[Translation kindly provided by Maike Hickson]
