The present situation in the Catholic Church, especially in West Germany, Europe and North America, can to a large extent be described as suffering from the Church. Suffering from the Church differs from suffering with the Church. The latter is inevitable when the Church, wherever it exists, comes under stress, distress and persecution. Then there is an obligation for all Christians to unite in solidarity, for "If one part is hurt, all parts are hurt with it. If one part is given special honor, all parts enjoy it" (I Cor 12:26).
Suffering from the Church today is not merely pain because the concrete Church lags behind its promise, its mandate, and its claims - that will always be the case. For this reason too the Church is an ecclesia semper reformanda, a Church which requires constant renewal but also a Church capable of such renewal. That is the basic assertion of the Second Vatican Council. We are this Church.
Suffering from the Church -- an expression of a faith which believes in and loves the Church as the community of the faithful - has its concrete foundation in the fact that the Church's cohesion, its communal togetherness defined so clearly by Vatican II, has been disturbed. In other words, the present sufferings from the Church are linked to the fact that the Church today has noticeably changed from the Church of the Second Vatican Council in its authoritative judgments and mandates and is steering toward a situation which seems preconciliar, a restoration of the so-called good old days, striving to return to a time which was certainly not as good as it is often imagined to have been. And this despite the fact that words and texts from the Council are constantly being quoted by representatives of this mentality, who often choose selectively and sometimes ignore the proper context or connection.
During the Council, despite some controversies and unavoidable compromises as well as the exclusion of important themes and some interventions from a "higher authority," there was no suffering from the Church -- apart from a few circles, then in the minority but since enormously enlarged. Rather it was a source of joy, even pride, to belong to this Church which radiated hope and confidence, which stood in solidarity with the joys and sorrows of humanity, which proclaimed the Gospel not as law but as a joyful and liberating human-friendly message, as an answer to the questions of contemporary people, especially to the question of what we humans are.
The Church of the Council sought and found a new relationship to the world as God's creation and the household of the human race. It also sought and created a new relationship to other Christian confessions, to Judaism, to the spirit of the modern age, to non-Christian religions. It argued for freedom of conscience and religion, for dialogue and cooperation as a form of encounter, and in the process it drew up principles about which, with the best of intentions, one cannot say "The Church has always...." Freedom of conscience and religion had been expressly rejected in the official doctrinal statements in the past century on the principle that error has no rights. The Council on the contrary asserted that error is not a subject of justice, but people are, even if they err.
During and immediately following the Council people had no difficulty in identifying with this Church and its statements. There was no anti-Church or anti-Rome feeling. The Petrine office as personified in Pope John XXIII evoked universal esteem and respect and made it possible for such a papacy, with its obvious sense of brotherhood displaying the power of love, to be acceptable even outside the Catholic Church. Across the entire world the public followed the events of the Council with great approval and respect. The old church had not been thought capable of such vitality, such encouraging youthfulness, such contagious radiance. I still remember Mario von Galli at the 1964 Katholikentag in Stuttgart crying out amid the tumultuous jubilation of the participants, "Church, how young you are -- Church, how beautiful you are!" Today, with all the radical Church criticism which conceals nothing, no one carries on in this manner any longer.
For some Catholics today the Council has become an almost forgotten past. In addition there are today not a few voices which play down and relativize this Council -- the most significant and hopeful experience in the history of the Catholic Church in our century - and the changes following it, indeed even see in it and them distorted developments which need to be revised. Instead of Gaudium et spes, joy and hope, today it is suppression, lamentation and listlessness which dominate the scene.
A change in the long, almost unbroken agreement with the official Church, its directives, and its official statements came about, in my opinion, because of Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae, which released a surge of criticism from many people, including loyal Catholics, who refused to accept so- called natural birth-control as the only morally-permitted method of birth control. Paul VI held to this decision, he said, despite the vote of the commission he himself had appointed, out of loyalty to prior Church tradition. This situation remains to this very day - on the one side there is Pope John Paul II who, with his constant emphasizing of this encyclical at every opportunity throughout the world, seems to have elevated it almost to the level of a new dogma, and on the other side there is the continuous critique of the encyclical's unconvincing argumentation. The directives espoused by Humanae vitae were not only to a large extent not accepted, they were actually rejected. As a foundation of what is natural and inherent in all human beings, biology as such just is not an adequate ethical or theological criterion. The human being as a person, endowed with conscience and responsibility, is more and other than a simply biologically-determined being. And that is true also in the area of sexuality.
Because the argumentation supporting Humanae vitae still put forth today - namely, that the language of nature is likewise the language of morality, and that to respect the biological is to respect God and therefore to defend God's creation[1] - is not convincing, it cannot gain support. Should one not instead perceive in the behavior of these most loyal Catholics a kind of sensus fidelium, which cannot simply be shunted aside?
Peter Hünermann has said, "When an extremely large number of committed Christian married people, after very careful investigation and examination of conscience and thoughtful consideration of the circumstances, use methods of contraception, then this may be a sign of the sensus fidelium, of the loyal sense of the faith of the People of God, and not simply a symptom of an accommodation to the spirit of the times, to the Zeitgeist, or an overall defection from the faith."[2]
In the face of the unrest arising from Humanae vitae the bishops of West Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as the United States issued declarations which did not disavow but rather welcomed the encyclical, especially in its positive statements, but raised the issue of the responsible judgment of conscience in the concrete decisions of marriage partners. Now an attempt is being made to appear to forget these declarations and make them inoperative. Today they would no longer be possible or imaginable. Attempts are made to view declarations like those of the German bishops at Königstein in 1968 as mistaken, and to annul them.
The General Synod of West Germany (1971-1975) had as its goal the application and enculturation of the Second Vatican Council in the German Catholic Church in light of the new problems expressed so turbulently at the 1968 Katholikentag in Essen. It was only with great effort that Cardinal Döpfner could read out a greeting from the Pope. At that time a plan was formed to prepare and convene a General Synod of all the West German dioceses. The idea of such a Synod was suggested by the Council itself, which had recalled the idea of a universal priesthood and the responsibility of all the faithful in the fulfillment of the mandate transmitted to the Church, and had made people conscious of the unity of the ecclesiastical mission and the participation of all members of the People of God in the Church's mission and in the threefold office of Christ. The Synod of Würzburg, composed of bishops, priests, theologians, members of religious orders, and laity, was an unparalleled center of communication, the experience and exchange of a lively Communio within the People of God, who together sought and discovered solutions through dialogue and reasoning based on faith.
Certainly the Synod also had its ups and downs; there were tensions that sometimes became an endurance test, expressions of a potential plurality in the Church. But the net did not break. The good will and commitment to the Church of all the participants were acknowledged. That created a solid base for community. Even the compromises, which often had to be settled for, were a sign of mutual respect. This is not the place to present the themes and conclusions of this Synod. The "official complete edition"[3] provides this information. Especially impressive is the Synod's basic statement and its declaration, "Our Hope." A Declaration of Faith for This Time. It is in a decisive way the work of Johannes B. Metz and bears his stamp in form and content. The initial draft was not infrequently disputed vehemently, ostensibly because of its one-sidedness, but it was in the end passed by a large majority. It is a text which today is still as moving, fresh and encouraging as it was during the Synod itself.
The president of the General Synod, Julius Cardinal Döpfner, explained at the end of the final plenary assembly in November of 1975, "The Synod is over - the Synod begins. The real task, to fulfill with spirit and life what was deliberated and resolved in Würzburg, still lies before us. I hope the publication of this complete edition will be an aid in enabling the spirit and letter of the Synod's conclusions under the guidance of God's Spirit in the Church to assume a concrete and fruitful form on all levels in the Church of our country. It was this greatness of faith, hope and charity that the General Synod wished to serve. It is by this goal that the entire post-Synod work of practical translation must be inspired."[4]
The General Synod in Würzburg had as its goal the resumption of the Council and its enculturation in Germany. It was sometimes referred to as the "German Council." The closing song of the Synod was not "See a House Full of Glory," but rather "Awake, the Voice Calls Us!"
The Synod has since faded from memory even more than the Council itself. Scarcely any of the great expectations have been fulfilled. In fact, it has come to the point where those who cite the Synod today and draw upon it as an authority and focus of the Catholic Church in Germany arouse suspicion in some circles that they no longer stand upon the firm ground of the Catholic Church of the present day, that they mourn for something which even during its day was regarded with mistrust, not least because in the voting and passing of resolutions the Synod as a whole was acting as the representative of the People of God in the Bundesrepublik.
Add to this that the decisions agreed upon by the Synod were for the most part rejected by Rome, including even the granting of permission to hold a synod every ten years. That was not very encouraging, but until now it has been understood to mean that only diocesan synods may take place, as in the diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart - in which the Würzburg Synod was not only referred to but remained extremely influential in many of the Rottenburg-Stuttgart declarations.[5]
Suffering from the Church thus has its base in the discrepancy between the Church of the Council and the Würzburg Synod and the Church of the present, between that which was and that which is today. This suffering to be sure can be correctly understood and weighed only by one for whom the Council and Synod are still living and present, who has found in the Council and Synod a foundational orientation for Christian faith and life and for the form of the Church and who can therefore draw a comparison.
Following are a few concrete examples of suffering from the Church today.
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