The deputy chairman of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany, Bishop Christoph Kahler, has praised Cardinal Karl Lehmann's opening address at the beginning of the fall plenary meeting of the German Bishops' Conference as an "ecumenical boon". Cardinal Lehmann had defined the self-understanding of the Catholic following the texts of Vatican II. The bishops interpreted Vatican II in such a way that there is room for "a very fundamental recognition of the authentic ecclesial reality" of the non-Catholic churches.
The vice-president of the Council reacted very positively to the concrete suggestions in yesterday's presentation and held out the prospect of a speedy review. At the start of the fall plenary session on Monday, Cardinal Karl Lehmann expressed skepticism about the state of ecumenism. Much of what has been achieved in ecumenical conversation in recent decades "has recently been absent, forgotten and also suppressed for several reasons," the bishops' conference president and bishop of Mainz said Monday in Fulda.The document presented in July by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the uniqueness of the Catholic Church had caused considerable irritation among Protestants. In the face of fundamental objections, especially from the Protestant side, Lehmann said he was trying to "present the Catholic self-understanding better and more comprehensibly on its own grounds".Against this background, Cardinal Lehmann had placed his speech at the opening of the fall meeting under the heading "On the self-understanding of the Catholic Church". On the theological discourse of church". And Lehmann, it is heard, wants the bishops in Fulda to debate intensively how they understand ecumenism.
Measures for the Latin Mes If one follows the agenda, the 71 bishops in Fulda want to deal in the next few days also with the Third Ecumenical Assembly (EEA3) at the beginning of September in Sibiu, Romania, and with the structural changes in the German dioceses. Other topics of the meeting include preparations for the Synod of Bishops in Rome in 2008, the progress of the revision of the Unified Translation of the Bible, and ecclesiastical concerns for the EU Intergovernmental Conference on the Constitutional Treaty in the fall of 2007.In addition, the meeting will discuss the 14. Benedict XVI's decree, which went into effect Sept. according to which the old Latin form of the Mass in the 1962 catch may be celebrated more again as an "extraordinary form of expression" of the Roman rite. Previously, this was only possible in exceptional cases. more Protests against Bishop Muller Before the start of the conference, the host bishop Algermissen had demanded a statement from Bishop Muller of Regensburg on the cases of abuse in his diocese. The chairman of the Bishops' Conference, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, plans to ask for the opinion of the clergy and present a statement from them on Friday. Lehmann said at the press conference at the opening of the plenary assembly that he was not interested in his personal opinion, but in the opinion of the other participants.In front of the bishops' meeting site on Monday, the initiative "We are Church" demonstrated with a "vigil" against the "cover-up of sexual violence" by church leaders. The church expert of the Green Party, Ulrike Gote, accused the Regensburg bishop of having failed "across the board" not only as a pastor but also as a superior. She appealed to the German Bishops' Conference to clearly reject the behavior of Muller. He had clearly violated guidelines of the German Bishops' Conference by his "wrong decision" to entrust the clergyman, who had a criminal record in this regard, with the service in a parish again. "Nevertheless, the bishop still stubbornly denies any co-responsibility and thus humiliates the victims and their relatives a second time," said the Green politician, who is also a member of the state committee of Catholics.