Vatican Sham Intervention: German Bishops Carry On

Neither the Synodal Way nor the bishops are competent to set up "synodal councils" at national, diocesan or parish level, the three Curia cardinals Parolin, Ladaria and Ouellet declared in a grandiloquent January 16 letter to the German bishops.

The epistle was "approved" by Francis. The German Synod voted in September to create a "Synodal Council" as a permanent governing body of bishops and lay people.

Subsequently, the bishops of Cologne, Augsburg, Passau, Regensburg and Eichstätt turned to the Vatican with critical questions about this "synodal council". The Cardinals' letter is the response to them.

But on 23 January, Presiding Bishop Bätzing sent the Curia Cardinals packing. He declared that the German bishops will stick to the "synodal council" and sarcastically affirmed that they will do so "within the limits of canon law".

But in canon law there is no such "synodal council" which is instead inspired by the constitution of the no longer existing Soviet Union.

Picture: © Pressebild Synodaler Weg/Maximilian von Lachner, #newsAvlgwvywtz