Bishops should glue themselves to their cathedrals to protest against Rome
What Bishops and climate change deniers have in common: No systemic reform without breaking the law
Church reform risks failing on its own, says moral theologian Daniel Bogner. What can help: The Bishops must commit calculated boundary violations. His German colleague Matthias Reményi agrees and explains why bishops should take climate activists as an example. An analysis.
The Freiburg moral theologian, Daniel Bogner (50), calls for "calculated border violations" in the professional journal "Herder Korrespondenz". The Würzburg fundamental theologian, Matthias Reményi (52), prophesies in "Kirche und Leben" that rule-breaking is inevitable for reforms. And he calls on church reformers to take their cue from climate stickers.
Synodality: Attitude without institutional consequences
According to Daniel Bogner, "the monarchist church constitution" poses a structural dilemma.
From Episcopal sovereignty, i.e. the king-like status of the bishops within the Church constitution, it follows that Synodality is above all "attitude and attitude, without there being any institutional consequences connected with it".
A tragedy in the making
According to Bogner, the monarchist church structure means that institutional consequences of reform projects are usually absent. The conclusion of the German Synodal Way is an example of this. This "resembles a tragedy with an announcement".
The problem: every institutional reform needs the approval of the highest bishop. And Rome consistently answers the German reformers in the negative. A Roman no came to lay preaching, the blessing of homosexual couples and the diaconate of women. The latter had already been a concern of the Würzburg Synod (1971-75) and its Swiss counterpart, the Synod of '72.
All back to square one
The Roman "no" votes mean that the game pieces of the reform advocates are being sent back to the drawing board. In other words, back to where they started.
But they did not just start in 2021. Many of the topics of the German Synodal Path and the Swiss Synodal process have been discussed since Vatican II. So they are half a century old.
Accordingly, Bogner attests to the reform bishops only a "courage with the handbrake on". And he finds it little surprising that the German reform proposals "are not perceived as a step forward outside the internal Catholic world".
Renewal through calculated rule-breaking
In order to prevent the reform of the Church from becoming an endless game of "hurry up and do it" in which everyone ends up going round and round in the same circle, Bogner sees only one path to genuine renewal. The bishops must commit calculated border violations. One could also say: they have to release the handbrake and just do it.
Matthias Reményi, a fundamental theologian from Würzburg, also believes that change can only be achieved through calculated, well-placed rule-breaking.
Rule-breaking from which blessings arise
In a guest commentary for the online portal "Kirche und Leben" (Church and Life), he writes: "We need rule-breaking so that something new can emerge in the Church. Actions like "#OutInChurch" or "Love Wins", but also lay and especially women's sermons as well as ecumenical meal celebrations are such rule-breakers from which blessings grow." See original coverage
Reményi is convinced that changing social conditions lead to a change in church practice. The theologian speaks of the theory-practice circle. By this, Reményi means that an "official church norm" is only formulated after social practice has already been established.
Both theologians demand - in different ways - that church reformers establish new practices in the hope that the official church will then follow suit. Where Bogner speaks abstractly of "calculated violation of boundaries", Reményi refers to concrete examples.
From climate to church glue protests?
For Reményi, the civil disobedience of the climate activists is a model. They commit selective, calculated breaches of the rules. Their motivation, however, is not the destruction of law, but rather its restoration in the face of great grievances. Reményi believes that this is exactly what is needed in the church.
The essays of the two theologians were published at the same time, but independently of each other. That is precisely why their consensus is interesting. Bogner and Reményi are convinced: without calculated rule-breaking, no change. In terms of personnel, one could say: without Monika Schmid's only Georg Gänswein's everywhere.
We will probably wait in vain for photos of Felix Gmür and Georg Bätzing sticking themselves in front of their cathedrals in Solothurn and Limburg in protest against Rome. But perhaps the theory-practice circle also works the other way round: theologians encourage in writing and bishops dare to break the rules in a calculated way.
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