[Grem] *****SPAM(5.0)***** An Open Letter to German Card. R. Marx / George Weigel

[Emoke Greschik]

AN OPEN LETTER TO CARDINAL REINHARD MARX

Your Eminence:

I noted with interest your recent announcement of a “binding synodal
process” during which the Church in Germany will discuss the celibacy of
the Latin-rite Catholic priesthood, the Church’s sexual ethic, and
clericalism, these being “issues” put on the table by the crisis of
clerical sexual abuse.

Perhaps the following questions will help sharpen your discussions.

1) *How can the “synodal process” of a local Church produce “binding”
results on matters affecting the entire Catholic Church? *The Anglican
Communion tried this and is now in terminal disarray; the local Anglican
churches that took the path of cultural accommodation are comatose. Is this
the model you and your fellow-bishops favor?

2) *What does the celibacy of priests in the Latin rite have to do with the
sexual abuse crisis*?* Celibacy has no more to do with sexual abuse than
marriage has to do with spousal abuse.* Empirical studies indicate that
most sexual abuse of the young takes place within (typically broken)
families; Protestant denominations with a married clergy also suffer from
the scourge of sexual abuse; and in any event, marriage is not a
crime-prevention program. Is it cynical to imagine that the abuse crisis is
now being weaponized to mount an assault on clerical celibacy, what with
other artillery having failed to dislodge this ancient Catholic tradition?

3) According to a Catholic News Agency report, *you suggested that “the
significance of sexuality to personhood has not yet received sufficient
attention from the Church.”* Really? Has *St. John Paul II’s Theology of
the Body* not been translated into German? Perhaps it has, but it may be
too long and complex to have been properly absorbed by German-speaking
Catholics. Permit me, then, to draw your attention to pp. 347–358 of *Zeuge
der Hoffnung* (Ferdinand Schoeningh, 2002), the German translation of *Witness
to Hope*, the first volume of my John Paul II biography. There, you and
your colleagues will find a summary o*f the Theology of the Body, including
its richly personalistic explanation of the Church’s ethic of human love
and its biblically-rooted understanding of celibacy undertaken for the
Kingdom of God. *

4) *You also note that your fellow-bishops “feel...unable to speak on
questions of present-day sexual behavior.” That was certainly not the case
at the Synods of 2014, 2015, and 2018, where German bishops felt quite able
to speak frequently to these questions, albeit in a way that typically
mirrored today’s politically-correct fashions*. And I’m sure I’m not alone
in wondering just when the German episcopate last spoke to “present-day
sexual behavior” in a way that promoted the Church’s ethic of human love as
life-affirming and ordered to human happiness and fulfillment, at least in
the years since its *massive dissent from* *Humanae Vitae (Pope St. Paul
VI’s 1968 encyclical on the ethics of family planning)*.  But that, as I
understand Pope Francis, is what he is calling us all to do: Witness to,
preach, and teach the “Yes” that undergirds everything to which the Church
must, in fidelity to both revelation and reason, say “No.”

5) The CNA report also noted that *your “synodal process” (which, in a nice
tip of the miter to Hegel, you described as a “synodal progression”) would
involve consultations with* the Central Committee of German Catholics. My
dear Cardinal Marx,* this is rather like President Trump consulting with
Fox News or Speaker Pelosi consulting with the editors of the New York
Times. I*f you’ll pardon the reference to Major Heinrich Strasser in
*Casablanca,
*even we blundering Americans know that the ZdK, *the Zentralkomitee der
deutschen Katholiken, is the schwerpunkt, the spearhead that clears the
ground to the far left so that the German bishops can position themselves
as the “moderate” or “centrist” force *in the German Church. You know, and
I know, and everyone else should know that* consultations with the ZdK will
produce nothing but further attacks on celibacy,* *further affirmations of
current sexual fads, and further deprecations of* *Humanae Vitae* *(based,
in part, on the ZdK’s evident ignorance of** the Theology of the Body **and
German hostility to * *John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical on the renovation of
Catholic moral theology, Veritatis Splendor).  *

Your Eminence,* the German Church*—the Catholicism of my ancestors—*is
dying. It will not be revitalized by becoming a simulacrum of moribund
liberal Protestantism. *

I wish you a fruitful Lent and a joyful Easter.

*George Weigel **is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington, D.C.’s
Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair
in Catholic Studies.*

*Photo by Dieter Schmitt
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Marx#/media/File:Marx_05-2009.jpg> via
Creative Commons <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>. Image
cropped. *

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