The Church of the Nihilists – guest article by Vigilius

Rorate welcomes once again a guest article by Vigilius, a traditional priest in Germany. The Anglophone reader will instantly conjure up the "Feiges" within his own local hierarchy... –PAK

The Church of the Nihilists

Vigilius

Magdeburg Bishop Gerhard Feige, along with his colleagues Bätzing and Marx, is one of those figures in whom the spirit of the German Church is particularly evident. More precisely: the spirit of that ecclesiastical establishment that has been at the helm of power for decades and firmly controls all ecclesiastical or church-related institutions, such as ordinariates, seminaries, faculties, educational institutions, and publications. It is remarkable how closely the psychological characteristics, as well as the activity and linguistic profiles, of the relevant officials—whether full-time or honorary—mirror their ideological outlook. To get a sense of their core beliefs, one need only take a look at any of the various religious magazines, such as Christ in der Gegenwart, Herder-Korrespondenz, Stimmen der Zeit, Publik-Forum, or katholisch.de [these would be like America, National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, Crux, U.S. Catholic - ed.]; if one is familiar with just one issue of any of these magazines, one is familiar with the entire intellectual cosmos of this well-nourished, hermetically self-contained milieu.

Leo XIV and the Challenge of Synodality - and of Germany -- by Roberto de Mattei

Leo Riding the German Machine

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

January 28. 2026

Thirty years ago, French historian François Furet published a famous book that presented itself as an assessment of 20th-century Communism in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union (The Past of an Illusion, Italian translation published by Mondadori, Milan, 1995). The originality of the work lay in its being a history of Communism, not as a party or state system, but as the attractive force of an idea that turned out to be an illusion, and therefore a utopia.

The path of this utopia, wrote Furet, “is more mysterious than the real history of communism.” Its spread throughout the world was in fact much more widespread than that of Communist power. However, the disappearance of so-called 'Real Socialism' meant the loss of credibility of the historical promise, and therefore its end, because communism ceased to appear as the bright future of humanity. Hence the title of Furet's book: The Past of an Illusion.

Leo and the Germans

 This is the first of several analyses written for Rorate by our contributor Serre Verweij on Leo XIV's first year.

Series: The First Year of Leo XIV

I  - LEO AND THE GERMANS

by Serre Verweij

for Rorate Caeli

August 1, 2025

While we are waiting for Pope Leo XIV to tip his hand and release his first encyclical, and make his first curial appointments, both sides in the struggle between tradition and modernism keep trying to claim him. The attempts by progressives to claim the Pope as their secret candidate (after the fact) are looking increasingly desperate, however. Specifically, attempts by the German bishops stand out as highly dubious.

The Disintegration of the Priesthood — Guest Essay by Vigilius

The following is the first in a series. We are grateful to Vigilius (the pen name of a German priest-theologian) for sending us the translation. The original appeared in German here.

The Disintegration of the Priesthood

Vigilius

The logic of the revolution

“It is about a new culture in the Catholic Church, which takes seriously that baptism is the most important thing ... With synodality, an element of decisive co-responsibility of all believers is added to the basic hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church as complementary, so to speak—at all levels: from the parish to the dioceses, to the national churches, continental churches and the universal church. This is something new!”[1] Thus spoke Georg Bätzing, Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference and participant in the Roman Synod.

In this statement, the “basic hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church” is initially cited as a self-evident fact. This refers to the priestly or episcopal decision-making authority in doctrinal and canonical matters. That Bätzing is referring to the clerical hierarchy is clear from the fact that his statement also includes the category “all believers”, which only makes sense from a logical point of view if, in contrast to the first-mentioned group, “all believers” refers not only to ordained ministers, but also to those who do not belong to the basic hierarchical structure of the Church. This group, which is not part of the basic hierarchical structure of the Church, consists of people who are usually called “lay people.” Given the logic of the term, the fact that lay people, unlike ordained ministers, do not belong to the basic hierarchical structure of the Church means that they have no decision-making authority in matters of doctrine and church governance.

On the other hand, according to Bätzing, by virtue of the new synodality “an element of decisive co-responsibility of all believers is added to the basic hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church as complementary, so to speak.” The crucial question here is what a “decisive co-responsibility” of all believers means, in other words: a decisive co-responsibility of the laity, which is also said to be—“so to speak”—“complementary” to the basic hierarchical structure of the Church. This is not clear. It could mean that the laity, who are not authorized to lead the church themselves, accompany the hierarchy’s decision-making process with their necessary prayer and ascetic exercises—which the lay women empowerment activists who can be found globally certainly eagerly practice. But the very fact that this inevitably sounds like irony shows that the word “decisive” is not only not about prayer accompaniment, but that prayer is no longer regarded as the decisive dimension in the Church at all. Rather, the ability to decide for oneself has become the decisive factor. In other words, we all know that Bätzing’s use of the words “decisive” and “co-responsibility” is about empowering the laity to make decisions that were previously reserved for ordained ministers.

However, if the basic hierarchical structure of the Church is now extended to all believers, there is no longer a basic hierarchical structure of the Church. Bätzing’s talk of hierarchy becomes superfluous, because the Church simply becomes a democracy. This also renders meaningless the argument that the lay people who have a say in decision-making are “complementary” to the hierarchy, because—with respect to hierarchy—there is no longer a mutually complementary duality of hierarchy and laity. In Bätzing’s construction, there can only be the model of representative hierarchies that reflect the majority will of all believers—i.e. “synodality” as a copy of political parliamentarianism. This means, however, that Bätzing’s sentence is—unless one assumes a defective intellectuality—a trick. The intention of the retained talk of the hierarchical basic constitution of the church, to which the lay decision-making authority is to be added as a complement, is to rhetorically conceal the fact that the revolution relies on the power of logic, which, via the implemented new synodality, inevitably leads to the abolition of precisely the hierarchical basic structure of the church, which is replaced by a democratic parliamentarianism.

However, the fuse of this system-destroying explosive device was lit much earlier by the—still existing—hierarchy. Many bishops have long shared the Lutheran view that the Catholic Church is the deformation of the true Church of the Gospel, and therefore must now finally be destroyed. They just do not straightforwardly admit this and, like Georg Bätzing, frame the intended goal as “being differently Catholic.”[2] In line with this view, many dioceses in the Western, especially the Central European world, have long since begun to practically disregard the sacramental-ontological link between ordination and leadership authority, and in doing so they rely upon the normative power of the factual. Increasingly, church leadership by priests is regarded as optional. At least from this point of view, the layperson has de facto been placed on an equal footing with the priest, insofar as the layperson can assume leadership offices in the same way as the priest. We can see from current synodal practice that this cannot—in terms of theological logic—remain limited to the parish level, but must inevitably extend to the episcopal realm due to the substantial sacramental unity of priest and bishop. Of course, bishops can also sit on the various decision-making bodies, but even this is no longer absolutely necessary given the disregard for the ontological link between ordination and governance that has become a principle. The fact that half of the “Synodal Council” planned by the German Synodal Way is to consist of bishops is a purely contingent provision that cannot claim any higher necessities for itself. The mere fact that clerics sit on synodal bodies as “voting” members alongside lay people who are also entitled to vote is in itself a de-potentiation of ministry. The matrix that always underlies the operation, which initially begins at the parish level, is the Protestant concept of church and office, which must inevitably lead to the bishop eventually losing his previous monarchical status.

It is remarkable, however, that this process no longer explicitly names the theological motives for its justification that led Luther to reject the Catholic hierarchy as an aberration of Christianity. Although the political-structural effect is identical, the lines of argument are different. In my opinion, there are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the synodality activists are essentially concerned with questions of power politics and autonomy theory in the classic modern sense. This does not apply to Luther, who was himself not yet a modern subject despite the fact that the Reformation’s incisions had de facto modernity-producing effects. The current advocates of the Roman and German Synodal Way, on the other hand, are filled with a bursting rage at the fact that the laity, unlike the clergy, have no ecclesiastical authority, because this circumstance must represent a narcissistic insult of enormous proportions for modern subjects. For modern subjectivity is essentially characterized by freeing itself for the sake of its own self-determination from all normative-authoritarian ties that are naturally or traditionally imposed on it as limitations to its autonomy. In the modern concept, to be self-determined means to be emancipated, and that means, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “to be able to move along as many paths as possible.” This idea is opposed by the “hierarchical basic order of the church”, which not only makes it impossible for the laity to make decisions, but also excludes women and all men who are not willing to renounce marriage from participating in the hierarchy in principle by limiting it to celibate men. It is a multi-discriminatory complex in which not everyone can do everything nor has access to everything in principle.

Being and work of Christ

This brings me to the second aspect in which today’s reformers differ from Luther. This aspect refers to the fact that many basic positions of Reformation theology, which Luther still had to laboriously fight for and formulate, have already become so self-evident that they no longer need to be specifically discussed. This applies, in particular, to those dogmatic provisions that are decisive for the priesthood. Here the traditional doctrine has dissolved so extensively and radically that it is hardly remembered by many church members. It is this erosion of the theological foundations of the ordained ministry, which has also characterized the clergy for decades, that makes it possible today that even bishops can so easily turn themselves into propagandists of a revolution aimed at finally destroying the hierarchy. And because the façade is now simply collapsing, these bishops no longer see themselves as revolutionaries, but only as executors of the self-evident.

In order to understand the prerequisites and consequences of today’s synodalism, it is helpful to remember why with Luther the clerical ministry of governance disappears. It disappears with him because the priest disappears altogether. But Luther does not make the priest disappear in order to eliminate clerical governance; rather, the priest disappears in his theology for much more profound reasons. It is only from these considerations that certain church-structural positions then arise, which means that Luther knew exactly that the priest’s power of governance could not be shaken as long as the ordained ministry as such was not abandoned. At the same time, this means that the governing function inherent to the priest is intrinsically linked to the determinations of the priesthood that establish the power of governance in the first place.

The question must therefore be asked as to what these “much more profound reasons” were, which, in contrast to today’s synodalists, still preoccupied Luther so intensely. These reasons essentially relate to the question of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Why Luther described the Catholic doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass as “terrible idolatry”, how he justified his own understanding of the Lord’s Supper, the relationship between Word and sacrament and his concept of the priest cannot be explained here. Nor is it necessary. All that is important is the fact that Luther clearly recognized that the priest, and consequently his governing authority, stands and falls with the question of whether the Mass is a sacrifice. Incidentally, it is worth emphasizing that Luther never doubted the atoning nature of Christ’s cross. This distinguishes him from today’s reformers, who have not only abandoned the Sacrifice of the Mass, but also the cross as a sacrificial event. The statement by Bätzing’s predecessor, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, that the cross is not a sacrifice offered to God, but merely an expression of divine solidarity with human suffering, can be considered representative of today’s theological awareness.[3] I doubt whether Zollitsch was aware of the consequences this position must have for the concept of the priest, indeed of the Church as a whole. Nevertheless, the definition of the priest and the Church depends on the question of whether the cross of Christ was a sacrifice and how this sacrifice and the Mass relate to each other. Since this complex problem cannot be discussed in detail in an essay, I can attempt only a cursory sketch.

In the traditional concept of Herself, the Catholic Church identifies Herself as the sacramental space of Christ’s re-presentation of Himself as the only sacrificial Priest, who Himself is the ultimate and unsurpassable offering. It is this self-offering of Christ that becomes present in the Church and which the Church Herself—from this very self-offering—becomes in a certain way, being the mystical body of Christ. This self-gift of Christ on the cross is the atoning sacrifice for the “sin of the world” and at the same time a “latreutic sacrifice” (Matthias Josef Scheeben). It is both in one, because its character as an atoning sacrifice follows from the fact that the self-gift of the incarnated Logos to the Father, which glorifies the Father, takes place under the condition of sin. The Logos is essentially self-gift to the Father. Therefore, when the Logos becomes man, His self-gift glorifying the Father takes on the character of an atoning sacrifice because He wants to glorify the Father, who is the Creator of the world, by overcoming the sinful rejection by the creature. The overcoming takes place in this sacrifice. This atoning, redeeming, and God-glorifying sacrifice takes place in history as a bloody event on Golgotha.

It is of great importance to realize that the incarnate Logos cannot simply be given various determinations that lie next to each other like pearls threaded on a string. Bad theologies have a tendency towards such mere stringing together. Instead, it is exactly as the Protestant theologian Karl Barth formulated it in his “Church Dogmatics”: “Jesus is absolutely the bearer of an office. He is therefore not man and then additionally also the bearer of this office ... There is no neutral humanity of Jesus ... His being as man is His work.”[4] Barth calls this ministry the “Office of Christ”, and it consists precisely in what I have just described: Jesus’ work, with which He is identical, is—as direct correspondence to His eternal Logos-being of giving Himself back to the Father—the atoning sacrifice, which glorifies the Father, for the salvation of the world. In this sacrifice, God is again given full glory by the creature. This is the Christ. Therefore, when theological tradition speaks of the three “munera Christi”, meaning Christ’s prophethood, kingship and priesthood, these offices must be interpreted from the principle of Christ’s self-sacrifice, as in the New Testament. In the Gospel of John, the cross is the ascension of Christ to the throne, who thereby receives His eternal power and glory from the Father. Christ’s role as shepherd means precisely that through the sacrifice of the cross He makes eternal life accessible to people, which is the focus of Jesus’ preaching from the very beginning.

Re-presentation of Himself

Now the question arises as to how it is conceivable that this temporal event can become present again at later points in time, whereby the “presence” does not simply refer to our subjective performances of reminiscence. However, it is also evident that “becoming present” does not mean that the event becomes present in its former form. The mode of re-presentation can only be a symbolic-ritual one. Since the sacrifice of Golgotha is absolutely unique and final, the rite cannot aim at a kind of reproduction, as is the case with repeated performances of a play. The Council of Trent also formally rejects this. The mode of re-presentation of the sacrifice must therefore be an act in which, in strict numerical and factual identity, precisely what once took place in a bloody manner now takes place in the form of an unbloody symbolic act at any number of times on the altars of the Church.

Such a re-presentation only becomes conceivable if what happened once on the time axis is always present in divine eternity, which itself is not subject to any time extension and relates to all points on the time axis in the same immediate way. St. Thomas illustrates this with the geometric image of a circle, to the center of which all points on the circumference have precisely the same distance. In God, however, the temporal event of Golgotha is only conceivable as perpetually present in such a way that it has transformed its particular historical form into the resurrection reality of Christ. In this, however, its metaphysical substance, which was realized in the historical event, is preserved in a way that cannot be lost. To illustrate this connection, according to the New Testament accounts, the Risen Christ identifies Himself before His disciples with His wounds, which are now “transfigured”, but are preserved as marks of the sacrifice in the eternity of God. They are a permanent part of Christ’s identity. “For once sacrificed, he does not die again, but lives forever as the Lamb who was slain,” is the wording of the Easter preface. As the sacrificed Lamb, Christ is the eternal life of the faithful, and the faithful relate to the Lamb and His eternal self-sacrifice in the manner of glorifying worship. This is the “heavenly liturgy” that is illustrated in the magnificent images of the 4th and 5th chapters of the Book of Revelation.

The substance of what happens in the Mass is precisely this eternal liturgy of Christ as the Lamb who was slain. The sacrifice of the cross becomes present in its eternal mode of existence in the Mass, which is why this presence has no magical traits and, with regard to Communion, nothing cannibalistic about it. It becomes present because Christ wants to extend His act of glorifying the Father, realized in the cross, by the dimension that the creature can actively integrate itself into the atoning sacrifice in order to wash itself “clean in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14) and now glorify the Father together with Christ, who continually gives Himself to the Father as the incarnate and crucified Son. The enabling condition for this becoming present in time is the Holy Spirit as the mediation of Christ’s presence, who Himself (i.e. the Spirit) needs no mediation. The instrumental mode of the eternal state of existence of the sacrificial Lamb making itself present mediated through the Holy Spirit is a symbolic-ritual one, because the heavenly liturgy becomes present under the modest conditions of our temporal existence. The Rite of the Mass has its prefiguration in the historical Last Supper, in which Jesus liturgically makes present this event even before His physical sacrificial death: “This is my body, which is given for you”. This act is also only conceivable if the future sacrificial event in God’s eternity, which knows no temporal extension, always already exists in its transfigured form and is made present in the Upper Room through Christ by virtue of the mediating power of the Holy Spirit.

At this point, I would like to make a liturgical-theoretical parenthesis. One of the favorite habits of liberal liturgical practices is to give the Eucharistic celebration a form that is as close to everyday life as possible, following the simplicity of the Last Supper. Clay dishes are preferred. It is not plausible to these protagonists why the liturgical form of the Church’s celebration of Mass should differ from that of the Cenacle. However, there is a theological reason for this difference. The subject of the Lord’s Supper is not yet the Church, which is established in the first place by Christ’s earthly act of the Lord’s Supper and the subsequent sacrifice on the cross, as well as the sending of the Holy Spirit made possible by it. Once the Church has emerged from these events, the same sacrifice of Christ is then offered through His sacramental self-representation in the priest. Only now does the Lord’s Supper become the celebration of the Church, the Mass, in which the Risen and Invisible Christ now acts in the Church’s mode of mediation. This inclusion of the Church has a strong effect on the ritual question. It is precisely the Church’s mode of mediation that prohibits the imitation of the Lord’s Supper. Precisely because it is about the identity of the event, the rite strives for an artificial stylization that would have been completely inappropriate to the earthly act of Jesus itself.

An imitation of the Supper only gives the semblance of authenticity, whereas in fact it is the opposite of it. When we encounter groups that re-enact the Last Supper scene, we can be sure that the belief in the sacrificial character of Christ’s death and the eternal liturgy of the sacrificial Lamb—and thus the identity of the historical sacrifice with the Church’s celebration of the Mass, which is mediated by the Holy Spirit—has disappeared. For this reason, the Mass is deflated into a mere celebration of the meal, in which everything depends on our own performances of reminiscence, which seek to scenically actualize something past and inevitably become trivial. This applies to Eucharistic celebrations in swimming trunks on air mattresses as well as to the liturgies of the German Synodal Way. On the other hand, those who believe in the formally differentiated but substantial identity of the Lord’s Supper, the death on the cross as an act of sacrifice, the heavenly liturgy, and the Holy Mass will endeavor to shape the rite in such a way that it most adequately manifests the theological content of the event and the veneration owed to the sacrificial Lamb.

The priest of the Church

The basic dimension of the ecclesiastical priest has already been repeatedly touched upon in the previous considerations. I would now just like to make this explicit. Assuming that Christ lives eternally “as the Lamb who was slain” and as such is the life of the faithful, the Mass cannot be regarded as a mere moment in the Church, but must be seen as its very essence. The Church is the presence, mediated by the Holy Spirit, of the heavenly liturgy as the eternal self-actualization of the sacrificed Christ in space and time, in which man reaches the Father in and with Christ. The entire structure of the relationship between the Trinitarian God and human beings is mediated through the Mass. In view of this significance of the Mass, it is no exaggeration to claim that the Mass is the essence of the Church. The Catholic Church is either the Church of the Mass or it is not at all the Church.

If the Mass is the being of the Church, then the priest is the central instance of the mediation of salvation. That is why the priest is fundamentally sacerdos. This is an ancient term composed of “sacer” (holy) and “dare” (to give) and refers fundamentally to the ritual act of sacrifice. The Church needs this sacerdotal function because without it there would not be the presence of Christ’s sacrifice, which completes all the sacrifices of the past, and whose presence defines the being of the Church. The proposition that the Church is the Church of the Mass, or it is not at all, must be logically extended by the statement: The Church is what it is only through the priest. However, this definition does not constitute a Christological monism, because there is a permanent difference between the ecclesiastical priest and Christ Himself. This is precisely the point of the sacramental structure. But in the ecclesiastical priest, Christ Himself is, in a singularly qualified way, the acting subject who communicates Himself and His own sacrifice to the faithful in the Holy Spirit and thereby constitutes the eternal unity of life of the “mystical body”.

Precisely because the priest is sacerdos, he must also have the exclusive function of shepherd, leader, and preacher in the Church. This assignment corresponds precisely to the structure of Christ’s ministries. The ecclesial sacerdos, too, can only ever be concerned with enabling the faithful to participate in the Sacrifice of the Mass through teaching, pastoral care, and other sacramental acts. This focus on the Mass also applies to baptism. It is significant that Bätzing speaks of baptism being “the most important thing.” This formulation is absolutely over-simplified. But it serves precisely as such to legitimize the empowerment of the laity, which logically presupposes the deconstruction of the Mass and thus of the priest. In truth, baptism and the Mass are organically interwoven in such a way that the inner telos of baptism is the integration of man into the mystical body of Christ, whose basic act is the eternal liturgy of Christ present in the Mass.

Bätzing’s statement on baptism is widely part of the rhetorical repertoire of today’s hierarchy. Because many bishops are no longer aware of the context described above, the priest can only be described as a “presider” of the Eucharistic celebration and reduced to something like the role of a Protestant pastor and a spiritual companion of congregations, whose leadership can lie with the laity, who are increasingly replacing Mass on Sundays with a so-called “celebration of the Word of God”. However, there is then no longer any reason why the priest, functioning as a presider, as which the layman also functions in his offices, must be ordained to his office of presider at all, or why ordination must be understood as a sacramental-ontological event. In fact, liberal theology understands the act of ordination simply as a solemn form of institutional commissioning, which is spiritually embellished as a “sending forth” and no longer differs in substance from that of a layperson to pastor, parish leader, and liturgist. The ordained priest as such is only an indispensable and plausible category if he is the God-manly sacrificial Priest’s real-symbolic re-presentation of Himself, who in turn wants to make His sacrifice glorifying the Father present in the celebration of the Mass: “Until the end of time, you gather a people for yourself so that a pure sacrifice may be offered to your name from the rising of the sun to its setting”, is how the Rite of Mass formulates the purpose of the Church. If this conviction disappears, the priest disappears too.

It is therefore only logical that the Synodal Way discussed the question of whether the priesthood should not be formally abolished or, which effectively leads to the identical result, to reformulate the priestly office, which has been robbed of its supernatural dignity, in the sociological category of a “professional profile” in order to define this professional profile—as was recently done by the Bochum pastoral researcher Matthias Sellmann on behalf of the German Bishops’ Conference—as a “commitment to the common good”.[5] And just as it is then only logical to replace the “hierarchical basic order of the church” with the synodalism praised by Bätzing, because anything else would now merely be an arbitrary power structure, it is also the custom everywhere in Germany that the priest is addressed as “dear colleague” by the full-time laity.

The “dear colleague” sounds so harmonious, but it is a poisoned harmony. After all, egalitarian synodalism loudly demands a church free of discrimination, which should not open up “any room for hostility”. As in the French Revolution, however, the sacerdos, in which the kingship of Christ manifests itself, must be sacrificed on the altar of “universal love of mankind” (Max Scheler) and universal equality of all. It is a perverse sacrifice. In the modernized world, the ordained ministry, which needs no democratic legitimation because it derives its authority directly from Christ, was the last splendor of true sacrality and monarchy. It was only a matter of time before the insatiable mass-man of modernity would also try to incorporate this ministry into his vulgarity, and for at least 60 years it was just as likely that this would eventually happen through the nihilistic hierarchy of the church itself. This hierarchy has now become so stubbornly committed to applause-inducing synodalism that it now knows only one goal: to erase all images that might provoke a memory of the greatness of the priesthood and the Sacrifice of the Mass and a love that has long since withered. In their vain opportunism, they have become pitiable bureaucrats of banality.

The advanced decline of the priesthood in today’s church is reflected not least in the radical questioning of celibacy and the letter “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” by John Paul II, in which the Pope states that access to the ordained ministry is reserved for men. Analogous to the question of governance, both aspects also lose their plausibility due to the erosion of the doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass and the definition of the priest as sacerdos. However, because they are closely linked to the sacramental priesthood—albeit in different ways—I will deal with celibacy in the next step and then with the question of why the priesthood is reserved for men alone. In the final and fourth part, I would like to raise the question of whether there are possibly unresolved tensions in the tradition of theology of hierarchy and ordained ministry of the Latin Church itself, which unintentionally play into the hands of the anti-priestly synodalism of our day.

NOTES 

[1] https://www.vaticannews.va/de/vatikan/news/2024-10/deutschland-synode-bischoefe-baetzing-oster-frauen-kirche-genn.html

[2] https://de.catholicnewsagency.com/news/12083/bischof-batzing-wir-bleiben-katholisch-aber-wir-wollen-anders-katholisch-sein

[3] www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjLn3zHq2es

http://www.kath-info.de/suehnopfer.html

[4] Karl Barth, Kirchliche Dogmatik III,2, Zurich 1948, 66-69.

[5] https://einsprueche.substack.com/p/matthias-sellmann-und-die-priester

Analysis: "Querida Amazonia, a Blueprint for a Lay Church" - by Fr. Pio Pace, Roman Curia Insider

It has been a while, but Father Pio Pace, our pseudonymous very influential insider in the Roman Curia, was at last able to send us a special comment on the new post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, Querida Amazonia.

***

Querida Amazonia: a document for a kind of "Lay Church"?

Father Pio Pace

Will married viri probati be ordained to the priesthood? This question was the focus of all the attention, before, during, and after the assembly of the Amazon Synod, and the bishops of the German 'Synodal Way' were mounting an ambush, getting ready to seize the issue to force the institutional transformation of the Church.

For all sorts of political and tactical reasons, the long-expected apostolic exhortation does not mention it. It does not reject the possibility (as it has been hastily claimed): it simply does not mention it. In fact, the exhortation goes much further, in the direction of a Laicized Church, in which the common priesthood of the baptized largely absorbs the priestly ministry, being mixed up with it.

Because this text, under a modest appearance, is actually very ambitious. One should read with great attention the beginning of the Exhortation: it is presented as a, "framework of reflection," which is an invitation to read the final document of the Synod (which speaks of priestly ordination of married deacons), but rises up to more fundamental, and certainly more radical, considerations. The central passage deals with the "Inculturation of ministry" (paragraphs 85-90), followed by thoughts on the communities (91-98), then on the role of women (99-103).

De Mattei: The Simony of the German Bishops

Roberto de Mattei

Corrispondenza Romana

January 29, 2020

 “How I would like a poor Church for the poor” exclaimed Pope Francis (L’Osservatore Romano, March 17, 2013). The antithesis of his ideal however, is embodied precisely by the church closest to him – the German one. The German Episcopal Conference, which sponsored ideologically and economically last October’s Synod on the Amazon, is in fact the wealthiest and most privileged enterprise in all of Germany. This wealth comes from the Kirchensteuer, a tax that the State devolves to the Church, by retaining a figure amounting to 8-9% of  the overall tax burden of German Catholics. The taxation though is obligatory, unlike other countries, where Churches are financed through the generosity of the faithful, freely choosing to pay out a part of their income.

In Germany, those who want to be exempt from the Kirchensteuer must sign a statement showing their abandonment of the Church (Kirchenaustritt), which, as a result, deprives them of the Sacraments. On September 20, 2012, the German Bishops decreed that those who asked no longer  to be registered in order to avoid paying the ecclesiastical tax, can no longer confess, receive Communion or Confirmation and, at their death, cannot have a Catholic funeral; they will not even be able to do voluntary work in a Catholic association, let alone work in a Church institution, such as a school or hospital.

In an interview published in Schwäbische Zeitung of July 17, 2016, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, denounced this glaring contradiction in these terms: “How does the Catholic Church in Germany react with those who don’t pay the Church tax? With automatic exclusion from the ecclesial community, which means excommunication. This is excessive – incomprehensible. Dogmas can be questioned and no one is thrown out. Is perhaps the non-payment of the Kirchensteuer a graver infraction than the transgressions against the truths of the Faith? The impression is, that, as long as what’s at stake is the Faith, it isn’t so tragic, but when money comes into play, then it is not to be trifled with”.

“La Verità” Newspaper interviews Professor Roberto de Mattei

“La Verita”

January 27, 2020

Last January 18, in Munich, Bavaria, a unique event took place: more than a hundred people lined-up in a square, where, for an hour, they remained standing,, reciting the Rosary in silence, in defense of orthodoxy in the Catholic Church. The promoters call it Acies ordinate. Among them was professor Roberto de Mattei, historian and President of the Fondazione Lepanto. 

How did this Bavarian initiative come about? 

It is the third Acies ordinata demonstration, the first outside Italy. The previous ones took place in Rome last year: on February 19^th ,before the conference on  sexual abuse organized by Pope Francis in the Vatican and then on September 28^th , the day before the opening of the Amazon Synod.     

Why the trip to Germany?

Munich is the Archiepiscopal See of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, President of the German Episcopal Conference, which last December 4^th officially launched the Synodalerweg, an “ongoing” synod, de facto permanent, that aims at transforming the Church in Germany and thus the universal Church.      

Isn’t the influence of the German Bishops overrated?

There is a strong theological culture in Germany. The main theologian of Vatican II and the Post-Council, was a German, Karl Rahner. Some days after his election, the first theologian quoted by Pope Francis, actually displaying his book, was another German, Cardinal Walter Kasper, a disciple of Rahner. The German Episcopal Conference financed the Pan-Amazonian Synod and directed it theologically.  A Brazilian Cardinal of German origins, Claudio Hummes, was the general rapporteur of the last Synod and the author of a “secret letter” sent to the Bishops of the entire world to prepare them for the soon to be released Post-Synod Exhortation from Pope Francis, to whom he is very attached.

The German Rebellion on Eucharistic Communion for Protestants: The Ground Opens Up

Sandro Botticelli

Punishment of the Rebels [Moses and the Sons of Korah]

Sistine Chapel, 1482

And immediately as Moses had made an end of speaking, the earth broke asunder under their feet: And opening her mouth, devoured them with their tents and all their substance. And they went down alive into hell the ground closing upon them, and they perished from among the people. But all Israel, that was standing round about, fled at the cry of them that were perishing: saying: Lest perhaps the earth swallow us up also. And a fire coming out from the Lord, destroyed the two hundred and fifty men that offered the incense. (Numbers 16:31-35)

Once again in this Pontificate, the most sacred treasure possessed by the Church, the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, is turned into an object of rebellion and division. The first was, of course, the fake controversy of Communion to adulterers ("remarried divorced" Catholics).

Now, following several denials by Rome, but after a clear authorization given informally by Francis in another interview granted in his return to Rome from Geneva a week ago, the first German bishop has finally awarded express authorization for Communion to be regularly offered to Protestant spouses of Catholics.

From the German-language page of the EWTN news network, the news that the Archbishop of Paderborn, Hans-Joseph Becker, has given his full authorization for the distribution of Holy Communiuon to Protestant spouses:

Event: Pro Missa Tridentina Annual General Meeting, Bamberg, Germany, April 21, with Dom Josef Vollberg and Dr Peter Kwasniewski

St Jakob, one of the oldest churches in Bamberg

Pro Missa Tridentina, a group of Catholics in Germany dedicated to preserving and fostering the liturgical heritage of the Church, is pleased to announce its annual general meeting on April 21, 2018. Dom Josef Vollberg, abbot of Mariawald, will be the celebrant of the Pontifical High Mass. Dr. Peter Kwasniewski will be the featured speaker. Information below, in German and in English. All events are open to the public except for the lunch on Saturday, which requires registration with PMT.

A Rare Moment of Clarity from Cardinal Lehmann

Cardinal Lehmann

H.E. Karl Cardinal Lehmann, who went to his eternal reward on March 11, was one of the most influential German prelates of the past few decades. A former assistant to Karl Rahner, Lehmann’s interpretation of the “spirit” of Vatican II was largely implemented in Germany. As president of the German Bishops’ Conference from 1987–2008, Lehmann accelerated the pace of the development of the German Church towards ever greater conformity to the spirit of the age. From a traditionalist point of view, his attempts at reconciling the German Church to the modern world were an unequivocal disaster, and a betrayal of his sacred duty as a successor of the Apostles. Remarkably, Lehmann’s last will and testament, written in 2009, but not published till after his death last month, can almost be read as admitting as much. Lehmann writes:

German Parliament Votes to Legalize Gay Marriage — Weak Response of German Catholics

The lower house of the German Parliament has voted to legalize homosexual pseudogamy (aka gay marriage). The German bishops voiced mild disapproval of the law, but without of course ever giving the reason why all people of good will should oppose such laws: the gravely immoral character of homosexual acts, which such laws are meant to normalize. 

Press Release of the Bishop of Regensburg concerning the Ordinations of the Society of Saint Pius X

Bistum Regensburg

June 22, 2016

The Bishop of Regensburg welcomes any initiative to overcome a schism, the rapprochement of groups separated from the Catholic Church and therefore to recover the visible unity of the Church.

UPDATE: Priest denied traditional Latin Requiem Mass: Maybe his Church tax was delinquent?

After a thunderous response from our readers, including priests (and most likely bishops), the ultra-leftist Bishop Stephan Ackermann of Trier, Germany, has reversed his decision and will now allow Fr. Andre Hahn of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) to say a traditional Latin Requiem Mass for Father Adolf Mohr tomorrow.

The intrepid Catholic journalist Barbara Wenz (read her here) asked the Diocese of Trier on Twitter to confirm he banned the Latin Requiem Mass for the late Fr. Mohr. The diocese tweeted this back:

"Requiem and funeral will be celebrated in the extraordinary form of the Roman rite."

Traditional Catholics have a voice and it's more powerful than we often believe.

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Original post 11/11/15 12:47p.m. GMT:

We joke in the headline, but it's really not humorous. In fact, it's a grave scandal to rob anyone, especially a priest, of his last wishes and the sacraments owed to him. Please weigh in and spread the word: 

From Gloria.TV:

Please Protest: German Bishop Prohibits an Old Latin Requiem for a Dead Priest

Bishop Ackermann is blessed in 2012 by a protestant Priestess

Last Friday, Father Adolf Mohr (86) of Rheinböllen, Germany, died from cancer. After his retirement he returned to the Old Latin Rite of his youth. In his will he expressed the wish to be buried in this rite. His parish priest guaranteed him in writ that his wish would be respected.

Archbishop Gänswein’s Thinly Veiled Critique of the German Bishops

In a speech given at the opening of the academic year of the theological seminary of the Austrian Cistercian Abbey, Stift Heiligenkreuz (Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Benedikt XVI. Heiligenkreuz), H.E. Archbishop Georg Gänswein offered what amounted to a thinly veiled attack on the German episcopate’s current campaign to conform the Church to the world. The speech, which has been made available on youtube (embedded above), was concerned with the reception in Germany of Pope Benedict XVI’s Address to German Catholics in the Freiburg Concert House, on the necessity of purifying the Church from worldliness. Archbishop Gänswein bewailed the fact that many in Germany had tried to play down the implications of that speech for German ecclesial life (“the pope never mentioned the Church tax”). He didn’t say exactly who the people playing down the implications were, but it became clear that he was speaking about the German episcopate. The climax of Archbishop Gänswein’s speech (beginning at the 15:17 mark) seemed to imply as much (Rorate translation):

EXCLUSIVE: CARD. MÜLLER'S pre-Synod presentation of Card. Sarah's book in Germany - Liturgy, Grace, Marriage, and the New Danger of Schism

"SCHISM"

Since the date of Cardinal Gerhard Müller's presentation of the German translation of Cardinal Robert Sarah's book "God or Nothing" in Regensburg, much has been said of his dire warnings that the Catholic Church may be on the verge of schism, once again originating from a confusion originated in Germany, today as in 1517.

In his September 1, 2015, lecture, Müller, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the presence of Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, had much more to say - a strong lesson on how true, actual poverty (as exemplified by the life and strong and orthodox beliefs of Cardinal Sarah) is translated into "full apostolic candor and zeal", not in a false doctrine that bends to the whim of the current preference of the post-modern European. That will not do.

We leave you with our exclusive translation of the main excerpts of the original German text provided by the Vatican website:

God or Nothing

Thoughts Concerning the Book by Cardinal Robert Sarah

by Cardinal Gerhard Müller

First of all, I would like to thank Cardinal Robert Sarah for his witness to the Faith, which he presents with his book Dieu ou rien. Entretien sur la foi, which has been published just this year. At the same time, I congratulate the German-speaking world that is able now to get to know in their own language the richness of thought of a great theologian and spiritual man.

[…]

In ten circles of questions, the Cardinal reflects theologically and spiritually upon the situation of the Catholic Church in the world of today and offers not only a diagnosis, but also a therapy for the postmodern man who has no orientation any more: that is to say, the Faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Redeemer of the whole world. […]

In the liturgy, the Faith expresses itself as an immediate response to the Triune God Who reveals Himself to each person in His Incarnate Word, in His Son Jesus Christ, and Who means Himself to be seen as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. […] It is not about an external staging of rites and symbols in which man plays with himself, turns around himself, honors and adores himself – but still without crossing over into the true transcendence of God. In the liturgy, there happens the elevation of man through Grace. Because it is the opposite of an egotistical trip full of self-pity; the liturgy means to elevate one's heart to God, Whom alone deserves adoration and glorification; it is not like in a Pagan cult and myth where man flatters the gods in a servile manner, or revolts against them in a Promethean way, but it is, rather, as in Christ, where God and man encounter each other. That is how Christians worship God. “The Glory of God lives in man (who lives in Grace), but man lives in the vision of God.” That is how Saint Irenaeus of Lyon put it in the 2nd century (Adv. Haer. IV, 20, 7: Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei). The Triune God is adored, glorified, and loved, He Who Himself Assumed our flesh and Who in Jesus Christ in His truly human nature, in His human history, in His sacrificial death for us on the Cross and in His real Resurrection from the dead overcame death and the separation from God. This is the same Jesus Christ Who as the Exalted Lord meets us historically, bodily, and communally, in the Church and in Her Sacraments realistically from person to person. […]

In the age of the creeping or noisy de-Christianization of the Global Society, the true understanding of the liturgy and of its dignified celebration becomes a crucial question of survival for Christianity in the world of today and tomorrow. In order to be able to fulfill this task, one needs more than a professional knowledge of the art of the liturgy in the stricter sense. The intellectual horizon of a Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship has to have permeated intellectually the philosophical, fundamentally theological, the dogmatic and cultural, as well as political preconditions and conditions of being a Christian in modern and postmodern times. Only a deep and thorough diagnosis of the spiritual and cultural structure of the globalized world can also lead to the development of a therapy which overcomes the Nihilism – as the common denominator of all expectations and yearnings of a world without God – and thus can make the Faith in God as the reason and purpose for man to shine anew. The liturgical incapacity of the modern man – of which Romano Guardini already spoke in 1948 at the Katholikentag in Mainz – and the “crisis of the sacramental idea” in a conscience which is reduced only to the aspect of immanence (as observed by Joseph Ratzinger), both have their roots in the monistic system of a naturalism which denies the transcendental dependency of man – both in spirit and in freedom – upon the Mystery of God. Consequently, this naturalism limits man one-dimensionally and intra-worldly and it is not capable of seeing man as a listener of the word that points to a supernatural Revelation of God in the world, in history and in the spirit of man. […]

Man is oriented toward the absolute. Only where God is above and in man, there is truth in freedom and justice in love. Where man tries to take power over the absolute, he turns himself into an idol who, with the help of the clench for a totalitarian dominance, brings man sternly into line and thus enslaves him by means of a political exercise of power which makes use of the media. […]

Hamburg Archbishop: "People Live Together in Manifold Ways!" / Plus: The German Strategy for the Synod - and another "Liberal" Shadow Synod, now in September

Katholisch.de [Official Website of the German Bishops' Conference]

August 1, 2005

On Marriage and the Family : “We Have to See the Manifold Ways of How People Live Together” - Archbishop Heße Calls For More Realism in the Moral Teaching on Sexuality

The Archbishop of Hamburg, Stefan Heße, has called upon his Church to have more realism with regard to the moral teaching on sexuality. “We have to look upon the manifold ways and forms of living in which people live, as they now exist,” said the 48-year old to the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger  on Saturday. He, “of course,” also sees “same-sex couples entering the Metropolitan Cathedral of Hamburg, and nobody asking them to leave.”

Synod Time! From the German Bishops' News Website: Indissolubility? That's just an ideal. Let's stop talking about "Guilt", please!

Katholisch.de [Official News Website of the German Bishops' Conference]

Bonn, July 29, 2015

Tradition or Opening?

A Report on How Bishop Franz-Josef Bode Considers the Themes likely to be Presented and Discussed at the [forthcoming October 2015] Synod on the Family in Rome:

The Bishop of Osnabrück [Germany], Franz-Josef Bode, sees that, in view of the Synod of Bishops as has been planned for this October 2015, the Catholic Church is facing important fundamental decisions. “We do not only face isolated questions concerning marriage and the family, but it is also about the fundamental decision as to how we want to react to the developments in Europe and the world,” said Bode himself to the journal Herder Korrespondenz, which is published in Freiburg [Germany].

Church Labor Law in Germany and Same Sex "Unions" - Three Voices in the German Desert: "We Will Not Accept Self-Secularization Here"

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.

Record Number of Church Defections in Germany. Cardinal Marx: "This is the Joy of Francis"

DENIAL: The state of the Church in Germany

As it has been recalled on Twitter, almost twice as many defections from the Church in Germany under Francis than under Benedict XVI... Well, well...

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German Bishops' Conference: Numbers of Catholics Leaving the Church Are at Its Highest On Record

Daniel Deckers

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

July 17, 2015

218.000 persons left the Church in the year 2014, 22 percent more than in the year before – and, besides that, more than ever before. The reason for it, according to the Archbishop of Freiburg, is very profane and secular.

In the year 2015, more Catholics than ever have left the Church. As the Catholic Bishops' Conference reported on Friday, the number of people having left the Church has risen 22 percent within the last year to now 218,000. The number of baptisms has remained nearly the same, however, when compared to the previous year: 165,000. The number of new members whom the Church has received either by entrance or by a re-entrance, has further sunken. Taken together, this number – for the first time – is less than 10,000.

The Bishops' Conference did not say anything about the deeper causes for such developments. Its president, Archbishop Marx of Munich, was quoted as saying that these new statistics show “that Church is multi-faceted and has still had a missionary force, even though the high number of exits from the Church makes us painfully aware that we do not reach people with our message.” Archbishop Burger, of Freiburg, spoke of the “irritations caused by the new way of gathering the Church taxes by referring to the capital incomes – which was erroneously then interpreted by many as an 'increase of taxes.'” Originally, the Church tax [Kirchensteuer] was only gathered together with the other taxes, when the tax payer formally requested it. Now, since 1 January 2015, it happens automatically. When, at the end of 2014, the banks started to inform their members about this new procedure, the number of exits considerably increased in the Catholic Church as well as in the Protestant churches.

[…]

[Concerning the numbers of the regular participants at the Sunday Mass: it is now 10.8 percent.] In 1990, the year of the re-unification, the number of the regular participants at Sunday Masses was 21.9 percent.

Also with regard to the priests and religious, the signs of implosion in the Church become visible only in a longer-term view. For example, the number of active priests [not yet retired] went down within the last fifteen years from nearly 13,000 to around 9,000. At the same time, fewer and fewer young men now prepare themselves for the priesthood in the seminaries. The number of female religious has been nearly cut into half since 1999 and is now down to approximately 17,500. Concerning the male religious, there is to be found a reduction of nearly 30 percent.

***

Press Release of the German Bishops' Conference, 17 July 2015

Church Statistics

The Neo-Modernist Theology of Eberhard Schockenhoff

The Rev. Fr. Eberhard Schockenhoff

According to Edward Pentin, “the ‘mastermind’ behind much of the challenge to settled Church teachings among the German episcopate,” and “the leading adviser of the German bishops in the run-up to the synod” is Fr. Eberhard  Schockenhoff, professor of moral theology at the University of Freiburg, about whom we have had occasion to report in the past. It is a sign of the state of theology in the German speaking world that Fr. Schockenhoff is considered a theological “moderate.” He is careful to quote the Fathers and Doctors of the Church to support his positions, and always makes a show of respect for magisterial teaching. This is probably the reason why the German bishops have chosen him, and not one of his more extreme colleagues to help them make the case for changing the unchangeable teachings of the Church on sexual morality.