Bishop says German Church should go it own way as much as possible

Bishops and laity: "Do not lecture others as the German Church".

The Catholic Church in the German-speaking area is further ahead than others in involving the laity, but it should be careful not to lecture other local churches - there is no way around synodality in any case. This is what Auxiliary Bishop Matthäus Karrer, who is currently attending a congress on co-operation between bishops and laity in the Vatican, told us.

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In our interview, the Auxiliary Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart said "that in the German-speaking world, I would formulate, we have already implemented a great many of these possibilities and it is now a matter of once again pushing the limits and thinking about how we can go a step further." More essential than questions of church law, however, is the pastoral attitude, according to Karrer: "Aren't the laity, from their own baptismal vocation, independently co-deciding and co-participating members of the people of God?"

In Germany, the Synodal Path, the Catholic Church's reform project, developed the idea of bishops voluntarily giving up some of their power to give lay people more co-responsibility. A model that other local churches in the world find difficult, the auxiliary bishop admits. But, "I think we have to be careful that we don't want to lecture others from a specifically German perspective."

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"Synodality must be worked out in the respective diocese"

In the German-speaking area, believers have long had more co-responsibility due to the constitution of the church under state-church law, Karrer recalled, pointing to the example of church tax. In other dioceses there is obviously more room for manoeuvre, as became clear at the Vatican Conference. "I am convinced that the synodal idea must be lived, worked out, experienced and developed in the respective dioceses. And I also take with me that there are not only limits here, but also possibilities."

"Those who approach us in conversation are quite positive about the whole synodal process in Germany"

At the Vatican conference, Auxiliary Bishop Karrer said he registered positive interest in the Synodal Way of the Church in Germany. Although the exchange could be "broader", "those who approach us in conversation see the whole synodal process in Germany quite positively, because they say: you have a resource with academic theology that can drive something like this forward, we don't have that." Many texts of the Synodal Way have now been translated into other languages, he said, and when reading them it becomes "clear even to outsiders that it is a struggle at a high theological level as to where it can go."

"But I advocate doing what can be decided in Germany"

Karrer compared the debates in the Church today to those on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, "where different national schools of theological thought made proposals, where people here in the Roman Curia also made up their own minds, and where we now have to enter into a great discussion and a common process of conversation, which I believe will sooner or later lead to a conciliar idea." In the end, the auxiliary bishop said, there would be new decisions. "And we won't make them in Germany either, but there will be much to be done in the context of the world church. But I advocate doing in Germany what can be decided in Germany. And the current canonical regulations offer much more than is being implemented in some dioceses.

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Cathcon: the German Association of Laity-ZdK was not invited to this conference.  They were upset but a sign, perhaps, that they are not flavour of the month in Rome with their reform proposals which would split the church in two, from bottom to top and top to bottom.