Germans in tussle with teaching authority

The Church in Germany is offering the rest of the world a view of the clash between what many Germans believe should be a democratic institution but which, in fact, is a body whose role is the preservation and dissemination of what God has revealed by word and deed, through Scripture and Tradition. 

In the months ahead, representatives of German lay groups, parishes, and religious orders, will meet with bishops in a form of an ongoing synod - what they refer to as a "synodal path" - on how to reform the Church, especially its structures, to prevent a recurrence of the scandalous tide of sex abuse. 

Though that is the stated goal, and it is a noble objective, there is a fear the journey will be a wasted one as participants rehearse the hoary topics of  greater share of power for the Church members, the ordination of women, and a change in its stance toward the sinfulness of homosexual acts (N.B. the Church makes no moral judgment concerning the person who is, among other things, a homosexual). The hope is that the path will come to an end next February.

Debate on the ordination of women to be a priest, in particular, will display in stark terms the conflict between the "enlightened" ones and those charged with upholding the living teaching office of the Church. This office is its "magisterium" involving the "clarification and manifestation of the truth contained in the deposit of faith or truths connected to the deposit and the mission of the Church" (Feingold 2016)* 

Note that "this teaching office is not above the word of God in scripture, but serves it". The commission can be fulfilled only through God's anointing of those who fill the office as successors of Peter and his fellow apostles, and through the help of the Holy Spirit.

Pope John Paul II declared in 1994 that priestly ordination must be reserved to men only.  He did it in such a way that made plain he was making a definitive and infallible statement that confirmed the Tradition of the Church:

Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church’s judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful. 

Read the short document here. It displays the elements of an exercise of the teaching authority of the pope in a case of infallibility, which is immunity from error in the teaching of the magisterium through the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

Feingold comments:

In this paragraph, the Pope has expressed himself very precisely so as to make clear that this pronouncement is definitive and therefore infallible, and thus can never be changed by any future pope or council. All of the requirements given in [the Vatican Council's] Lumen gentium §25 (summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church §891) are clearly realized. First, the Pope confirms that he is acting as supreme pastor when he speaks “in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren.” Second, he explicitly intends to make a definitive act (“this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful”). Finally, he is teaching on a question pertaining to faith and morals, for he says that it is “a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself.”*

Here is an instance of God acting in the Church for the guidance of His people. For those who have lost the sense of the spiritual as an integral part of our world along with the material, this is a hard saying.  

Therefore, that the ordination of women as priests is still on the agenda in the German discussions has caused the fear of another German schism to grip many in the Church outside secularised Europe. 

*Feingold, Lawrence, 2016, Faith Comes From What Is Heard: An Introduction to Fundamental Theology, Emmaus Academic, Steubenville, Ohio.

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