German prelate Cardinal Walter Kasper, the former President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has called Germany’s Synodal Path a “failure” in an interview with <em>Communio</em>, joining fellow German cardinals Gerhard Müller and Reinhard Marx, who have also expressed their concerns to different degrees. Cardinal Kasper said the Church would only have a future if it continued on the path taken by the Second Vatican Council in synodal fellowship, a route that the Synodal Path has “failed to take”.
This is not the first time Cardinal Kasper has criticised the Synodal Path amid fears of potential schism, having warned in the summer that the Path is ignoring Pope Francis’s admonitions, and if it continues to ignore them could “break” its own neck. At the time, Kasper said that while some reform was necessary this did not mean reducing the Church “to a mass of modelling clay which one can knead and shape to fit any situation”.
For Kasper, the risk is that the Synodal Path puts human views on an equal footing with the faith as the Church has received it. More recently, Kasper argued that “the German ‘Synodal Path’ gives the impression that it can and feels it has to discover a new Church and must push through its own agenda.” He added, however, added that he places “all the more hope in the World Synodal Process that Pope Francis has launched”.
Kasper joins other German clerics in criticising the Synodal Path. Cardinal Marx recently criticised the Synodal Path’s proposition to discuss whether the Church needed priests. One of the most vocal critics however, not just of the Synodal Path, but of the wider synodal process, has been Cardinal Müller, who – in another interview in September – said <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/cardinal-muller-challenges-pope-francis-no-authority-to-change-teaching-of-church/">the Pope has no authority to challenge the teaching of the Church</a>.
In that <a href="https://infovaticana.com/2022/09/23/entrevista-al-cardenal-muller-en-infovaticana-el-papa-no-tiene-autoridad-para-cambiar-la-ensenanza-de-la-iglesia/">interview</a>, with <em>Infovaticana</em>, Müller said of the Synodal Path that “one would not know exactly whether to speak of tragedy or comedy with respect to this event.” He argued that “the texts, very abundant but not very deep, do not deal with the renewal of Catholics in Christ, but with a surrender to a world without God.” The ongoing theme of sexuality “is not understood as the gift of God granted to human beings as created persons”, and instead “as a kind of drug to numb the basic nihilistic feeling with the maximum satisfaction of pleasure.”
That said, Marx has, with Bishop Georg Bätzing, supported texts which ask the Pontiff to change teachings on sexual morality and the ordination of women. “There are two errors in this that only theologically ignorant can commit,” Müller said. “First, the Pope has no authority to change the teaching of the Church, which is based on God’s revelation. By doing so, he would exalt himself as a man above God; secondly, the apostles can only teach and order what Jesus commanded them to teach (Mt 28:19).”
On the prospect of schism that might be caused by the German Church’s direction of travel, Müller argued: “In their blind arrogance, they do not think of division, but of taking over the universal Church. Germany is too small for them to exercise their governing ideology.” Later, speaking on <em>EWTN </em>with Raymond Arroyo in October, Müller <a href="https://ewtn.co.uk/article-cardinal-muller-on-synod-on-synodality-a-hostile-takeover-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-we-must-resist/">said</a> of the Synod on Synodality, “I think the approach is wrong”. He even warned that the synodal process might spell “the end of the Catholic Church”.
For their part, leaders of the Synodal Path have <a href="https://www.synodalerweg.de/service/aktuelles/meldung/praesidenten-des-synodalen-weges-begruessen-verlaengerung-des-roemischen-synodalen-prozesses">welcomed</a> Pope Francis’s decision to extend the synodal process up to 2024. Irme Stetter-Karp (the co-president of the German Synodal Way) and Bishop Bätzing said the extension “shows that Pope Francis considers synodality to be the decisive moment of change”. Many supporters of the synodal approach may hope for a deepening of reforms, but the fact that a recent assembly of the Path backed a text calling for “a re-evaluation of homosexuality in the Magisterium” will alarm others.
Cardinal Kasper has joined Cardinals Marx and Müller in expressing his concern for the direction that the Synodal Path is taking, adding another German voice to a growing concern about developments that risk fundamentally dividing the Church. What effect the concerns of these senior leaders (who are not necessarily natural bedfellows) will have on the Synodal Path, especially in Germany, remains to be seen.
