Cardinal rebukes head of German bishops: We can’t ignore Christ’s teaching on marriage

German Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, who headed the Papal Council Cor Unum until 2010 and was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, has publicly opposed the words and direction of the German Bishops' Conference. In a Letter to the Editor to the German newspaper Die Tagespost on March 7, 2015, Cardinal Cordes contradicts the words of Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German Bishops' Conference, as well as Bishop Franz-Joseph Bode (Osnabrück).

After the Bishops of Germany had had their conference in Hildesheim, Northern Germany, Cardinal Marx said words that provoked the resistance of Cardinal Cordes. The latter cardinal has responded out of concern that Marx caused confusion among the faithful.

First of all, Cardinal Cordes rebuked Cardinal Marx for his claim that the Catholic Church looks to and expects much from the Church in Germany. He noted that Germany has barely any supernatural Faith left (only 16.2 percent of German Catholics believe in a Triune God, as a personal God with a Face, instead of an abstraction), so therefore, Germany is hardly a model for any other country concerning the Faith. “We have therefore no reason to put us with our Faith up front of the Churches of other countries,” he said.

Cardinal Cordes also resists Cardinal Marx’s claim that the German Church is not merely a “subordinate of Rome” and that, rather, the German Church has to make her own decisions concerning marriage and those who married outside the Church, namely, “the German Church has to teach the Gospel in her own way.”

Read more.