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From blessing so-called “safe sex” contracepting couples in 1968 to blessing same-sex couples today, German-speaking clergy are vowing, once again, to oppose Rome openly. Unable to marry same-sex couples, many of the ordained have taken to blessing them.
But the Holy See on Monday condemned the practice. The Vatican’s chief doctrinal watchdog explained in a document the Church can bless individuals with homosexual inclinations, who will “to live in fidelity to the revealed plans of God as proposed by Church teaching,” but the Church “does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.”
While the ink was still drying, prelates and priests expressed disappointment, dismay and even appall. In a press release titled “Call to Disobedience 2.0,” a dissident Catholic group in Austria dug in its heels: “We will continue to bless same-sex couples.”
The group, Pastor’s Initiative, is led by Fr. Helmut Schüller, an outspoken, pro-homosexual cleric, who launched the first “Call to Disobedience” in 2011, calling for women to be ordained. That year, Cdl. Sean O’Malley of Boston banned the dissident priest from speaking on Catholic property in the archdiocese.
Head of the German bishops’ conference Bp. Georg Bätzing treated the Vatican’s doctrinal clarification as just another point of view in a discussion he says has “no easy answers.” Bätzing claimed immutable Church teaching can develop with arguments on truths of faith and “progressive theological reflection and also in openness to more recent results of the human sciences and the life situations of people today.”
One priest explained to Church Militant the reason for this rebellion boils down to the love of money coupled with homosexuality in the clergy, which some German prelates have decried.
Cdl. Walter Brandmüller: “What is especially frightening and unsettling about this phenomenon of homosexuality in the clergy is that, in this way, the sacraments are abused.”
Simply put, Father said keeping homosexual couples in the Church means keeping their money in the coffers.
This especially since the Kirchensteuer — German Church tax — has been in sharp decline: As the pews empty, so do the baskets.
German bishops designed the so-called Synodal Way, a two-year attempt to tamper with Church teaching on faith and morals, to reach Rome. But with the current papacy confusing everybody, the faithful and the not-so-faithful, that design might fail, leaving only schism in the German-speaking Church.
