VATICAN (CNS): “I, too, share this concern about the numerous concrete steps that are now being taken by large parts of this local Church that threaten to move further and further away from the common path of the universal Church,” Pope Francis wrote in a November 10 letter.
Without a doubt, the pope wrote, this included the recent formation of a synodal committee. This committee of 74 laypeople and bishops was set up in March and is to spend the next three years working on the establishment of a permanent German synodal council.
The synodal council aims to be a national “advisory and decision-making body,” made up of bishops and laypeople, that will make key decisions on pastoral, long term planning and financial matters not decided at diocesan level.
The pope’s letter is a response to four Germans who wrote to him on November 6 expressing “doubts and fears” about the outcomes of the Synodal Path, which began in December 2019 and concluded in March 2023.
I, too, share this concern about the numerous concrete steps that are now being taken by large parts of this local Church that threaten to move further and further away from the common path of the universal Church
Pope Francis
The letter from moral theologian, Katharina Westerhorstmann; theologian Marianne Schlosser; philosopher Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and journalist Dorothea Schmidt of Germany, was published in full by the German newspaper, Die Welt on November 21.
The women had been prominent participants in the Synodal Path but withdrew their support in February saying it was “casting doubt” on essential Catholic doctrines and teachings, and organisers were ignoring the Vatican’s many warnings, according to a joint statement published by Die Welt after their departure.
In a letter approved by Pope Francis, top Vatican officials already had warned organisers in January they had no authority to set up such a body.
In his November 10 letter to the four women, the pope referred to the admonition against forming the council and said a body like that described by the Synodal Path’s resolution “cannot be reconciled with the sacramental structure of the Catholic Church.”
The pope wrote that Catholics need to turn to prayer, penance and adoration as well as reach out to the marginalised and abandoned “instead of looking for ‘salvation’ in always-new committees and always discussing the same issues with a certain self-referentiality.”
He thanked the women for their contributions to theology and philosophy and “for your witness to the faith.” He asked them to continue praying for him and for “our common concern for unity.”
“I am convinced [it is] there the Lord will show us the way,” Pope Francis wrote.
