The German bishops’ conference, over the cliff

When it was first published in 1993, Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical on the reform of Catholic moral theology, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), dealt a severe blow to the pride of many German theologians, who had long thought themselves the cutting edge of Catholic intellectual life. Indeed, within a year of the encyclical’s publication, a book composed entirely of essays critical of John Paul’s deeply humanistic explication of Catholic teaching on the path to happiness and beatitude was published in Germany — because, its editor explained, Germany had a special obligation to police the Church’s theological precincts. Who had appointed German theologians to this supervisory role was left unstated. So was the idea that seemed to undergird much of the German Catholic intellectual resistance to John Paul II: German theologians must be smarter than a Pole.

German resistance to the papal magisterium antedated John Paul II, of course; it would be hard to find a prominent German theologian (or bishop, for that matter) who defended Pope Paul VI after he issued the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae on the morally appropriate means of regulating fertility. But much has changed since then, and the locus of progressive Catholic revisionism in moral theology has shifted from contraception to homosexuality. And now the German resistance to the truths taught by Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendor has metastasized into what seems to be an embrace of the claims of gender ideology and the “trans” movement by most of the country’s bishops.

On October 30, the German bishops’ conference secretariat announced on the conference website the publication of a text by the bishops’ Commission on Schools and Education, Created, Redeemed, and Loved: Visibility and Recognition of the Diversity of Sexual Identities in Schools. And by “diversity,” the text did not mean the diversity of Genesis 1:27 (“…male and female he created them”); the title refers to the ever-expanding catalogue of “identities” promoted by rainbow ideologists and LGBTQ+ activists. As Cologne-based domradio.de reported, the text urges teachers to “contribute to the visibility of people with diverse sexual identities by using language that reflects that diversity. Teachers … should foster a classroom climate in which children and young people feel seen and taken seriously as they explore their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And then the Deutsche Woke Express careens over the cliff into apostasy: “The paper calls on religious education teachers to present the Catholic Church’s sexual morality in a differentiated manner and to address controversial points in the Church and theology in their lessons so that students can form their own reasoned judgment.”

So: No affirmation of biblical anthropology. No proclamation that the Church authoritatively teaches a sexual ethic that has fostered human flourishing and sanctity for two millennia. No call to conversion. Do-it-yourself moral discernment. No recognition that empirical studies demonstrate that “transitioning” or “sex-reassignment” does not lead to positive, long-term mental health outcomes. No suggestion that young people experiencing gender dysphoria and other confusions over their sexuality should seek counsel from a religious educator, priest, or consecrated religious who believes that what the Catholic Church teaches about the moral life is true, and who lives that truth happily.

The document’s call to challenge bullying is welcome and, in the climate created by brutal social media “conversations” and rancid internet sites, urgent. And who would deny that schools should be places where the pains and crises of maturation are not worsened by “discrimination and personal degradation”? But treating others with respect is a basic obligation of Christian charity (not to mention human decency) that has been known for millennia. It’s not something gender ideology, rainbow activists, and trans advocates have taught us in the twenty-first century.

It is tragic that this abandonment of theological sanity and pastoral responsibility coincides with the 60th anniversary of the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, in which German bishops and theologians (including the future Pope Benedict XVI) played significant roles. Vatican II rightly rebalanced the Church’s self-understanding by affirming that bishops are true teachers, governors, and sanctifiers in their local churches, not simply branch managers of Catholic Church, Inc. For a bishops’ commission to issue a text calling for a “differentiated” approach to Catholic teaching — that is, an approach to education in which the settled truths of Catholic faith are regarded as one option on a menu of possibilities — is thus beyond bizarre. It is a betrayal of Vatican II. And it will result in intensified human suffering, rather than the healing of troubled souls through the ever-available grace of God and truly compassionate pastoral care.
The disastrous German situation cannot go unaddressed by Rome indefinitely.

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