I have to disagree with your assessment, Teresa.
This isn't a mere cry for attention as we've experienced in the past.
This is an organized, determined campaign - possibly enhanced by some desperation, to finally push for a different Church.
Considering the 'non-reaction' of the episcopate, they have a good chance to actually get a result of some sort this time.
People are being approached after Mass to sign the Memorandum, teachers are spreading it through their channels (the majority of German teachers are left-liberal types), and Priests in favor are lobbying for it.
Some Bishops have actually spoken out in support of it.
The majority of parish councils (run by the most dangerous people in all of this: bossy feminists and power-hungry, democracy obsessed, pro-active, always improving and optimizing bureaucrats).
They are determined and they are fearless, they have no respect and will put on their 'freedom of the evil institutional Church' show wherever they go.
And what do they find? Who's their audience?
The majority: insecure, badly catechized, political correct, nominal Catholics without ANY knowledge or sensitivity of theology, who will follow the course, set by the media.
Who have actually been told all their life that this ultra-radical Cardinal with that high Curial position in Rome is an embarrassment to the German Church, which is so much more modern and open and attuned to people’s needs.
And, after giving him a chance for nearly six years, they can finally show him how disappointed they are in him and what they really think about his Dark Age views.
It's not a given thing that everybody of this majority group will agree to their agenda - but that also doesn't mean that the will openly disagree.
The minority: furious, disappointed, defiant, fierce Catholics who are shocked and appalled and who will go to great lengths to defend their faith from dissent and heresy.
They are getting organized and will show their love and support to ‘their’ Pope when he comes to honor them with his visit.
The dissenters are aiming for a German National Church - even if they may call it something slightly different.
They will create their structures (Germans are very good at that!!), they will find a nice, catchy abbreviation for their name, they will have democratic election of their leadership and they will have committee meetings galore.
And, most importantly, they will be happy in constant praise of each other, they will keep padding each other on the back for their incredibly insightful views, they will finally loose connection to Christ (many of them reject the biblical Christ), and they will surely go down the road of becoming an irrelevant, meaningless social organization, along with the other protestant denominations.
Generally, this doesn't bother me - I simply feel bad for all the souls they're so determined to corrupt.
Well, you are right there, in situ, where it all sounds pretty dire... I did infer the pitifully low numbers of 'right-thinking' German Catholics from the disappointing experience of last summer's attempts to stage pro-Papa demonstrations in some German cities - when the total participation seemed to be less than 10,000 in three cities. And, of course, I realize the capacity of dissidents to mobilize the media in their favor and therefore swing public opinion their way....
It distresses me greatly that Germans can be so brilliant as individuals but many are apparently capable of being so dumb in the collective and ready to be led by the nose by demagogues, no matter how dubious their message. All these types you are describing give me a glimmer somehow of why the majority of Germans just followed the Fuehrer during the Nazi years...
Assuming your dissidents do split off from Rome, whatever they call themselves, then good riddance! Joseph Ratzinger has always said that Western Christianity may soon be reduced to 'creative minorities'.... Psychologically, however, what will they do for fun - and ego-tripping - when they no longer have Rome and the Pope to kick around?
Why have all those 'We are Church' types in Austria - and, for that matter, all the media-darling Catho-libs of the USA - not split off all these years? They don't have the balls for it, and they'd much rather continue being media heroes by defying and dissing Rome and the Pope - feeding their fantasies of bending Rome to their will - rather than leave the Church, start from scratch, and be like any other Protestant sect with small numbers whom the media will not bother reporting on. Once they break off from Rome, the media will no longer care what they say about Rome and the Pope because their formal schism will have made the subject moot... Just as the MSM never reported on the Lefebvrians for almost 20 years until Benedict XVI decided to meet with Mons. Fellay in Castel Gandolfo in 2005, and then not again until he lifted the bishops's excommunications - i.e, schismatics only make the news insofar as Rome deigns to pay them any attention. On their own? Not news.
Meanwhile, let us wait and see what Benedict XVI has in mind for September. One presumes that he has been doing his homework and marshalling the few resources that the Roman Catholic Church can count on in Germany - perhaps having someone shepherd the present minority 'faithful' into the beginnings of a 'creative minority' in preparation for September????
I am not aware that the dissidents have any charismatic leader at all, but can the 'faithful' not come up with one or more? (I suppose not, or they would have emerged by now.)... And I must say again, if Cardinal Reinhard Marx is going to prove he is worth anything at all, now is the time to do it! But why am I even thinking of him after his misguided ecumenical kowtowing at the last Kirchentag?
TERESA
P.S. We haven't heard so far from Hans Kueng, but last April, after the Pope's letter to Irish Catholics, he had this infamous 'open letter' published by - not coincidentally - the newspapers that would become the Wikileaks outlets months later, in which he called on the bishops of the world to stand and and resist the Pope en masse, or something to that effect, and urged the same things his fellow theologians listed in their Memorandum, only in slightly better language.
Two observations: 1) Not one bishop responded to his call; and 2) Why didn't all these no-name theologians get his signature on their Memorandum? [I may be speaking too soon. I haven't checked the Freiheit site yet - and they may well have enlisted him by now!)
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/02/2011 02:03]