They are led by the Bavarian diocese of Augsburg, but at least one Catholic lay group is challenging the German Conference that is instructing the blessings.
By Catholics for Catholics
In the midst of a national religious debate, five Catholics dioceses in Germany are openly opposing the blessing of same-sex couples.
The dioceses are clearly challenging the directives of the Episcopal Conference, according to Zenit. The five dioceses are refusing a brochure authored by the Conference that promotes the blessing of same-sex couples
According to Zenit, three months after Germany’s bishops revealed their own pastoral guidelines for blessing same-sex couples, the country’s Catholic landscape is showing profound fissures, with views going from complete support to open denial. A survey conducted by katholisch.de across all 27 dioceses paints a picture of a Church wrestling with its identity in the shadow of the Vatican’s Fiducia Supplicans.
The Diocese of Augsburg in Bavaria is perhaps the most notable in the German resistance. Bishop Bertram Meier has criticized the German text for clashing with Rome’s emphasis on restraint.
Where the Vatican warns against ritualizing such blessings, the German version openly speaks of “celebration services,” even encouraging careful aesthetic design, complete with music and song, Meir said. For him, this is a deliberate divergence from what Rome envisions.
But the opposition goes beyond the dioceses. The lay reform group Neuer Anfang (“New Beginnings”) is accusing the German bishops of fostering the opposite of Pope Francis’ intentions, contending that the new guidelines stimulate practices far beyond the scope of Fiducia Supplicans.
Neuer Anfang argues that some bishops have not defended traditional Catholic sexual ethics and are instead normalizing irregular unions in the name of pastoral care.
Zenit added that Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, likened the situation to the medieval trade in indulgences — a practice that, he warned, endangered souls and splintered Christian unity for centuries.
In a July 18 commentary, Müller made the case that blessings for same-sex couples or others in “irregular” situations are spiritually meaningless, calling them a “pious fraud” that cons partakers. He has previously criticized Fiducia Supplicans itself as confusing and doctrinally inconsistent.
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