As a theologian, what do you think of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith (DDF) saying that they’re willing to look again at, or at least study the question of women priests?
For me it’s a very good, impressive and inspiring process. We can see that there are these five cardinals and they tried to go against the Pope asking so-called ‘questions’ and then they get an answer. The answer is in my eyes to open the door and not to shut down the discussion.
What the Dicastery (DDF) wrote was in good resonance to what is important for us in Germany. I’m the vice-president of the Synodal Path in Germany and the ordination of women is one of our main topics and we decided in three steps; first of all please fulfil the rights of women in accordance with canon law now. Secondly, let us truly study the possibility of female deacons. Thirdly, let us have an open dialogue in our Church about the validity and quality of possibility of ordination of women to priesthood.
When you follow the answer to the so-called Dubia, you will just find this structure and they did not copy the German ideas but in my eyes, there’s a logic in the task of the rights of women in the Catholic Church.
And is this the same logic you were using in Germany?
Yes. What I did was memorise the structure of our decisions. That is what we want to do in Germany. We have the possibility and the duty to do a lot of what we in Germany are allowed and called to do.
Then there are other points. There’s no debate that this is not only a German task but it is a challenge for the whole Church. Then we try to bring in some votes of Germany to this concept of Catholic voices all over the world and then we will see. I find there’s a lot of resonance.
Do the Germans take credit for inspiring the recent openness to sex-same blessings?
I find that in the Catholic Church there are a lot of dynamics on that point. But the real reason for that is in my eyes was that the Catholic discipline since the 19th century was very strong and strict.
From the point of view today when you are in dialogue with the people, you realise that their views on this differ from that described in the catechism and what is forbidden in the eyes of the Catholic Church. We are in favour of opening this moral teaching and we need answers regarding what should happen in the meantime when the tension between doctrine and life is too big.
Our proposal and decision in Germany was: Please make open what otherwise is only hidden. I find that there is a good resonance in the answer to the Dubia as well.
As a theologian in a world synod, there are African bishops and cardinals, gay blessings isn’t an issue for them. Are we in a situation where we can talk about these things but it’s going to be very difficult to bring the rest of the Church on board? Are these western issues?
Well firstly, as a theologian at the Synod, it is not my job to push the bishops. I’ll perhaps analyse and reflect and support. But when you have a look through the continental papers, you see that the presence of LBTQ-people in the Church is a reality. Very important is the point of view, from which the theme is developed and the style.
In Germany sometimes we argue: This is the doctrine – that is the solution – so, make a new doctrine. Perhaps, it is a better idea not only on this point of blessings and of homosexual couples, to say: We should be a welcoming Church. How are we able to become it? This is a wider horizon.
We are a push back Church when we don’t welcome those who are convinced in faith to live their life in love even if it is in tension with the present moral doctrine.
One example: The papers of Africa mention very openly that they have other problems to prioritise, for instance polygamy. We as organisers of faithful lay Catholics in Germany, we are in very good contact with groups from the global south – from the grassroots so to say.
Some people here would say to me that it’s good we made our decisions, it gives us more space. So, for the moment it’s not topic number one in the Synod but it’s on the agenda.
I’m conscious of your longstanding connections with the Synod in Germany, have you experienced any negative comments since you came here because there were a lot of things said before the event about the Synod in Germany?
I have to say no. Once while waiting for coffee a cardinal from the US was in the queue and then when he found out I was from Germany he mentioned that he wrote a letter to me and then I realised that he was one of the bishops who wrote a critical letter, and I thanked him and said that we read it very carefully and that it was very important to keep contact.
He knows what I was thinking. I know what he was thinking. I’ve been invited to the Synod as an expert and I know that there are some who looked at Germany and said that perhaps we need a little expertise from this country – just like we have from other countries.
A lot of the Catholic Church has been very critical of Germany of late but yet here is one of the only countries in the world doing this massive Synodal Pathway and had all of this infrastructure going back 20 or 30 years, even more. This culminated with the Pope’s comment that ‘we already have a Protestant Church’. Was that quite hurtful to people?
We have very good contacts with the Protestant churches in Germany. And we have invited Protestants to be guests at our churches. These Protestant guests say to us that we’re 100% Catholic.
We have synodality with bishops and not against. We have synodality with the Holy Father and not against. We organise synodality with those Catholics who are willing to be engaged – who were elected for pastoral councils at local and regional levels and are members of clubs and associations. There are millions of members. For me it was a surprise.
In the group of theologians, there’s a colleague who asked me if our Synod in Germany is more less a parliament. Much like the Anglican community has a parliament with no clear distinctions between Church and state.
I was able to clarify that we as laypeople were not elected by the German parliament, but that we organised ourselves as Catholic believers, independent of the state. The organisation of our own Catholic memberships to me is very important.
It’s not the structure of a “Catholic action”. The “Zentralkomitee” is not organised top-down and guided by the bishops but our representation comes from the democratic revolution in Germany in the midst of the 19th century.
Catholics all began to organise themselves to strengthen the Catholic voice and vote in society and in the Church. Those are our roots for 175 years. Now we are officially recognised as an organisation of lay apostolate by the bishops.
Therefore it was possible to organise a partnership on more less the same level with the Bishop’s Conference and to cooperate. This is a little bit unusual.
We are in that process independent because we have the effects of synodality in Germany and this is only the next step.
Was the difficulty for the universal Church that because you had that structure, you were too far ahead of everybody else in the Church?
We in Germany are only a small part of the Catholic Church. We do not think that we are the role model for the whole Church.
But our experience is: deliberations and decisions do belong together in organised co-responsibility and circularity.
A criticism at the beginning of our Path in Germany was that it would be impossible for bishops and others to come together for deliberations and decisions. But what is now happening in Rome? All of this criticism is for nothing.
Because of the decision of the Pope to invite not only bishops. 80 more persons are full members with a vote. So what we have in Germany is only that the relations are a little bit different.
It’s not possible in Germany to make a decision against the bishops. We need always a two thirds majority – so 66% plus one from the bishop’s side. Of course, the 2/3 majority of the assembly as well.
There was only one case where trouble arose and flashed. Three votes from the bishops were missing. However, a big majority of bishops were in favour. When you look to Australia and the question of women in the Church, it wasn’t as severe.
Was that during the vote to abolish the priesthood? There was a lot of animosity there.
The attempt at scandalisation was a foul. I like football. A good referee would decide it was a red card. One of our so-called fora is about priesthood and from that fora came the question: “Should we explain the necessity of priesthood or should we not?”.
And what the critics did was change this question to “Do we need priests or not?”. That was not fair.
Wasn’t the vote to retain the priesthood just marginally passed?
Yes. I was not vice-president at the time and was only a normal member but I know that I should have made an intervention because the whole of the assembly was not clear about what was the real subject.
Most of those who voted against that had the idea so clearly that we as Catholics need priests that it is not necessary to approve this topic. Anyway, now we have a good text on priesthood. Covid was a real problem for communication.
Therefore we have a double communication problem. On the one side, we from Germany have the duty to communicate but the possibilities were not the very best.
On the other side, my idea is that for the Roman Curia as well, it is a little bit difficult to interest them in what happens in Germany. So we have received letters that forbid something that wasn’t the subject of the decisions.
Do you think that after this the lines of communication can be better?
Now it’s better. I am optimistic that we will find a good way together. The world synod opened the door. Now we are invited to go on.
Dr Thomas Söding is a German Catholic theologian, professor of New Testament exegesis at the Ruhr University Bochum and vice president of the Central Committee of German Catholics. He was selected to preside as an expert during the Synod of Bishops.
