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Participants in Germany’s “synodal way” will vote next month on a controversial proposal. If passed, the proposal would create a powerful permanent “synodal council” to oversee the local Church.
Fourteen papers will be put to a vote at the synodal way’s fourth plenary assembly next week. One, “Sustainable strengthening of Synodality: A Synodal Council for the Catholic Church in Germany,” will have its second reading at that time.
If the document passes its second reading, it will be formally adopted as a synodal way resolution.
The synodal way is a multi-year process where German bishops and lay people collectively discuss four topics: power; the priesthood; women in the Church; sexual morality.
In July the Vatican intervened in the discussions. It clarified that the synodal way has no power “to compel the bishops and the faithful to adopt new ways of governance and new approaches to doctrine and morals”.
Commentators think the Vatican Secretariat of State’s intervention was prompted by the synodal way’s “synodal council” proposal.
Others think it was triggered by broader concerns that German dioceses would implement synodal way decisions before next year’s synod on synodality in Rome.
Some German bishops have signed a document known as the Frankfurt Declaration. This promises to enact Germany’s synodal way resolutions in their “dioceses and parishes, in schools and charitable institutions”.
The push for a synodal council has generated a backlash in Germany. Cardinal Walter Kasper (pictured) is leading the criticism.
“Synods cannot be made institutionally permanent,” he says.
“The tradition of the Church does not know a synodal church government. A synodical supreme council, such as is now taken into the prospect, has no support in all constitutional history. It would not be a renewal but an outrageous innovation.”
Last year’s first reading of the synodal council’s draft text was endorsed by 138 votes in favour, 32 against and 9 abstentions (with a total of 212 delegates present). It was then passed to a working group for further consideration.
The revised text to be voted on next month calls for the creation of a “synodal committee”. It would comprise 27 diocesan bishops and 27 members elected by the lay Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), with 10 members elected by both the bishops and the ZdK.
The committee would help create the synodal council, while making “fundamental decisions” on budgetary issues at a national level.
The synodal council’s decisions would have “at least the same legal effect as the resolutions of the synodal assembly,” says the revised text.
The proposed council would meet in public with two chairs drawn from the German bishops’ conference and ZdK. It would also have a permanent secretariat and be “adequately staffed and financed”.
At next month’s meeting, five synodal way texts will face their first vote. Nine will be voted on for a second time, including papers on the “Magisterial reassessment of homosexuality,” “Women in ministries and offices in the Church,” and ending mandatory priestly celibacy.
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