Emmanuel Thomas, DPA l Friday, May 5, 2023
MUNICH – Germany’s Catholic laity are insisting on the implementation of decisions on reforming the Church following a series of scandals while calling for further reform, the president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) said in Munich.
All the decisions taken in the course of the Synodal Way conferences since their start in December 2019 should be implemented, Irme Stetter-Karp said on Friday following the conclusion of the series in March.
“I appeal to the German bishops – to all of them – to meet their responsibilities,” she said at the start of the ZdK’s spring general meeting. “The decisions do not go far enough,” Stetter-Karp said, repeating earlier criticism.
Among the reform decisions taken were on blessings for homosexual couples and increasing the role of women in sacramental offices. A synodal committee is also to be established. The pope has expressed veiled criticism of the Synodal Way.
Stetter-Karp said she still saw a “Church in which the leading men are cementing their power, blocking developments and deepening the divides between the church and the world.”
She expressed disappointment at Rome’s refusal to allow baptism by laypeople and said she sometimes felt “rage” at the lack of progress.
Stetter-Karp expressed shock at the outcome of an investigation into abuse in the Freiburg diocese and the role of former archbishop Robert Zollitsch, saying that the probe had not gone far enough.
The fact that certain dioceses still did not want to hold probes into sexual violence sounded “like mockery,” she said.
In her speech, Stetter-Karp referred to an “encrusted system” and called for thoroughgoing transformation. “This Church must find an end to the absolutist power system,” she said.
