I finally found a fairly clean English translation of the KIRCHE 2011 memorandum, from a group blog called PRAYTELL, and much as I dislike having anything more to do with this letter - which I find even more unpleasant, unbelievably banal, ultra-hypocritical, shamelessly fallacy-ridden, and outrageous than I did the first time I read it - I shall post it for the record anyway and you can judge for yourself.
If this memorandum is any indication, I shudder at the shoddy theology they must teach! Perhaps the worst insult is that they dare present such an ill-conceived and badly executed manifesto to a master of systematic reason and elegant prose as Benedict XVI, to whom this manifesto is really addressed, if the signatories were more honest and less cowardly!
I won't bother to fisk it in detail as it deserves to be, but have 'purpled' its most outrageous passages, and interposed quite a few comments despite myself!
Also, about the translation: The Italian journalists have translated 'Aufbruch' as 'svolta' - which means a turning-point; while this English translation translates it as 'departure'. From the beginning, I chose to translate it as 'new beginning' or 'new start', from among the many possible translations, which also includes 'upheaval'. I think the sense in which the theologians use it is obvious - the same sense by which they and their fellow progressivists considered Vatican II as a 'new start' for the Church. The awkwardness of translating it as 'departure' becomes evident in the many ways the term turns up in the document, even if twice the translator rightly uses the term 'new beginning'.
The Church in 2011:
A Necessary Departure
It is over a year since cases of sexual abuse of children and youth by priests and religious at the Canisius School in Berlin were made public. Thereupon followed a year that plunged the Catholic Church in Germany into
an unequaled crisis.
Today, a split image is projected. Much has been undertaken to do justice to the victims, to come to terms with the wrong done, and to search out the causes of abuse, cover-up, and double standards within the Church’s own ranks.
Many responsible Christians, women and men, in office and unofficially, have come to realize, after their initial disgust, that deep-reaching reforms are necessary.
The appeal for an open dialogue on structures of power and communication, the form of official church offices, and
the participation of the faithful in taking responsibility for morality and sexuality have aroused expectations, but also fears. [
A re-statement of the relativistic core belief that each individual has the sole prerogative alone to decide what is good or bad!] This might be the last chance for departure from paralysis and resignation.
[Sniff! Such melodrama!]
Will this chance be missed by sitting out or minimizing the crisis? Not everyone is threatened by the unrest of an open dialogue without taboos –
especially since the papal visit will soon take place.
[There's the giveaway of the raison d'etre for this Memorandum!] The alternative simply cannot be accepted: the “rest of the dead” because the last hopes have been destroyed.
[More melodrama!]
The deep crisis of our Church demands that we address even those problems which, at first glance, do not have anything directly to do with the abuse scandal and its decades-long cover-up.
As theology professors, women and men, we can keep silence no longer. We consider ourselves responsible for contributing to a true
new beginning: 2011 must be a Year of
Departure for the Church.
In the past year, more Christians than ever before have withdrawn from the Catholic Church. They have officially terminated their legal membership, or they have privatized their spiritual life in order to protect it from the institution.[Baloney! In Germany, these types simply took advantage of the 'scandal' as a 'radical chic' pretext to pull out so they can stop paying a tax for the Catholic Church!] The Church must understand these signs and pull itself from ossified structures in order to recover new vitality and credibility.
The renewal of church structures will succeed, not with anxious withdrawal from society, but only with the courage for self-criticism and the acceptance of critical impulses – including those from the outside.
[The Church does not have to listen to external sources to take care of its internal problems. She has a dynamic that is not simply human-driven!]
This is one of the lessons of the last year:
the abuse crisis would not have been dealt with so decisively without the critical accompaniment of the larger public. [Excuse me????? What help was the 'public' which did nothing but dismiss the Church and her leaders with scorn and contempt?]
Only through open communication can the Church win back trust.
The Church will become credible when only its image of itself is not removed so far from the image others have of the Church.
[That is downright ludicrous - when the image 'others' have of the Church is that it is nothing more than a cradle of evil, a confederacy of dunces.]
We turn to all those who have not yet given up hope for a
new beginning in the Church and who work for this. We build upon the signals of
departure and dialogue which some bishops have given in recent months in speeches, homilies, and interviews.
The Church does not exist for its own sake.[Wow! What a pearl of wisdom! What thesaurus of platitudes did these theologians raid to cobble this memorandum?] The church has the mission to announce the liberating and loving God of Jesus Christ to all people. The Church can do this only when it is itself a place and a credible witness of the good news of the Gospel.
[DUH! You're reminding Benedict XVI of this? And do you, dissenting theologians, consider yourselves 'credible' witnesses of the Gospel????]
The Church’s speaking and acting, its rules and structures – its entire engagement with people within and outside the Church – is under the standard of acknowledging and promoting the freedom of people as God’s creation.
Absolute respect for every person, regard for freedom of conscience, commitment to justice and rights, solidarity with the poor and oppressed: these are the theological foundational standards which arise from the Church’s obligation to the Gospel. Through these, love of God and neighbor become tangible. [DUH once again! I would refer these theologians to Benedict XVI's mini-homily last Sunday for a truly elegant and memorable statement of these basic tenets!]
Finding our orientation in the biblical Good News implies a differentiated relationship to modern society. When it comes to acknowledgement of each person’s freedom, maturity, and responsibility, modern society surpasses the Church in many respects.
[Another reaffirmation of relativism. 'Acknowledgment of each person's etc...' is code for "Each person can and should do as he pleases".]
As the Second Vatican Council emphasized, the Church can learn from this. In other respects, critique of modern society from the spirit of the Gospel is indispensable, as when people are judged only by their productivity, when mutual solidarity disintegrates, or when the dignity of the person is violated.
This holds true in every case: the Good News of the Gospel is the standard for a credible Church, for its action and its presence in society. The concrete demands which the Church must face are by no means new.
And yet, we see hardly any trace of reform-oriented reforms.
[How can reforms not be reform-oriented? What they mean is that they do not consider any changes carried out by Benedict XVI to be reform, because, to them, he is 'conservative and traditionalist' and therefore incapable of reform.]
Open dialogue on these questions must take place in the following spheres of action. [So, go ahead and dialog with anyone who will engage you! Of course, it is really Benedict XVI that they are challenging directly to this 'open dialog'. All they have to do is read through what he has said and written since he became Pope - and they will find he has answered all their demands ten times over. Just that his answers are not what they want to hear. It is almost insulting how they frame their demands as though the Pope as leader of the Church had never ever once considered these very questions and patiently explained why the Church does as she does about them! Come to think of it, their ultimate isult to the Pope is probably not to read anything he writes or says at all, so they would have no way of knowing!]
1. Structures of Participation: In all areas of church life, participation of the faithful is a touchstone for the credibility of the Good News of the Gospel. According to the old legal principle “What applies to all should be decided by all,” more synodal structures are needed at all levels of the Church. [The age-old fallacy of liberals is to think that the Church has to be a democracy as in a political state. The Church is not a human institution because though she is carried on by humans, she was divinely instituted. And no true religion can be a democracy, because religion - faith - implies a basic discipline, and discipline in faith means obedience by everyone, a virtue the liberals do not recognize at all, but is fundamental to the truly faithful. Once again, they should consider the Pope's homilies reflecting on the elements of the first Christian community of Jerusalem - there was prayer, there was communion, there was sharing, but there was, first of all, 'listening to the Apostles' who transmitted the Word of Christ. Listening in religion means obedience. Unless there is obedience, you have not listened, you remain self-centered and self-absorbed, incapable of humility. But this too is a virtue one does not expect to find in these breastbeating pharisaic theologians!] The faithful should be involved in the naming of important officials (bishop, pastor). Whatever can be decided locally should be decided there. Decisions must be transparent.
2. Community: Christian communities should be places where people share spiritual and material goods with one another. But community life is eroding presently. Under the pressure of the priesthood shortage, larger and larger administrative entities (Size “Extra Large” Parishes) are constructed in which neighborliness and sense of belonging can hardly be experienced anymore. Historical identity and built-up social networks are given up. Priests are “overheated” and burn out. The faithful stay away when they are not trusted to share responsibility and to participate in democratic structures in the leadership of their communities. Church office must serve the life of communities – not the other way around. The Church also needs married priests and women in church ministry. [What senseless blather! Especially coming from theologians who are confined to their academic lecture halls and probably never had any pastoral experience at all.]
3. Legal culture: Acknowledgement of the dignity and freedom of every person is shown when conflicts are borne fairly and with mutual respect. Canon law deserves its name only when the faithful can truly make use of their rights. It is urgent that the protection of rights and legal culture be improved. A first step is the development of administrative justice in the Church. [More senseless blather! Can't they learn to say things directly and not speak in code?]
4. Freedom of Conscience: Respect for individual conscience means placing trust in people’s ability to make decisions and carry responsibility.
['Respect for individual conscience' is of course the more familiar liberal code for 'Each person is free to do as he pleases when he pleases'. They should all read Blessed John Henry to get the right ideas about conscience!] It is the task of the Church to support this capability. [No, it is not. It is the task of the Church to form Catholic consciences which can discern not just right from wrong but judges events and situations by the standards of the Church.] The Church must not revert to paternalism. Serious work needs to be done especially in the realm of personal life decisions and individual manners of life. [[Once again, the insistence on 'Each man can and should decide for himself as he pleases, when he pleases". SOOOOOOO TIRESOME AND ANNOYING ALREADY!]
The Church’s esteem for marriage and unmarried forms of life [?????] goes without saying. But this does not require that we exclude people who responsibly live out love, faithfulness, and mutual care in same-sex partnerships or in a remarriage after divorce. [The Church does not 'exclude' anyone. She does points out occasions and situations of sin, such as homosexual activity and divorce, but the liberals would want the Church to change her teaching about that! I'd say they can't be serious!, but they are about this. Once again, they should listen to the Holy Father's homily to the new bishops about 'marsh reeds that bend with the wind', that grow on shifting sands and cannot take root in rock.]
5. Reconciliation: Solidarity with “sinners” presupposes that we take seriously the sin within our own ranks. [They're saying this to Benedict XVI, who instinctively and immediately indicated the path of purification and witness as the necessary first step for renewal????] Self-justified moral rigorism ill befits the Church. The Church cannot preach reconciliation with God if it does not create by its own actions the conditions for reconciliation with those before whom the Church is guilty: by violence, by withholding rights, by turning the biblical Good News into a rigorous morality without mercy. [When was the last time anyone ever accused the Church of hell-and-brimstone moralism??? In fact, it seems most priests and bishops have abdicated from preaching about sin at all - Benedict XVI memorably lamented early in his pontificate that the faithful seem to have lost the sense of sin!]
6. Worship: The liturgy lives from the active participation of all the faithful. Experiences and forms of expression of the present day must have their place. Worship services must not become frozen in traditionalism.
[Guys, you have your Novus Ordo, which remains the ordinary form of the Mass. You think that is 'frozen in traditionalism'????] Cultural diversity enriches liturgical life, but the tendency toward centralized uniformity is in tension with this. Only when the celebration of faith takes account of concrete life situations will the Church’s message reach people. [Obviously, these theologians have lost all sense of worship as rite and ritual. A rite is a prescribed set of actions and words - by nature, it cannot be free-form, 'creative' and continually changing. For 1,970 years, Catholics the world over uncomplainingly celebrated the Latin rite with some degree of universal uniformity as it was handed down from generation to generation. All of a sudden they demand cultural diversity? I don't think anyone would have even thought of 'inculturation' if the Bugnini liturgists and kumbaya theologians had not introduced the idea at all!]
The already-begun dialogue process in the Church can lead to liberation and departure when all participants are ready to take up the pressing questions.
We must lead the Church out of its crippling preoccupation with itself through a free and fair exchange of arguments and solutions. The tempest of the last year must not be followed by restful quietness!
In the present situation, this could only be the “rest of the dead.” Anxiety has never been a good counselor in times of crisis. [YADA, YADA, YADA! And who is acting like nervous Nellies with this letter? Anxiety is the last thing one could attribute to Benedict XVI!]
Female and male Christians [Why 'female and male' - why not go all the way with lesbians, gay, bisexuals and transgender?] and are compelled by the Gospel to look to the future with courage, and walk on water like Peter as Jesus said to him, “Why do you have fear? Is your faith so weak?” [And how is this quotation relevant at all to their message? Who is showing fear here? And whose faith is being weak?]
YUKKKK!
P.S. Catholic News Agency has finally come up with its first report on the 'memorandum'and surveys its main points as well as the principal reactions to it so far:
German bishops see recycled ideas
in theologians' 'reform' letter
By Benjamin Mann
Bonn, Germany, Feb 16, 2011 (CNA) - Increasing numbers of European theologians have signed onto a set of proposals they say will “renew” the struggling German Church.
But while the German bishops say they are willing to hold discussions, they have indicated that the proposal re-treads old ground and contradicts important Catholic convictions.
As of Feb. 15, 227 theologians from three German-speaking countries had signed their names to a letter entitled “The Church in 2011: A necessary departure,” which was first endorsed by 143 signatories on Feb. 3.
Issues of sexuality, authority, and cultural adaptation dominated the statement, which used revelations of sexual abuse at Berlin's Canisius school – revealed in early 2010, approximately three decades after they occurred – as the jumping-off point for a series of wide-ranging proposals.
“The deep crisis of our Church,” the theologians wrote, “demands that we address even those problems which, at first glance, do not have anything directly to do with the abuse scandal and its decades-long cover-up.” Many German Catholics, they said, have come to believe that “deep-reaching reforms are necessary.”
The theologians' program of “reform” would involve greater lay participation in selecting bishops and pastors, increased tolerance for different styles of liturgical worship, and a decisive break with what they described as attitudes of “paternalism” and “moral rigorism.”
More specifically, the theologians asserted that “the Church also needs married priests and women in church ministry.”
For this reason, the letter has been regarded in the international media as a call for an “end to celibacy.”
The text itself, however, only indicated a preference for making the Latin rite practice of priestly celibacy optional, rather than mandatory. [That is not at all indicated in the text!]
Although some interpreters regarded the statement on women in ministry as a call for women's ordination, it was not clear whether the statement carried this meaning, or merely acknowledged the important roles women have always played in the life of the Church.
[What's to make clear? "The Church needs... women in Church ministry" means just that. The headlines were unfair that took this to mean the dissenters necessarily meant women priests, but church ministry also includes deacons, who require training and ordination like priests - it is the step before priesthood - as well as unordained ministers.]
They went on to state that “the Church's esteem for marriage … does not require that we exclude people who responsibly live out love, faithfulness, and mutual care in same-sex partnerships or in a remarriage after divorce.”
Referring to German Catholics' declining participation in Church life, the theologians indicated that the answer lay in modifying the Church's approach so that it agrees more with the surrounding culture.
“When it comes to acknowledgment of each person's freedom, maturity, and responsibility, modern society surpasses the Church in many respects,” they wrote. “As the Second Vatican Council emphasized, the Church can learn from this.”
The theologians did not indicate which portion of the Vatican II documents they were referring to, in advancing this claim.
Fr. Hans Langendörfer, secretary for the German bishops' conference, responded to the letter on their behalf on Feb. 8. He expressed appreciation for the theologians' engagement with the state of the German Church, acknowledging that they had raised “weighty issues” that should “no longer be avoided.”
But Fr. Langendörfer noted that the proposals had been made with some frequency in the past.
“In essence,” he said, “the memorandum gathers once again ideas already often debated.” Many of these ideas, he said, were “in disagreement with the theological convictions and statements of the Church at the highest level.”
Fr. Langendörfer said that the next meeting of the German Bishops' Conference would seek to respond to the theologians' concerns, in cases where “urgent further clarification” was needed.
German Cardinal Walter Kasper, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, responded to the theologians' letter by highlighting the importance of celibacy. In a Feb. 6 homily at the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome, he described celibacy as a “sign that exists for Christ and for the Kingdom of God.”
The cardinal referred to the gospel passage which says Christians should be the “salt of the earth” and said that celibacy “is that pinch of salt that not everyone can be, but that brings good to all.”
Peter Seewald, the German journalist who recently collaborated with Pope Benedict XVI on the book “Light of the World,” was less restrained in his own comments on the theologians' manifesto.
Seewald told the German website Kath.net that the open letter was “a rebellion in the nursing home,” orchestrated by “chief priests of the zeitgeist” whose priority was to accommodate public opinion.
John Allen has now blogged on the issue, rather perfunctorily, skirting the questions raised to give undue importance to what Fr. Landendoerfer said, but he conducted an interview with one of the signatories. You may check on it here:
www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/german-bishops-express-desire-dialogue-their-the...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/02/2011 15:09]