Sect nourished at the heart of the Church after Vatican II

 The deeply troubling history of the Catholic Integrated Community

The Katholische Integrierte Gemeinde – Catholic Integrated Community (KIG) was founded in 1965. The beginnings of the community go back to 1945, when the initiator Traudl Wallbrecher developed her idea of a new beginning in the church linked to Jewish-Christian roots as a response to the Holocaust. In 1948, Traudl Weiß, the leader of the federation at the time, left the Heliand Girls' Federation with around 60 other members. After her marriage to the lawyer Herbert Wallbrecher, a childhood friend of Johannes Degenhardt, this developed into the nucleus of the later Integrated Community.  The group established itself in Munich at the end of the 1960s.  For a time it was regarded as a hopeful new departure in the Catholic Church and, according to its own account, wanted to be "a place for an enlightened and unabridged Christianity".  The spiritual and theological orientation was based on modern exegesis, the liturgical and ecumenical movement, the Jewish roots of Christianity and the philosophy and literature of the post-war period (including the French existentialists).  The members of the Integrated Community understood themselves to be "a place for an enlightened and unabridged Christianity".

The members of the Integrated Community saw themselves as a large family of married couples and single people, priests and lay people, old and young. They lived all over Munich in commune-like house communities, so-called integration houses, and pursued their professions.  A strong elite consciousness and the behaviour of the founder, Traudl Wallbrecher, which was perceived by dropouts as indoctrination and a cult of personality, characterised their living together.  In retrospect, those affected criticise the living together, which was only possible at their expense. The church hierarchy stood in the way of the integrated community.

The church hierarchy initially had reservations about the grouping.  As early as 1973, there were accusations on record that the members' freedom was being impaired and that the leadership of the KIG was encroaching on their freedom.   Since 1976 there had been closer contact with Joseph Ratzinger, who shortly afterwards became Archbishop of Munich and Freising and Cardinal, and in 1978 gave the KIG ecclesiastical approval in his archdiocese; in the same year it was also recognised in Paderborn by Archbishop Johannes Degenhardt. This was followed in 1985 by its establishment as an ecclesiastical "association under public law" in accordance with c. 301 of the Codex Iuris Canonici (CIC). Several renowned theologians joined the community, which gained considerable prestige through its closeness to Ratzinger. Rudolf Pesch recruited many members of his Frankfurt student community for the KIG and gave up his chair in 1984.   In 1977 he moved with his family into an integration house and in 1996 his daughter married a son of the founding couple; the couple were married in Rome by Cardinal Ratzinger.  They included Norbert Lohfink and his brother Gerhard, who also gave up his chair in 1986 and moved into the KIG.  Integrated Communities were established in other dioceses in Germany, Austria, Tanzania and Italy or KIG clergy were delegated to parishes in these dioceses.  In 1994, the priestly community associated with the Integrated Community was founded.  Later, the IG changed its name to Catholic Integrated Community (KIG) and developed into a group of committed Catholics, mainly from southern Germany, which gained influence within the Church and at the Roman Curia due to its special position as a family environment of friends for Joseph Ratzinger.

Its conference centre in Urfeld near Walchensee in Upper Bavaria and various institutions in Munich and Bad Tölz developed into overarching centres of the community. This was followed by the Villa Cavalletti International Centre near Rome, which was built with considerable funds, but was only used for a short time.  On 25 October 2003, the KIG opened the "Academy for the Theology of God's People" in its Roman centre and received a detailed message of greeting from the then Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, on this occasion.  The mission of the Academy, which KIG founder Traudl Wallbrecher had formulated in consultation with Ratzinger, was interdisciplinary reflection on the people of God made up of Jews and Christians. The first director of the Academy was Ludwig Weimer, a student of Ratzinger and member of the association P.i.D. ("Priester im Dienst an Katholischen Integrierten Gemeinden e. V."), who together with Gerhard Lohfink and Rudolf Pesch is described as the authoritative theological head of the community.  

In 2004, Cardinal Ratzinger met with all Academy members to clarify his understanding of the historicity of the virgin birth and the materiality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to commit the Academy to this view.  

Cathcon: clearly some incipient heresies being promoted

After his election as Pope, he received the KIG leadership team for a private audience in the Vatican in February 2006 and invited a delegation of the community to his summer residence Castel Gandolfo in the same year.  On 13 March 2009, at the Pontifical Lateran University, in the presence of Traudl Wallbrecher, the Rector of the Lateran University, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, and the Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechay Lewy, Ludwig Weimer was presented with the newly created Chair of the Theology of the People of God, which was located at the university's Pastoral Institute. Cardinal Walter Kasper gave the opening lecture.  In the meantime, Achim Buckenmaier heads the Institute.

In 2009, Traudl Wallbrecher resigned from the chair of the KIG and moved to her daughter in Munich. After her withdrawal, the Catholic Integrated Community got into increasing internal tensions and was finally dissolved as a church organisation after the death of the founder, louder accusations of longstanding spiritual abuse practices against members and finally a clear distancing of the church leadership. It is not clear in what framework the group's activities still exist (chair, school). Former leading members have "gone underground", according to research by the Süddeutsche Zeitung in the spring of 2021.

Organisation

Statutory task and purpose

The Second Vatican Council, in Numbers 18/19 of the Decree Apostolicam actuositatem, explicitly dealt with ecclesial associations established for the purpose of common apostolic activity, emphasising their importance as an organised form of lay apostolate in the contemporary world.

In its statutes of 1978, the KIG described its work as an attempt "to make the Gospel present in a world alienated from the Church in such a form that even those who are distant can once again find access to the faith of the Catholic Church. Its members link their lives together in all areas in a variety of ways and take joint initiatives - on their own responsibility and with their own funding." In 1985, the Integrated Community was established as a public association under Catholic canon law. The group was included in the list of pontifically recognised international lay associations of the former Pontifical Council for the Laity.  It was not subject to the supervision of the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, but as a lay movement and ecclesial association remained under the control of the local bishop in whose diocese it was established. 

Funding

The KIG financed its tasks independently and largely independently of official ecclesiastical channels through private initiative. However, there have been parish priests in German dioceses who belonged to the KIG and collected donations for its projects among the faithful.  The economic situation of the parishes and the whereabouts of proceeds from the sale of businesses and real estate is unclear according to the report of the visitators of the Archdiocese of Munich.

Relatives

The KIG included families and unmarried people, lay people and priests, who formed house communities and also lived in residential communities (integration houses).  According to their self-image and practice, everyone remained "responsible for their livelihood, their profession, their financial circumstances and their property, as well as provision for old age and illness."  According to the statutes, the general meeting was the responsible body. This also elected the leadership team and the chairperson of the leadership team, who was normally to be confirmed by the competent bishop. Since 2010, however, confirmation by the archbishop has no longer been sought for newly elected leadership in the responsible archdiocese of Munich. According to an expert opinion on canon law from 2004, irregularities also occurred when members were expelled.  Membership figures are not known, nor was there any information on the number of table and living communities. Identical entries in the list of papally recognised international lay associations (last 2006) and the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life (last 2017) listed "around 1,000 members in seven countries", based on self-reporting.  There is no information on the number of members.

Key persons for the KIG

Achim Buckenmaier (* 1959), theologian and priest

Aloys Goergen (1911-2005), priest and art scholar, spiritual companion of the initiator in the founding phase of the IG 1949-1968

Rudolf Kutschera (* 1960), theologian and priest, managing director of the St. Anna Colleg school association

Norbert Lohfink (* 1928), theologian and priest

Gerhard Lohfink (* 1934), theologian and priest

Michael P. Maier (b. 1961), theologian and priest

Rudolf Pesch (1936-2011), theologian and biblical scholar

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022), long-time friend and patron

Married couple Traudl (1923-2016) and Herbert Wallbrecher (1922-1997)

Ludwig Weimer (* 1940), theologian and priest

Peter Zitta, priest (ordained 1962) and psychologist, member of the supervisory board of the St. Anna School Association and member of the management team of the Catholic Integrated Communities, (formerly) Superior of the Community of Priests in Service of the KIG.  From 1966, one of the three chaplains in the priestly team of the "fraternal community" in the Viennese parish of Machstraße,  before joining the KIG in Munich and being commissioned in 1978 by Cardinal Ratzinger with the approbation certificate as "Ecclesiastical Assistant of the Integrated Community in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising".  From 2008 to 2015, Zitta was parish priest of the Viennese parish of Weinhaus, seconded by the priestly community to the Archdiocese of Vienna.

Initiatives

Initiatives run by relatives and members of the KIG included (after a significant reduction) most recently:

P.i.D. Priester im Dienst an Katholischen Integrierten Gemeinden e. V.

since 1977: St. Anna Schulverbund (since 2021 St. Anna Colleg) in Munich, which is run through a non-profit limited company.

since 2003: School project Herbert Wallbrecher Primary School in the Parish of St. Nicolaus for grades 1 to 7 in Mikese, Tanzania in Mikese in the Diocese of Morogoro in Tanzania; since 2012 a girls' school attached.

since 2009: Chair for the Theology of the People of God at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, since 2016 with distance learning "Theology of the People of God" (recognition exempted)

Since 2010: Professor Ludwig Weimer Foundation in Munich, represented by the P.i.D. - Priest in Service to Catholic Integrated Communities e.V.

Canonical investigation and dissolution

Prompted by serious allegations by former members, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich appointed canonical visitators on 14 February 2019 to examine the conditions within the spiritual community in the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. According to the interim report of the examiners, the community's treatment of its members "bears the character of spiritual abuse over large stretches". There was a system of psychological and financial dependence in which dissent was presented as a sin against the Holy Spirit. According to the report, the group has also been accused of psychological or disciplinary abuse of the sacrament of penance for many years. Relationships and marriages have been formed and broken up depending on whether the KIG assembly thought it would be beneficial for church life.  The KIG meeting had decided whether and when a couple could or should have children.  According to the Munich diocese spokesperson, the KIG refused to co-operate with the visitators.  The latter was denied by responsible persons of the community via counterstatements, rather they had "communicated their willingness to co-operate to the visitators in writing several times."

After the internal investigation became public in autumn 2019, representatives of the KIG such as Achim Buckenmaier spoke out in conservative church media such as Radio Horeb and tried to relativise the complaints.  The accusations, he said, were old, sweeping and unclear, and had been brought up again and again for years to discredit the community. Buckenmaier also criticised the archdiocese's procedure as non-transparent and lamented the publicity of the interim report as well as the fact that Cardinal Marx had not publicly backed the community after the allegations had become public, despite being asked to do so by the KIG leadership.  The KIG also rejected the allegations in a statement on its website. They were "completely baseless accusations, untrue allegations and fact-free prejudices against the community".  The accusations were substantiated by the testimony of a person affected on the online portal BR24 of the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation. According to her own account, the former member grew up, among other things, in the so-called integration houses of the KIG, often separated from her parents (at the time also parishioners), who were put under psychological pressure by the community to divorce against their will.

In October 2020, the final report of the visitation was completed and available to the archdiocese.   As a result, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI distanced himself from the Catholic Integrated Community. He deeply regretted that the impression could arise that all the activities of the community had been approved by him as Archbishop of Munich. In a statement, KIG announced that it would cease its activities as an ecclesiastical association and operate in a different legal form in the future. By withdrawing all its members, which was tantamount to self-dissolution, the association evaded scrutiny by the competent archdiocesan supervisory bodies.  Similar statements were also made by the other offshoots of KIG to the local bishops responsible for them.

On 20 November 2020, Cardinal Reinhard Marx announced that he had dissolved the public ecclesiastical association Katholische Integrierte Gemeinde in der Erzdiözese München und Freising. The visitators' statement was published on the website of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. According to the TV documentary Geknechtet unterm Kreuz - Leben in einer katholischen Sekte, by Bayerischer Rundfunk in November 2021, about the KIG and Joseph Ratzinger's role as a supporter of the KIG, it was unclear at that time who would own the KIG's assets after the dissolution.

In autumn 2021, the Archbishop of Paderborn, Hans-Josef Becker, dissolved the "Community of Priests in Service to Integrated Communities" in the Archdiocese of Paderborn. At last count, the community was said to have "still had 20 clergy associated with the 'Catholic Integrated Community' (KIG)."

The association "Catholic Integrated Community in the Diocese of Augsburg (KIG)", which had unanimously decided to cease its activities on 25 June 2020, was dissolved by an episcopal decree on 21 February 2022. The association was dissolved on 15 September 2022.

With effect from 15 September 2022, the Bishop of Münster, Felix Genn, dissolved the public association "Katholische Integrierte Gemeinde" in the Diocese of Münster. According to the decree of dissolution, the association no longer had any members.The last two KIG ecclesiastical associations existing in Germany in the archdiocese of Paderborn and in the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart are also on the verge of dissolution, as the two dioceses announced in response to a request in October 2022.

The Bishop of Rottenburg-Stuttgart, Gebhard Fürst, finally dissolved the Catholic Integrated Community as a canonical association in his Diocese on 1 February 2023.

Cathcon: Thus ends the wretched story of the Catholic Integrated Community as it disappears into historical oblivion.

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