Some were taken aback when Bishop Ackermann presented results for the group of bishops at the end of the church's second dialogue forum: ecclesiastical labor law, remarried divorcees, the advancement of women and political commitment also to the protection of life. This is now the bishop's work program.
The mood among the 300 delegates from all 27 dioceses and many areas of church life was much more diffuse. But the bishops had resolved that they would not go home with the accusation that they had not delivered anything. They have succeeded in doing that.
The bishops were disciplined. When, at the end of the debate, each group was asked to present its summary at the microphone, only the Bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann, managed to do so in the allotted time. “A precision landing,” commented the moderator at the second dialogue forum of the Catholic Church in Germany, which ended Saturday in Hanover.
Elaborate discussion director: the Aquarium Debate
According to some participants, however, the path to this goal was rather circuitous. Delegates were led through an elaborate discussion regimen that mixed small-group discussions with plenary debates. In the process, the “iPad” became a conversation tool, allowing everyone to send and record comments to everyone all the time. The highlight was the so-called “fishbowl” – the “aquarium debate”. In the middle of the room sat nine representatives of the church groups and functionaries, who led the debate on behalf of all of them as a kind of podium.
The ingenious moderation technique repeatedly caused disgruntlement. But tablet computers and on-screen presentations also offered variety in the exhausting sorting of topics and focal points. Some committee-experienced church officials claimed any parish council meeting would be more effective than such media-sweetened event debates. But there were also quite different opinions. After the first day, the computer-assisted and editorial consolidation of topics and requests had produced a 13-page compilation. The demands ranged from the diaconate for women to the desire for cheaper sausages at the parish festival.
Only once were there boos
The debate was hardly controversial. There was a struggle over how to bundle the more or less unity on ies of church reform. Only once there were boos. The Frankfurt CDU politician Bernhard Mihm, sent by the conservative “Forum of German Catholics”, had jumped into the “debate aquarium” and swum against the tide. With topics such as marriage and sexuality the church would have to place itself exactly like with questions of the justice and the peace also against the social “mainstream. “We are committed to the truth, not to society.”There was no approval for it. “The true believers on the ground think differently,” commented one parish priest and received applause. Loud controversy was undesirable in Hanover, harmony was the program. No bishop disturbed this atmosphere either.
After the first round of dialogue in Mannheim, Hanover was a great step forward, the president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Alois Gluck, summed up after the meeting. The atmosphere of discussion has been established, and the bishops have undertaken things they would not have been willing to do two years ago. The Green member of the Bundestag, Josef Winkler, warned against premature criticism of the dialogue process. "Nowhere else in the world do bishops engage in such a dialogue at eye level."
And so, for some association officials, the Hanover event was rather long-winded. However, many participants enjoyed speaking directly with the bishops for once, and many also appreciated the trouble-free exchange across all levels of the church hierarchy. "Many have a rumbling in their stomachs," said the chairwoman of the Federation of German Catholic Youth (BDKJ) in the archdiocese of Berlin, Andrea Kohler. "Here in Hanover, I can finally let my emotions out and show why I'm involved in the church." And the bishops listened with discipline.