Munich (dpa / lby) – In view of internal church debates about the synodal path, the diocesan council of Catholics in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising has asked the bishops in Germany to cooperate. “We expect that the bishops and cardinals will live up to their own claim to leadership by working together in the bishops’ conference and boldly implementing the urgently needed changes together,” the committee demanded on Tuesday in Munich. “The bishops have to ask themselves what image of the Catholic Church in Germany they are shaping.”
The request was addressed in particular to the chief shepherds of Augsburg, Eichstätt, Regensburg, Passau and Cologne, Bertram Maier, Gregor Maria Hanke, Rudolf Voderholzer, Stefan Oster and Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki. “The question-and-answer game between the bishops and the curia in Rome about participating in a synodal committee and later in a synodal council must stop!” the lay panel demanded. Pope Francis also concludes his current statement in an interview with the forgiving words: “Always try to come to an agreement”.
The discussion, which has intensified significantly in recent weeks, about how to proceed and the implementation of the synodal path in Germany, as well as the answers and statements from Rome, have become a burden for all those involved in the Catholic Church, the statement continues. Volunteers would have to justify themselves again and again for what organized parts of the “executive floor” in Germany and in Rome.
The background is a letter in which the bishops named by the diocesan council in Rome asked whether they had to take part in the preparations for the synodal council, a core element of the synodal path reform process. High-ranking representatives of the Vatican then made it clear “that neither the synodal path nor any body appointed by it nor a bishops’ conference have the authority to set up the “synodal council” at the national, diocesan or parish level”.