Catholic Church entering post-ecclesiastical phase with Synodal Path
There follows a devastating analysis of the Synodal Path as the 5th and last Synodal Assembly opens in Germany, totally lacking legitimacy. Only an idiot would think these worldly political manipulations were guided by the Holy Spirit.
Denial of secret voting and other inconsistencies
It is probably already strange enough when Bishop Georg Bätzing, a member of the Presidium of the Synodal Path, writes a letter to himself as the President of the Bishops' Conference and thus informs himself about a decision of the Presidium, after he himself was involved in the decision of the Presidium in question - but what is still strange in the face of a Synodal Path that fights in several respects for the legitimacy of its decisions.
Another inconsistency has just been added, which, strictly speaking, is a tangible scandal, as it arbitrarily interprets the right to secret voting guaranteed in the statute of the Synodal Way, which can be requested by at least five members of the assembly. The Presidium sees this differently and not only brings the Rules of Procedure of the Synodal Path into opposition, but even constructs a priority with linguistic subtleties.
Specifically: The Presidium of the Synodal Path (consisting of Bishop Bätzing and Bishop Bode as representatives of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK) and Irme Stetter-Karp as well as Thomas Söding as representatives of the ZdK (Central Committee of German Catholics) held a meeting on March 6th 2023, that at the Synodal Assembly the roll-call vote takes precedence over the secret vote, and at the request of the Bishops' Conference, it communicated this legal assessment to its chairman, i.e. Bishop Bätzing himself (the 4-page letter here under the link).
Remember: After the vote on the basic text on sexual morality failed at the 4th Synodal Assembly in autumn 2022 due to the blocking minority of bishops in a secret ballot, the outrage was so great that the statutes were spontaneously canceled in a private decision in the autumn questioned "interpretation committee" and here, too, overruled the application of five members of the Synod without further ado.
The canon lawyer Georg Bier (Freiburg) described this as an "unsustainable assessment of the legal situation"; his colleague Martin Rehak (Würzburg) called this approach a "failed interpretation and application".
Everyone is recommended to read Georg Bier's razor-sharp analysis, which not only lists the chronology of these events, but also lists all the shortcomings of these decisions. Quotes:
"First of all, the interpretation process is questionable: the commission apparently involved a person who did not belong to it in the consultation on the interpretation."
"There are considerable doubts about the impartiality of the interpretation commission."
"The Synodal Assembly, which is often referred to as "sovereign", was passed over"
“Such an approach is problematic enough. The obviously incorrect interpretation of the Rules of Procedure weighs much more heavily."
"Anything else would also be incompatible with the Statutes of the Synodal Path, which as such take precedence over the rules of procedure (Art. 14 statutes, § 17 GO)"
In his expert report, Martin Rehak also sharply dissects the interpretation commission's hierarchy "Rall-call elections come before a secret election" and even allows himself to be carried away to the verdict:
“It is incomprehensible that such a mistake could have been made by people of standing and reputation, whose personal integrity is beyond doubt and who have a reputation to lose in the legal community. One also does not understand the twisted inner logic that the interpretation claimed by the interpretation commission could follow.”
The consequence that Georg Bier named is now clearly evident:
“The Fourth Synodal Assembly showed what absurd consequences arise if this is not observed. The moderation team treated the request for a secret vote by five people as a request for a rule of procedure and put it to a vote (which was inadmissible because a request for a secret vote is not provided for in the exclusive list of possible requests for the rules of procedure in Section 5 (3) GO). The “proposal motion” clearly missed the simple majority. If this procedure were in accordance with the statutes and the rules of procedure, the majority could block any request for a secret ballot. This would obviously have undermined the protective purpose of the exemption.”
And that's exactly what it was about in autumn, now it should be repeated as standard at the 5th General Assembly. With this, a secret free election, something that is supposed to enable really free elections without fear of consequences, especially in democratic processes, has been undermined with an announcement. One may allow the remark that such customs are only known from totalitarian countries, or as the theologian Helmut Müller puts it:
“Glass urns only existed under communism”
Anyone who thinks that this is the end of the formal inconsistencies must be disappointed because further paradoxes and breaches of the law are opened up that either no one wants to see or that everyone wants to ignore. Listed below:
1. Valid vote despite disregarding the voting procedure?
Not only the Berlin state government had to be taught that an election that does not comply with the right to vote is not valid and has to be repeated. The Synodal Path must be able to ask the same question with regard to all the voting that was carried out last September with the refusal of the secret ballot. And there are quite a few, because after the failure of the basic text on sexual morality (that was the very first vote), all further resolutions were held for two days under voting conditions that did not conform to the statutes. The matter is very simple: if the statutes have not been observed, and as stated above, leading canonists agree, the resolutions of September are not valid and would have to be repeated.
2. A nationwide Synodal Council has been decided and at the same time prohibited
Martin Brüske formulated what we as an initiative have already criticized several times: If the so-called "Synodal Committee" is to be elected in its final composition in a detailed candidate casting at the Synodal Assembly on Saturday, the dilemma that cannot be resolved remains that the core task of the committee is the The establishment of the Synodal Council should be exactly what the Roman Curia, but also the Pope personally, clearly rejected in his letter of January 16, 2023.
Now the Synodal Assembly in September 2022 has long since decided to set up this Council (here the decision in its final version), now it has been banned. The resolution should nevertheless be implemented, although its content and objectives are prohibited by canon law.
According to the agenda, however, the decision will foreseeably neither be revised nor rewritten at the current meeting. But something cannot be valid and forbidden at the same time. One leaves it as it is and works its way along the line of argument that Rome simply did not understand how the Council was structured, that one always wanted to remain within the framework of canon law.
But what is the need for a body that is nothing more than a toothless tiger? Unless one wants to impose more than canon law with the “self-commitment of the bishops”?
And how should one trust the assurances of a body that pretends to want to observe canon law when its members are demonstrating that they are not even able to implement a simple organizational statute in a legally correct manner, the content of which is only at the level of a rabbit breeders' association ?
3. A draft resolution continues to call for Synodal Councils down to the parish level
However, the Pope has clarified even more than the impossibility of installing a nationwide Synodal Council, namely additionally "that neither the Synodal Way nor any body appointed by it nor a bishops' conference have the competence to set up the 'Synodal Council' at national, diocesan or parish level set up level". In his welcoming address at the spring meeting of the bishops in Dresden, the nuncio just added: Even a bishop is not allowed to do this alone.
Undeterred, however, with this action text from Forum 1, "Together discuss and decide", a text is available in the second reading, which is intended to oblige the bishops to enact new governance regulations, so that even the last pastor should submit to a committee in "self-commitment". , where he can formally object, but he is pushed into a detailed procedure up to ordered arbitration - or should we say - until he finally caved in under pressure from the community and the local press. And in addition, the question remains unanswered: Did someone not read the letter from Rome of January 16? Quote from the text:
"The diocesan bishops issue regulations for the dioceses and model regulations for the parishes on binding procedures and rules for joint consultation and decision-making by the leadership office and Synodal bodies. At the center of the regulations is the voluntary commitment of the bishop or pastor to the decisions of the committee. (...) For the parish, the bishop issues a model regulation for the voluntary commitment of the pastor in his diocese.
Do the pastors in Germany know that the synodal path wants to disempower them all and that the bishop is to be used as a henchman while everyone ignores a papal order?
4. Board hopping for advanced users
Last but not least, one last formal dilemma remains, namely, with what legitimacy can a newly founded body (the Synodal Committee) have the competence to complete the first readings of texts of another body (the General Assembly) or even to finally adopt them? So can Panel A terminate Panel B's decisions, even though some Panel B participants were never on Panel A, and other Panel A members who drafted the papers are no longer on Panel B? And which statutes and which rules of procedure make such madness possible - provided there are any written rules at all? In Frankfurt, for example, this action text (measures against abuse of women) is to be discussed in the first reading. However, it cannot be adopted definitively, so it has to go to committee, like any other texts, if they are rejected. This delegation of decision-making authority is nowhere formally determined in their processes.
5. Why should the implementation be monitored when according to the statute no decision is binding?
In a vague paraphrase, a few more tasks were quickly added to the new Synodal committee to be set up in the resolution of September 2022, namely to finish what cannot be completed here, but also to evaluate the resolutions of the synodal path. Quote from the resolution on the assignment:
"By 2026 at the latest, it will prepare the establishment of a Synodal Council of the Catholic Church in Germany that will meet the requirements below. The development of the Synodal Council includes determining the relationship to other bodies of the German Bishops' Conference such as the Central Committee of German Catholics.
It prepares and develops the evaluation of the resolutions of the Synodal Assembly.
It further develops the initiatives that have been discussed on the Synodal Path in the Synodal forums and the Synodal assembly. He decides promptly on the texts that were discussed and decided in the Synodal forums and could no longer be included in the Synodal Assembly.
The Committee therefore has the task of monitoring whether the resolutions of the Synodal path are actually being implemented at the diocesan level. And that brings us to the last inconsistency: If we are already harping on the statutes, they should really be taken literally. And it is now clear - and it has been explicitly referred to countless times to appease critics - that the resolutions of the Synodal assembly are not legally binding. Quote from the statute:
“Resolutions of the Synodal Assembly have no legal effect of their own accord. The authority of the bishops' conference and the individual diocesan bishops to enact legal norms within the framework of their respective competence and to exercise their teaching office remains unaffected by the resolutions." (Art. 11.5)
So you want to monitor and warn the implementation of resolutions that do not have to be implemented by anyone, but for whose non-implementation you still have to justify yourself. It is reminiscent of the "recommendations" of the EU Commission to the member states of the European Union. Of course, this is only a "recommendation".
But alas, it will not be finished! In any case, there is a clear legal term for this: it is coercion.
All of this leads to the fear that the Synodal Committee will and should be nothing more than the endless continuation of these debates until even the last priest gives in or gives up.
But of course, we're only doing the whole thing in the name of an honorable "abuse processing", right?
(Cathcon: the horrific thing is that the Synodalists have instrumentalised the abuse scandal in a grotesque bid for power)
Alexander Kissler also draws a sober note today in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) in his article entitled: "On its Synodal Path, the Catholic Church stumbles towards insignificance and comes to a devastating conclusion:
"Perhaps it will be possible to find one or the other flexible compromise formula at the last Synodal Assembly, perhaps some papers will be outsourced to future rounds and working groups. That doesn't change anything about the self-inflicted misery with which the Catholic Church is taking itself out of the game."
The Synodal Path accelerates the relapse of the church into a small and ridiculous Principality. In the future, every Council wants to be its own Bishop and almost every Bishop wants to be their own Pope. Such a patchwork of arbitrariness is only held together by the church tax. In this respect, the Catholic Church is entering its post-ecclesiastical phase with the synodal path.”
Birgit Kelle
publishes as a freelance journalist and columnist for various print and online media in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On the topics of women's, family and gender politics. Kelle is the author of various books (“Gendergaga”, “MUTTERTIER. An announcement”, “STILL NORMAL? – That can be gendered!” and most recently “CAMINO. Go with your heart”). She was born in Transylvania, Romania in 1975 and is the mother of four children
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