This is interesting…
From LifeSite:
‘Married’ lesbian approved as head of Catholic day care in Cardinal Marx’s diocese
July 31, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – The website of the German Bishops’ Conference, katholisch.de, reported yesterday on the first case of a practicing homosexual permitted to remain in a position at a Catholic Church institution despite a flagrant and public violation of the Church’s moral law.
The woman who heads a Caritas Day Care Center in Bavaria, had been asked in April to leave her position due to her announcement that she was going to “marry” a woman. The decision has now been rescinded, according to Fr. Hans Lindenberger, head of the Caritas in Munich, Germany.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is the Archbishop of the Diocese of Munich, has agreed to implement the Church’s new Labor Law on August 1. The new Church Labor Law, approved by the German Bishops’ Conference at the end of April 2015, drastically liberalized the Catholic Church’s disciplinary rules in Germany. In the past, employees who did not live according to the Church’s moral teaching might have been asked to leave their position in institutions of the Church.
Three German bishops, Bishops Stefan Oster, Rudolf Vorderholzer, and Gregor Hanke, have decided not to implement the new Church law in their own dioceses.
Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau explained his stance in a recent Facebook post. He asked rhetorically whether the Church’s institutions would not lose their Catholicity even more than they already have with the new regulations. Would the service institutions which say “Catholic” on the outside have any faith on the inside, he asked. Are people working there from Christian conviction or only on the basis of what is professionally and economically viable? He warned that it was a self-imposed secularization of the Church.
Bishop Oster is under pressure from the priests of his diocese to give in to the new law. Twenty liberal priests in the diocese have issued a public letter asking the bishop to relent.
To comment on Bishop Oster’s Facebook page visit here.
Now that you have scanned that, think of the upcoming Synod and of who is pushing which agenda.
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I still haven’t gotten past “married lesbian” and “head of day care center.” The Catholic part doesn’t really enter into it. In Germany, this is an okay thing? NO I’m not saying that lesbians are likely to molest children. It’s just the weirdness of it.
German bishops have an arrogance to them, not from a great success in drawing the multitudes while others fail, for they have done a fairly dreadful job in that regard. The Church Tax makes them believe they can ignore some basic positions the whole body of the Faithful share. Unfortunately, I don’t see Pope Francis saying anything. Perhaps like with the Gay ‘Marriage’ Referendum a Curia officer will express dismay.
These German bishops, like other liberal Christians, seem to think that the more we compromise and give into secular society, the more the world will “like us”. They’ve somehow convinced themselves, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that these compromises will stem the exodus from their churches. In reality, liberal Christianity never thrives. I think of the liberal denominations here in Canada that have embraced gay marriage, abortion, and the like: The Anglican Church of Canada, the United Church of Canada, and the like. What do they all have in common? They are all on their death beds…membership his plummeted over the past several decades. On the other hand, conservative Catholic archdioceses like Vancouver are flourishing with vocations, converts, and fresh life from devout immigrants who have no time for liberal nonsense.
German Mass attendances have dived. Yet the piles of Church Tax makes them feel they can ignore reality. Part of the positioning is likely from the hope that Germans will at least keep paying their Church Tax. However, the ability not to offend is not a strong hold on a person affections and beliefs. The Church Tax take will continue shrinking slowly. I can only pray those bishops who feel the need to discard orthodoxy and rubbish Tradition will move back to it somehow.
First off, I really like Bishop Oster. But secondly, I don’t understand how this lesbian can be “married” since homosexuals cannot “marry” in Germany. They can have civil unions, as far as I am aware, but nothing more, and I think I read that Angela Merkel has no plans to change that. Please tell me that she was not fake-married by a priest.
Bishop Oster is very strong and brave to have such an interactive Facebook page. Prayers for his continued strength.
It’s interesting that the three dioceses of Eichstätt, Regensburg and Passau are all joined together in Bavaria. A little enclave of orthodoxy in a see (no pun intended) of heterodoxy. I have just come back from a holiday in Germany and went to Mass in Wilhelmshaven, Niebüll and Celle. (Niebüll is a small town near the border with Denmark.) I witnessed a number of liturgical irregularities but on the bright side, during the Mass in Niebüll the congregation sang the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Sanctus and the Agnus Dei according to the Missa de Angelis. As for the size of the congregations I would say that they compared favourably with the size of congregations in similar-sized churches in the UK. All were at least half-full. What did surprise me, in view of the Church Tax, was that there was a collection. Why should people be asked to give money during Mass when they have already donated a fair-sized amount in their tax?
I think what matters here is the ability of the person to run a day care and not her sexual orientation.
I must have missed the part in the gospels where Jesus of Nazareth refused to associate with people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
frjim4321 says:
1. I think what matters here is the ability of the person to run a day care and not her sexual orientation.
2. I must have missed the part in the gospels where Jesus of Nazareth refused to associate with people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
1. Agree as long as it’s a secular run day care. One run by the Church, however, exists ultimately to promote belief in Christ and the teachings of His Church.
2. You also seemed to have the part in the gospels where Christ tells the adulterous woman, “Go and sin no more.”
Fr. Jim,
Notwithstanding that nothing in the tradition relates any encounter by Christ with a practicing homosexual in the first place, the point is not a refusal to hire sinners (which would make any hiring impossible), but a refusal to hire open, unrepentant sinners who by their witness uphold grave sin as a positive good.
Since I have to think that even you would blanche at hiring a known pornographer or abortionist to run your daycare, I cannot help but suspect that the real issue here is that you don’t view these acts as sinful in the first place. But I would be delighted to stand corrected on that.
Notwithstanding that nothing in the tradition relates any encounter by Christ with a practicing homosexual in the first place …
Maybe Our Lord did when he healed the centurion’s pais. I agree with frijm4321 that the important issue here is her ability to do her job and not her sexuality.
Thing is, even apart from the whole “education by moral example” thing…
The facility is run by the church. There are plenty of educators out there that aren’t gay. There are plenty of job opportunities, in Germany, for educators outside of the Church.
I’d like to highlight that the actual problem is here not that the bishops want to change Church doctrine, or any such thing. This is not the divorced-remarried affair! The problem is distinct: the German Bishops’ Conference enacted certain new guidelines – and why? The aim of the bishops that approved of them was a comparatively unabashed* panic, “Let’s enact them ourselves before the State enacts them for us”.** So, if anything this is a courage issue (by saying which I do not imply I would have said courage myself), but not a doctrinal one. This isn’t, to repeat that, the divorced-and-remarried affair.
[* Of course, they would bury that, in the public statements, in a couple of homosexual-friendly sounding phrases. No need to overestimate them.
**Such a law, or even, they clamour for that too, a mere jurisprudence** by the Supreme Court for Labour Affairs, would be manifestly unconstitutional – religious freedom and so on. However, who’s guaranteeing these days that the Supreme Court strikes down unconstitutional laws?
*** the civil-law equivalent of a precedent]
To combat a peculiar American misunderstanding which I, forgive me, somewhat anticipate:
If the State says “do this and that”, then one can either obey or disobey. What one cannot do is “well then, I quit taking money from you, after all I can do what I like with my own” and (forgive the word:) naively think that, quite certainly, one has checkmated the State with that little sacrifice.
The State – all over the world – doesn’t deal in nonsense, and he has weapons. He may be friendly, that has been observed; but if he isn’t, noone can afford not to take him seriously (except, of course, those who have completely lost all fear of both death, and painful life).
(Forgive the Germanisms, but the last two paragraphs would have sounded somewhat unnatural to my ears if I had replaced the “he”, referring to the State, to the “it” demanded by English grammar.)
What one cannot do is to say, etc.
Tim says:
I agree with frijm4321 that the important issue here is her ability to do her job and not her sexuality.
Let’s say it’s a secular government day care center in which the head is a very religious Catholic. In addition to very competent work, she is also proselytizing for the faith. Do you think the state would tolerate that?
robtbrown wrote Let’s say it’s a secular government day care center in which the head is a very religious Catholic. In addition to very competent work, she is also proselytizing for the faith. Do you think the state would tolerate that?
Was the woman who was not rehired prosyletizing for sex outside of marriage? I haven’t read that I thought the reason she was rejected was simply her status – that she was in a same-sex marriage.
Unless she was proslyletizing, it seems to.me that the proper parallel for your example would be an atheistic government excluding anyone who believed in God from teaching in the schools – for fear that simply their presence would convey a message that belief in God was a legitimate position to hold.
I must have missed the part in the gospels where Jesus of Nazareth refused to associate with people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
Association is not the issue here. Exemplifying disordered lifestyles to little children is the issue.
Impossibile est ut non veniant scandala: vae autem illi per quem veniunt. Utilius est illi si lapis molaris imponatur circa collum ejus, et projiciatur in mare quam ut scandalizet unum de pusillis istis. Or did you “miss” that part too?
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