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How Much Zeitgeist Can the Catholic Church Take?

The Catholic Church has endured for two millennia, remaining flexible on dogmatic issues but strictly hierarchical on organizational ones.

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How Much Zeitgeist Can the Catholic Church Take?

The Catholic Church has endured for two millennia, remaining flexible on dogmatic issues but strictly hierarchical on organizational ones. As an outsider, one must acknowledge this fact, regardless of one's view of Church dogma and practice.

An organization that gives its leader the power to “bind and loose” in heaven and on earth is not quite of this world. An institution that promulgated a dogma like the Assumption of Mary bodily into heaven in 1950 because it measured a commitment to the principle "Credo quia absurdum" (I believe it precisely because it's absurd) and represented the ultimate challenge to then-mighty communism not in the zeitgeist.

However, the spirit of the times determined the resolutions of the fifth and last assembly of the synodal path. The panel, made up of equal numbers of lay people and bishops, called for blessing ceremonies for homosexual couples, recognition of gender diversity and the permission of women to preach during the celebration of the Eucharist.

Further demands such as the admission of women and married people to the priesthood were not taken into account. Not yet. As the President of the Central Committee of German Catholics said: In order to achieve more, it is necessary to “change structurally” the Catholic Church in Germany. This is to be achieved by setting up a synodal council that meets regularly and has equal representation.

However, Pope Francis already remarked on the synodal path: “There is a very good evangelical church in Germany. We don't need two of them.” In terms of marketing, why should the universal church give up its unique selling proposition – the derivation of the pope's authority from Peter and thus from Jesus himself – just because some German lay officials are impatient? Why don't the German bishops show more Lutheran "Here I stand, I can't help it"?

There's something opportunistic about first making a career and then turning against the hierarchy to which you owe your rise. If this were to become a school practice in the Church, one would have to ask whether it could survive another century, let alone a millennium.

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