Green Party faction leader Renate Kunast has called on the Catholic Church to face social realities more strongly. It must also be about how the church deals with modern lifestyles, she said Friday in an interview with the Catholic News Agency (KNA) in Berlin. Bishops and cardinals are not in a "criticism-free space". In addition, Kunast suggests a discussion between Cardinal Meisner and Volker Beck.
At the same time, in view of the sharp disputes between bishops and the Greens, she opposed an "official bonus" for church representatives who take a stand in political debates. Every cardinal or bishop, however, has the right to a proper discussion.The parliamentary group leader expressed the hope for further talks with representatives of the Catholic Church, as there have been so far. She could also imagine inviting Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne to a "proper and quite clear discussion". But then the parliamentary manager Volker Beck would also take part in it. Beck had called the cardinal a "preacher of hate" after a sermon on the decline of morals in Europe, but retracted the statement two days later after criticism, including from within the Green Party.It was the second sharp statement of the Greens against a church representative within a few days, after party leader Claudia Roth had called the Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa a "crazed buffoon". Kunast referred to the sharpness of the criticism to statements of the two bishops. The church must ask itself how it can happen that "Catholic Christians talk about women as birthing machines" or that people with certain sexual orientations are described as the downfall of humanity. This kind of conservatism can not be "suddenly the core of the Catholic lived values". There must be no discrimination. She is surprised that silence reigns in church ranks, if one of the outstanding church representatives expresses itself pejoratively.In Kunast's opinion, the church should "seek the core of values" in questions of family and society. Finally it belonged to the central Christian values to live charity and care for the others, in which form ever. The church should not ignore realities such as single parents or patchwork families and discriminate against certain people, he said.