10 March 2020, The Tablet

German church could back women deacons

by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

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Bishop Georg Bätzing
Photo: CNS

The new leader of the Catholic Church in German has made clear his support for women deacons.
At their spring plenary from 2- 5 March, the German bishops elected Georg Bätzing, the 58-year-old Bishop of Limburg, to succeed Cardinal Reinhard Marx as conference president. Marx had surprisingly announced in January that he would not be available to serve for a second term.
In an early TV interview Bätzing  said he was convinced that the most important challenge of his six-year term as conference president would be women’s equality in the Church. “That is where the Church really has a backlog”, he underlined. A week later, in a radio interview, Bätzing said he could not guarantee that the synodal procedure for church reform, of which he is a staunch supporter, would not rule out a resolution in favour of women deacons.
If at the end of the two-year procedure, the members decided to apply to the Pope for an indult, that is an exemption for Germany, he was prepared – and would even be obliged, to “convey that to Rome”, he explained. Asked why a synodal procedure was required for such a step, Bätzing said he doubted whether an application by an individual bishop or even an entire bishops’ conference would succeed in getting an indult. “It will be more powerful if it is worded by the bishops and lay representatives of the synodal procedure,” he said.

Little was known about Bätzing before the plenary except that he had skilfully reconciled the diocese of Limburg which was deeply divided when he took over in 2014. Thousands of Catholics, not only from Limburg but from all over Germany, had left the Church in frustration on account of the lavish spending habits of his predecessor, Bishop Franz-Peter van-Elst, often nicknamed the “bishop of bling”.
Bätzing, whose episcopal motto is “congrega in unum” (“reconcile and reunite”), is known for patiently listening to all sides in a controversy. In four years he has succeeded in bringing his Limburg flock together. He never moved into the bishop’s palace but lives in an ordinary house.
In another interview, Bätzing was asked what scope he saw for homosexuality or premarital sex in church teaching. Pope Francis’ exhortation Amoris laetitia had opened the doors on this, he believed. He hoped canon law could be reworded in such a way that it was not seen as prohibitive morality. “And that concerns how we treat homosexuals and their lifestyle. On that score, things have simply got to change”.