Calls for reform renewed at German Catholic convention

Deutsche Welle, 17 May 2012

Splits between reformist lay Catholics and bishops loyal to the Vatican have resurfaced at a convention in Mannheim, Germany. Organizers say there are "great discrepancies" between papal doctrine and everyday realities.

The Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) has demanded the Vatican make "improvements" by opening the church's leadership to women and ending the "exclusion" felt by divorcees and couples in mixed-faith marriages during Mass.

The so-called Mannheim Appeal issued by the committee, which has organized the annual five-day festival-like gathering in the southern Rhine river city, says reforms within the church of 1.2 billion Roman Catholics worldwide are "overdue."

Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck
rules out female priesthood

The call was promptly rejected by Ruhr District bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, who told the Rheinische Post newspaper on Thursday that "the Church has no authorization to allow women into the priesthood." Overbeck added that he saw "little point" in making the issue public again.

Organizers expect at least 33,000 participants daily at the five-day lay convention, which on Thursday began its full program of discussions and workshops. Debate and prayer services will be spread across 76 locations within Mannheim, under the organizers' motto "dare a new beginning."

Guestlist includes parliamentarians

Guests invited on Thursday include the leader of conservative Bundestag parliamentarians Volker Kauder and opposition Social Democrat party leader Sigmar Gabriel as well as Auma Obama, the Kenya-born sociologist and German language scholar, and half-sister of US President Barack Obama.

At an open-air church service early Thursday, which is an Ascension Day public holiday in Germany, the chairman of the German bishops' conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, condemned adherence to the ideal of economic growth. 

Growth no longer panacae, says
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch

Zollitsch said the repeated call for economic growth was not the correct recipe against the injustices of the world.

"We sense it. Our lifestyle is not sustainable. It can't go on like this," he said. "Must it always be the best mobile phone or the newest fashion?"

Central ZdK committee president, Alois Glück, said pressing issues in society, the secular state, and the church had converged and required "urgent action."

Industrial society had reached "a phase of important cross-roads decisions" with long-term consequences, Glück said.

"To not decide also generates its own dynamic."

Scandal resolution sluggish, say critics

A spokesman for one of several dissenting Catholic lay movements, Christian Weisner of "We are Church" said the church's sexual abuse scandals worldwide in recent years had prompted German bishops to launch a public discussion process a year ago, "but the bishops are still not really moving it forward."

"That burdens the Catholic convention," said Weisner.

Another spokesman, Bernd Göhrig for the "Church from below" movement, accused bishops of "failing to grasp the seriousness" of the scandal and its roots, which Göhrig said, lay within church teachings on sexual morality. 

Prominent theological critic,
Friedhelm Hengsbach

Göhrig also accused organizers of overlooking Pope Benedict XVI's recent bids to reintegrate strict traditionalists of the Society of Catholic Saint Pius X. They opposed liberal reforms of the 1960s; broke with Rome in the 1980s; and include the controversial British bishop Richard Williamson.

Leading Frankfurt Jesuit theologian, Professor Friedhelm Hengsbach, accused ZdK convention organizers of behaving submissively in search of harmony. The convention was once a liberation movement, launched during Europe's revolutionary year of 1848, but it was now "totally dominated" by the bishops, Hengsbach asserted.

ipj/ai (epd, kna, dpa, AP, AFP)

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"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems  (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it),  Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once), Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse),  Illuminati (Based in Greece, Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to built Africa to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.)

"Perceptions of God" – June 6, 2010 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Quantum Teaching, The Fear of God, Near-death Experience, God Becomes Mythology, Worship, Mastery, Intelligent Design, Benevolent Creator, Global Unity.... etc.) (Text version)

“.. For centuries you haven't been able to think past that box of what God must be like. So you create a Human-like God with wars in heaven, angel strife, things that would explain the devil, fallen angels, pearly gates, lists of dos and don'ts, and many rules still based on cultures that are centuries old. You create golden streets and even sexual pleasures as rewards for men (of course) - all Human perspective, pasted upon God. I want to tell you that it's a lot different than that. I want to remind you that there are those who have seen it! Why don't you ask somebody who has had what you would call a near-death experience?

(SaLuSa channelled by Mike Quinsey, March 16, 2012)

“…. Each project is underway and that will result in a sudden wealth of information reaching you. Events are such that the facts can no longer be kept hidden, and with that there will be an explosion of people coming forward to tell what they know. It may take longer where the Vatican is concerned, as it is akin to a secret society that has kept its dark secrets hidden well away. However, nothing will remain concealed for too long, as you are entitled to know the truth and the extent to which you have been deceived….”  

Christ Consciousness Is The Energy of The New World – Mar 7, 2012  (Kryon channelled by David Brown)