Opponents of the Synodal Path said its goals “do not go hand in hand” with the Universal Church.

 

Opponents of the Synodal Path said its goals “do not go hand in hand” with the Universal Church.

Four conservative German bishops said the final document of the Synod on Synodality ruled out further reforms from the Synodal Path initiative.

They signed a statement saying the document strengthened their prior boycott of the Synodal Path, since sexual morality and celibacy did not appear in it and there was no change on women’s ordination. 

Supporters of the Synodal Path, a reform process opened in response to the clerical sexual abuse scandal which has received several rebukes from the Vatican, reacted positively to the Synod document. Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, the bishops’ conference president, said it was “timid but irreversible”.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich dismissed the four bishops’ statement, saying it was “not a topic” at a recent meeting of Bavarian bishops though three of the signatories were from the state. “I don’t need to know every letter people write – I have so much to do,” he said.

The statement from Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, Bishop Gregor Maria Hanke of Eichstätt and Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau said they would not attend the next Synodal Council because “the goals and content of the German Synodal Path and the Universal Church process of the Synod do not go hand in hand”.

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They said German reform debates resembled “a parliamentary-like process of gaining simple majorities and not of spiritual discernment, as the final document urges us to do”.

Much is “already structurally possible in Germany, in particular through numerous advisory and co-determination bodies that already exist,” they said, encouraging Catholics to “contribute to their spiritual deepening”.

Cardinal Marx said the Synod’s final document, which Pope Francis approved directly rather than issue a post-synodal exhortation, left several questions open. “But they are still in the world. The decision about what is considered important must be made locally,” he added. “To say that it was not discussed at the World Synod, then we must not talk about it either, I find that a bit strange.”

The lay Catholic leaders and bishops who have parity in Synodal Path decision-making said it was necessary “further to develop and expand synodality in our dioceses and in our country with the help of the experiences of the World Synod and our Synodal Path”.

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