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He who laughs last…
Over at Breitbart New Service, our friend Edward Pentin has great article providing background into the situation within the German Catholic Church, and the bishops sneaky attempt to circumvent Church teaching with respect to serial adulterers divorced and remarried and aberro-sexual unions. (see here)
If you recall, Edward Pentin was the journalist that recorded an interview with card. Kasper when the said cardinal made racist remarks about the African bishops. (See here)
Reproduced without comment.
Germany’s Catholic Bishops Face Resistance Over Labor Reform
Germany’s Catholic bishops are pressing ahead with reform of a controversial Church labor law that would allow employees who are in homosexual relationships or those divorced and civilly remarried to work in Church-run institutions.
The bishops were to unanimously vote in favor of change on Nov. 24, but decided to postpone the decision until April after a minority of conservative bishops resisted the move. They were also impeded by a federal court ruling that ironically supported the Church’s current laws that forbid employing staff whose lifestyles run contrary to Church teaching.
Until now, those seeking employment in the German Church – the second largest employer in the country – are required to adhere to lifestyles consistent with Church teaching.
But a majority of bishops, led by the president of the episcopal conference, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, were expected to vote in favor of the changes this week which would have given the green light for such employees to continue to work in administrative positions or as heads of departments, or to employ them in the future. The move has been devised in secret and will have important ramifications if it is eventually enacted, Church observers say.
Given that many homosexuals and divorced and civilly remarried Catholics are already working for the Church, and that the German Church is such a vast operation, proponents argue that these employees must be admitted if the Church is to continue functioning and offering the services people need.
However, opponents say the proposed changes are part of a highly skilled, secretive and finely tuned plan, devised by some members within the German bishops’ conference to circumvent Church teaching. In a bid to facilitate change, Cardinal Marx asserted at Monday’s meeting that homosexuals and the divorced and civilly remarried who are already employed by the Church are not “automatically dismissed.”
Critics of the reform say a key factor is the notorious Church tax in Germany which has led to complacency. Many dissenting bishops say “it’s simply enough to pay the tax,” said a German Church source. “They feel there’s no need to scrutinize people’s private lives.”
Opponents also dismiss the argument about requiring manpower for services: with a Catholic population of 23 million, it is surely not so difficult to find suitable employees who could adhere to Church teaching on these matters, they say.
The pastoral consequences of changing the Church’s rules on this issue would be significant. Those living in what the Church has always viewed as sinful relationships would henceforth have those lifestyles implicitly affirmed. Furthermore, critics say, it would be difficult to say to someone they must confess such sins when their colleagues, who might even be in positions of authority in the Church, are known to be living sinful private lives. They say it would send the message that the Church doesn’t care about the background of new employees and how they live, so essentially everyone can be employed.
The proposed changes, allegedly being spearheaded by Jesuit Father Hans Langendörfer, Secretary of the German Bishops’ Conference, have been considered in secret for at least the past 18 months, according to sources. “It’s like a hidden bombshell,” one informed source close to the German Church said, adding that the language they will also use will be purposefully vague and therefore open to interpretation. This could be used, opponents fear, to dismiss those employees who are upholding Church teaching and being “too Catholic” on the grounds that they are the ones causing scandal by creating a “negative atmosphere.”
Church commentators say the proposed law is expected to eventually achieve the requisite two-thirds majority as only a few conservative bishops are obstructing it.
Proponents of change were wrong-footed last week when Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court ruled that a Catholic hospital in Düsseldorf had the right to dismiss a senior doctor who was divorced and remarried.
The judges overturned a prior judgment of the Federal Labor Court which had declared the dismissal of the doctor invalid. The constitutional court ruled that the labor court had not “sufficiently taken into account” the meaning and scope of the Church’s autonomy.
German bishops have publicly welcomed the constitutional court’s ruling, but played it down and are expected to spin their new law as “more merciful”. The court ruling has shown, however, the country’s judges to be arguably more Catholic (even though some are not Catholic) than many of the country’s bishops.
The timing of the ruling is also interesting as many of the bishops hoped the court would have given the ruling after they had met and decided on the new changes to the Church’s labor law.
The motives behind the court’s decision are said to be a willingness among Germany’s judiciary to uphold religious freedom in the face of Islamist threats and riots in Germany involving supporters of the Islamic State militant group. Realizing the Islamist threat is increasing, they have reportedly opted for a way that strengthens the Church and religious freedom. The ruling also follows a similar decision taken in June this year by the European Court of Human Rights to uphold Church autonomy.
If the German Church goes ahead with its proposed adaptation to labor law, it will be just the latest in a series of efforts on the part of the German Church to accommodate the Church’s teaching to secularist trends.
Cardinal Marx told reporters during the synod on the family last month that a strong majority of German bishops supported Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal to allow some divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion.
“They’re trying to change doctrine through these subtle means,” a source in the German Church told Breitbart, adding that exposing their tactics is “important” ahead of next year’s Synod on the Family to take place at the Vatican next October.
This general attitude of many of Germany’s bishops also runs contrary to what Benedict XVI said during his famous “Entweltlichung” speech when visiting his homeland in 2011. In that address, the former pontiff called on the German Church to detach herself from worldliness or face having her roots withered away.
Pope St. Pius X once again, foresaw and clearly dreaded this evil.
In his encyclical, “Acerbo Nimis” (1905-2nd year of his Pontificate)\
Quoting Sacred Scripture he warned:
” Fierce wolves will get in among you, and will not spare the flock.”
“God Himself declared through the Prophet Osee: “And there is no knowledge of God in the land. Cursing and lying and killing and theft and adultery have overflowed: and blood hath touched blood. Thereafter shall the land mourn, and everyone that dwelleth in it shall languish.”
“Christian teaching reveals God and His infinite perfection with far greater clarity than is possible by the human faculties alone.”:
“We cannot expect to reap a harvest when no seed has been planted, how can we hope to have a people with sound morals if Christian doctrine has not been imparted to them in due time? If faith languishes in our days, if among large numbers it has almost vanished, the reason is that the duty of catechetical teaching is either fulfilled very superficially or altogether neglected.
___
Writing of the “otherwise well-educated”, [attention German Bishops] he wrote:
“It is hard to find words to describe how profound is the darkness in which they are engulfed and, what is most deplorable of all, how tranquilly they repose there. …They have no conception of the malice and baseness of sin; hence they show no anxiety to avoid sin or to renounce it. And so Our Predecessor, Benedict XIV, had just cause to write: “We declare that a great number of those who are condemned to eternal punishment suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those mysteries of faith which must be known and believed in order to be numbered among the elect.”
___
“There is- no reason for wonder that the corruption of morals and depravity of life is already so great, and ever increasingly greater, not only among uncivilized peoples but even in those very nations that are called Christian.” “THE CHIEF CAUSE of the present indifference, infirmity of soul, and serious evils that result from it,
IS IGNORANCE OF THINGS DIVINE..
[“Just do good and I’ll meet you there”, apparently doesn’t suffice for Atheists or anyone else:]
.. “For the will of man retains but little of that divinely implanted love of virtue and righteousness by which it was, as it were, attracted strongly toward the real and not merely apparent good. Disordered by the stain of the first sin, and almost forgetful of God, its Author, it improperly turns every affection to a love of vanity and deceit. This erring will, blinded by its own evil desires, has need therefore of a guide to lead it back to the paths of justice whence it has so unfortunately strayed. The intellect itself is this guide, provided by nature itself.. THOUGH, IF IT LACK ITS COMPANION LIGHT-THE KNOWLEGE OF DIVINE THINGS, IT WILL BE ONLY AN INSTANCE OF THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND, SO BOTH WILL FALL INTO THE PIT.
___
.”We must consider UPON WHOM RESTS THE OBLIGATION to dissipate this most pernicious ignorance and to impart in its stead the knowledge that is wholly indispensable. There can be no doubt that this most important duty rests
UPON ALL WHO ARE PASTORS OF SOULS.
On them, by command of Christ, rest the obligations of knowing and of feeding the flocks committed to their care; and to feed implies, first of all, to teach.
Jeremiah says: “and they shall feed you with knowledge and doctrine.”
“.. for a priest there is no duty more grave or obligation more binding than this.
And who, indeed, will deny that knowledge should be joined to holiness of life in the priest?” _” And how are they to hear, if no one preaches?”
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