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German bishop at Synod on Synodality: Church should not ignore ‘signs of the times’

Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, Germany at the Synod on Synodality press briefing Oct. 21, 2023. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez

Vatican City, Oct 21, 2023 / 12:40 pm (CNA).

A German bishop participating in the Synod on Synodality challenged the idea that the Catholic community in his country is at odds with the universal Church — and reasserted that it will continue to play a role in the ongoing discussions in Rome about the Church’s future.

Speaking at the Synod press briefing Saturday afternoon, Bishop Franz Josef Overbeck of Essen acknowledged that others have expressed concerns to him regarding the Catholic Church in Germany’s controversial “Synodal Way.”

“Many people have asked me, ‘Are you still Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?”, said Overbeck, one of the German Bishops Conference’s three delegates to the universal Synod, and a major proponent of the German Synodal Way. “And I say, ‘Yes, of course, we are Catholics, and we are here to stay.”

Begun in 2019, the Synodal Way is a non-canonical initiative of the German bishops’ conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK). The collaboration approved blessings of same-sex unions, incorporated transgender ideology into Church practice, and petitioned Rome to open ordained ministry to women at its final assembly in Frankfurt in March 2023.

Pope Francis has criticized the Synodal Way as “elitist” and “not helpful,” while bishops from around the world have written to express their concern that the process could induce schism between Germany and the universal Church. Vatican officials and German bishops have held multiple meetings to discuss the Synodal Way, most recently on July 27.

Contextual argument

Speaking for nearly 10 minutes about the Synodal Way to journalists, Overbeck asserted that the controversial process was responding to the uniquely “post-secular” context of German culture, in which “people have no idea” about transcendence, the Church, or Jesus Christ.

“This changes the entire framework for the questions we are carrying out,” said Overbeck, adding that if Catholic teaching is in contradiction with “the signs of the times,” then “nobody is going to be convinced” by the Church’s guidance.

Overbeck repeatedly referred to Germany’s particular cultural situation to justify some of the Synodal Way’s most controversial proposals. For instance, he alluded to exploring an end to mandatory priestly celibacy by noting that in his 13 years as Bishop of Essen, he has only ordained 15 new priests, while 300 priests have died. The Diocese of Essen, he said, currently has no seminarians in formation.

In addition, Overbeck suggested that the widespread presence of both the Catholic permanent diaconate as well as ordained women as Lutheran ministers in Germany makes the question of opening the diaconate to women particularly relevant to the local Church.

“We live in this world, and these are the questions that come up,” said Overbeck, who said that any consideration of including women in the diaconate should be in response to “a vocation,” and not simply creating a rite “so that women can be a part of the sacramental ministry of the Church.”

Overbeck, who has previously said that same-sex “marriage” should be accepted and not described as immoral, also said at the press event that the Church must keep Christ at the center but set aside its “habit and tradition” to meet contemporary needs, though he seemed to clarify that by “tradition” he was not referring to Apostolic Tradition.

The bishop of Essen added that the Synodal Way and its calls for change in Church teaching related to sexuality, ordination, and governance were aimed at addressing the systemic causes of the sex abuse crisis, which has rocked the Catholic Church in Germany over the past decade.

Bishop Overbeck also acknowledged that a “synodal committee” will begin work in Germany in November, with the aim of establishing a permanent synodal council made up of bishops and laity to govern the Catholic Church in Germany. The Vatican has explicitly forbidden the establishment of this council as inconsistent with the Church’s ecclesiology, and four out of Germany’s 27 ordinaries voted in June to block funding for the synodal committee from a common fund.

Decentralization and “Convergence”

Notably, Overbeck’s inclusion on the panel and his comments came during the Synod on Synodality’s exploration of the theme of “participation, governance, and authority,” which includes a focus on the “decentralization” of Church governance.

To this effect, the synod’s working document quotes Pope Francis’s instruction in Evangelii Gaudium that “it is not advisable for the Pope to take the place of local Bishops in the discernment of every issue which arises in their territory. In this sense, I am conscious of the need to promote a sound ‘decentralization.’”

During this part of the Synod, participants are being asked to consider questions including, “What degree of doctrinal authority can be attributed to the discernment of Episcopal Conferences?”

Another question asks “to what extent” the “convergence” of local Church entities, such as episcopal conferences, on “the same issue commit the Bishop of Rome to address it at the level of the universal Church?”

The founding president of the German Synodal Way said in December 2022 that the initiative was designed to create “pressure” on the universal Church.

Overbeck and Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishops Conference, have both expressed their intention to advance the proposals of the Synodal Way at the ongoing Synod on Synodality. In fact, Bätzing reportedly shared a 159-page document detailing the Synodal Way’s findings with the rest of the Roman synod’s 365 members earlier this month.

Overbeck has previously said that the Synod on Synodality must take up the proposals advanced by the German Synodal Way, “from the role of women to the question of sexuality and the question of people who love each other.”

However, Overbeck added at the press conference that he may also be taking something from the Synod on Synodality back to Germany. He noted that the synod’s “conversation in the spirit method,” emphasizing listening without asking questions and times of silent prayer, could be incorporated into the German Synodal Way’s work going forward.


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30 Comments

  1. “The bishop of Essen added that the Synodal Way and its calls for change in Church teaching related to sexuality, ordination, and governance were aimed at addressing the systemic causes of the sex abuse crisis, which has rocked the Catholic Church in Germany over the past decade…”

    Nonsense.

    There is no credible data or study that Church doctrine was responsible for the sex-abuse crisis. With an 85%-90% male-on-male contact and an average age of a beginning teenager, real evidence may be found in the hierarchy structure that not only looks the other way regarding active homosexuality but manages to promote it with statements such as the above.

    • Exactly right. For example, neither the 2004 nor the 2011 John Jay report found a causal relationship between the vow of celibacy and the incidence of priestly sexual abuse. When facts like this get in the way of the bishop’s narrative about causes of the sexual abuse crisis, it leads me to believe he is attempting to exploit the mistaken beliefs of a still-credulous faithful in order to advance the agenda described in this article. That is grossly dishonest, and His Excellency should be deeply ashamed.

    • Agree completely.
      The root cause of the sexual abuse crisis was the admission to seminaries and later
      ordination—perhaps sometimes unknowingly but other times knowingly—of men living an active gay lifestyle. This Bishop’s solution to that crisis is to make gay OK within the Church and probably within the clergy as well. No wonder the Faith is in such drastic decline in Germany.
      St Peter Damian pray for us.

  2. We read: “the Church must keep Christ at the center but set aside its “habit and tradition” [and then the asserted need for] change in Church teaching related to sexuality, ordination, and governance [which] were aimed at addressing the systemic causes of the sex abuse crisis, which has rocked the Catholic Church in Germany over the past decade.”

    Clever fig leaf, that!

    Reading the real “signs of the times,” why would ANYBODY want to enter the seminary under a system (systemic!) which equates the truth of human morality, and other ecclesial certainties, with accretions of “habit”? About “habit” and a double-minded will, we have this from some dead white dude from North Africa, butt from outside the German bubble:

    “…it is no monstrous thing partly to will a thing and partly not to will it, but it is a sickness of the mind [!]. Although it is supported by truth, it does not wholly rise up, since it is heavily encumbered by HABIT. Therefore there are two wills, since one of them is not complete, and what is lacking in one is present in the other” (St. Augustine, “Confessions,” Book 8, Ch.9:21).

    This from a real man who knew personally and for over thirteen years the sickness of mind and will that now consume the Synodal Way. Butt, like Cardinal Kasper once said so synodo-polygonally: “who are those Africans to tell us what to do?”

  3. “Many people have asked me, ‘Are you still Catholics and part of the Catholic Church?”

    No, really? Why would anyone ask you that Bishop? No one has ever said such a thing to me. I guess they just assume I’m Catholic.

    Anyway, ignore those tax payers. You be you.

  4. This bishop is clearly lacking the reality of the teaching of the Lord —- “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

  5. How would his point apply to the Germany of the 1930’s?

    Would he object to the Church contradicting the signs of those times?

    Would he favor taking note of Germany’s particular cultural situation at that time to justify other controversial proposals? Say, regarding extermination camps?

    As someone wiser than me put it on CWR in recent days, the Bergoglio-era church is downstream from culture. And, considering the sewer-like culture we’re referring to, the Church under Bergoglio is going to suffer terribly.

  6. What might I say, when I have urge to say something meaningful, when I lack the wide spectrum of academic research that would enable me to avoid repetition? Perhaps a personal reflection that relates to ‘the signs of the times’ and Franz-Josef Overbeck diocese of Essen.
    When in Rome I didn’t follow the pattern of doing what Rome’s doctoral candidates did. I tackled a subject, intuition in Thomas Aquinas that was anathema. Finally found a wonderful professor willing to direct, Fr Richard Mathes rector of the German College, philosophy lecturer at the Angelicum. Fr Mathes was from Essen. Whether it was a perceived tendency in Germans to react against Nazi arrogance, Mathes was a kind, but matter of fact man. Essen, located in the Rhineland, the largest Catholic population aside from Bavaria and the South, the home of the Krupp family and armaments, a place with long history of Catholicism at odds with expanding Lutheran Prussia. That tendency to react against Nazi arrogance, perhaps an excessive pride that preceded Nazism seemed visible in the notorious case of Essen’s child rapist Fr Peter Hullermann, and the long, sordid history of transfer to Card Josef Ratzinger’s see the Archdiocese of Munich Freising [Our beloved Benedict admittedly misspoke about unawareness]. Why the accommodation when facts were made public, finally exposed years later by Der Spiegel? That reactive tendency to Nazi intolerance seemed at play.
    Bishop Overbeck’s reaction to the Synod Follies fits the compunctive mindset of postwar Germany. I refuse to use insulting language toward Germany and Germans, the [barely] Catholic Church it is now. Or opine that the true faith will disappear. Persons, Germans I’ve met besides Fr Mathes support that belief.

  7. “…Overbeck alluded to exploring an end to mandatory priestly celibacy by noting that in his 13 years as Bishop of Essen, he has only ordained 15 new priests, while 300 priests have died. The Diocese of Essen, he said, currently has no seminarians in formation…”.
    Look in the mirror, Overbeck. Take responsibility yourself and resign NOW!!!

    • He should get missionary priests to come serve in his diocese. Many African priests serve in my diocese in the USA, as missionary priests, to help with the priest shortage. Our diocesan seminary is growing rapidly, with a good bishop. Maybe the Bishop of Essen should consider becoming a good bishop and see if vocations increase!

  8. Its clear the German Bishops regret not being Martin Luther. I suppose they think this is now their chance. Its also clear they are heading toward schism in a vain attempt to force acceptance of what is clearly both abnormal and sinful sexual behavior. To accomplish this, they are trying to gain a change in church theology. Sadly, this Pope may choose to accommodate them. It is disgusting, and all they will gain in the end is to expedite the destruction of the Church.

  9. Vatican II instructed the Church to adapt its theologies of our divinely inspired dogmas and doctrines to our modern circumstances so as to better convince the World that Jesus is the Truth and the Way.

    Vatican II absolutely did not ask the Church to change its dogmas, doctrine, and theology to match the World’s circumstances.

  10. I am so tired of this nonsense from the German Church (and others).
    No seminarians?
    I agree with the bishop that it’s probably a sign. The question is in the interpretation of the sign.

  11. I am thinking that German Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, of the German Synodal Way, participating in Pope Francis’ Synod on Synodality, is actually Jesus’ intention for His, Matthew 26:31 ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed’. Like the dispersed Germans, when it comes to any Universal Catholic Church authority, just let all Catholics be dispersed.

    Zechariah 13:7 Oracles Concerning the End of False Prophecy. The Song of the Sword.
    Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the one who is my associate—oracle of the LORD of hosts. Strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones. In all the land—oracle of the LORD—two thirds of them will be cut off and perish, and one third will be left. I will bring the one third through the fire; I will refine them as one refines silver, and I will test them as one tests gold. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them; I will say, “They are my people,” and they will say, “The LORD is my God.”

    It is Jesus who splits out of His mouth two thirds of His Catholic Church, to be intentionally ‘led into temptation’, and follow the ‘Desolating Abomination’ ‘Standing in the Holy Place, into hell. The keeper Catholics, one third of Jesus’ Catholic Church are to be sanctified by Jesus’ Faithful Catholic Apostolic Successors, and refined to become Jesus’ glorious post-apocalyptic, ‘Holy City’, ‘New Jerusalem’, Bride of the Lamb, Messianic Reign, Catholic Church.

    Matthew 26:31
    ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed’

    USCCB NABRE Bible Note for Matthew 26:31
    Will have…shaken: literally, “will be scandalized in me”; see note on Mt 24:9–12. I will strike…dispersed: cf. Zec 13:7.

    Matthew 24 The Destruction of the Temple Foretold

    USCCB NABRE Bible Note for Matthew 24:9-12
    Matthew has used Mk 13:9–12 in his missionary discourse (Mt 10:17–21) and omits it here. Besides the sufferings, including death, and the hatred of all nations that the disciples will have to endure, there will be worse affliction within the church itself. This is described in Mt 24:10–12, which are peculiar to Matthew. Will be led into sin: literally, “will be scandalized,” probably meaning that they will become apostates; see Mt 13:21 where “fall away” translates the same Greek word as here. Betray: in the Greek this is the same word as the hand over of Mt 24:9. The handing over to persecution and hatred from outside will have their counterpart within the church. False prophets: these are Christians; see note on Mt 7:15–20. Evildoing: see Mt 7:23. Because of the apocalyptic nature of much of this discourse, the literal meaning of this description of the church should not be pressed too hard. However, there is reason to think that Matthew’s addition of these verses reflects in some measure the condition of his community.

    Someone has to prepare Christ’s Bride, the Catholic Church, to become Jesus’ glorious, post-apocalyptic, ‘Holy City’, ‘The New Jerusalem’, for Jesus to Second Coming, Come and enter His Presence on earth, into It. We can clearly see this will not be Pope Francis and His Synod on Synodality doing this work.

    Divine Mercy in My Soul, 429
    I heard these words spoken distinctly and forcefully within my soul, You will prepare the world for My final coming.

    Revelation 21:9 The New Jerusalem.
    “Come here. I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” He took me in spirit to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It gleamed with the splendor of God. Its radiance was like that of a precious stone, like jasper, clear as crystal…. I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb. The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.

  12. German Bishop at Synod (“Walking Together”) says we must stop “clinging to habits and traditionalisms” including APOSTOLIC TRADITION, by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, October 22, 2023.

    Excerpt (from X):

    Diane Montagna
    @dianemontagna

    I was not quite clear on what Bishop Overbeck meant in his response, so as soon as the briefing had ended, I went up to him & twice asked explicitly if he meant we need to set aside Apostolic Tradition—and twice he said “yes”, that this is what he meant. (4/4) #SynodonSynodality
    2:40 PM · Oct 21, 2023

  13. This guy keeps getting better and better. Now he wants to throw out Apostolic Tradition/s. Can we hear from some of the non-bishops, please?

  14. Faith in the presence and the workings of the Almighty was awakened by the Asian Jesus of Nazareth in his admirers and their challengers of his time and place. Formal frameworks and structures to contain such faith has been a gift of the Global West and the Global North. Missionaries from the Global South should be invited to evangelize those areas that are in dire need of liberation from old and antiquated habits. Awakening in people, the dormant deep down lying faith in God is certainly not an impossible task.

    • “Missionaries from the Global South should be invited to evangelize those areas that are in dire need of liberation from old and antiquated habits.”

      Dr.Cajetan Coelho,
      I’m probably misunderstanding your comments but from my experience priests & religious from the Global South are evangelizing those who have lost their connection to Catholic Tradition.
      Perhaps you meant old & antiquated vices? We certainly hold on to those in the West with a death grip.

  15. The last sentence in the above article as to how the Bishop found solace in the Synodal format of ‘conversation in the spirit method ‘ of listening, without asking questions and silent prayer …as what our times need , what the Holy Father has been trying to model in the midst of accusations and misunderstandings ..

    http://www.seraphim.my/divinemercy/diary/text/DiaryI.htm – 425 -‘I saw a soul being separted from the body amidst terrible torments ..was a soul who was full of world’s appluase and honors ..’ – St.Faustina , chosen by The Lord to be a sign for our times ; the related Divine Will writings through the mystic SOG Luisa ,also on line. All such – may it help to bring persons back to the faith and its blessings world over !

  16. Fundamental “traditional” (and habitual) Catholic common sense: We sin. When we sin, we often lie to ourselves that we haven’t sinned. In some cases, we habitually lie to ourselves that our favorite sins are not sins. We look for ways to form our entire belief system as a way of life to convince ourselves that our sins are not sins, and the sinful side of the theology industry is there to help support our delusions by “rethinking” sins into non-existence. Walking with us and accompanying us. The sins of theologians contriving lies to accompany sins are among the signs of the times that the times are evil. There used to be a time when Catholic common sense was catholic. It was common sensical enough that even a progressive prelate could understand what an adolescent can understand, that seminaries advertising and recruiting in gay porn magazines might have something more to do with a vocations crisis than not turning to ordaining pro-abortion feminists as a fantasy solution. Catholic common sense knows that plumbing solutions to problems never work. At the risk of being a traditional habitual backwardist, the Church receives the number of vocations it deserves. We need to become more deserving.

  17. We are called to read the signs of the time with the light of the Gospel not read the Gospel in the light of the signs of the times. The first keeps us centered in Christ, tha latter centered on the ever changing times.

  18. Where are the good Cardinals and Bishops at this Synod? Bishop Barron is all over social media but he can’t hold a press conference to correct these false teachers?

  19. Interesting comment about the diocese of Essen in The Pillar. Apparently there was a large influx of Catholics into this industrial area, the Ruhr, at one time. The Church, too elitist, generally ignored the needs of these working class people.
    It has been noted that the Church today has lost the working class, for the most part.

  20. Interesting comment about the diocese of Essen in The Pillar. Apparently there was a large influx of Catholics into this industrial area, the Ruhr, at one time. The Church, too elitist, generally ignored the needs of these working class people.
    It has been noted that the (western) Church today has lost the working class, for the most part.

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