Good afternoon, good talk.
As a German-American whose grandparents were born not far from here in a little town called
Kirweiler, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the situation in the German Catholic Church
which is beyond desperate and which has caused considerable concern among many American Catholics
as well as German Catholics.
The German bishops' synodal path appears to be an effort to create a church according
to the image and likeness of the German bishops, who apparently believe that they can define
doctrine and establish their own national
Church, a sort of elitist nationalism that flies in the face of the universal
Catholic Church of Jesus Christ with one faith, one sacramental system, and one
discipline throughout the whole world.
Statutes drafted in cooperation with the Central Committee of German Catholics
threatened to posit the ordination of women and the abolition of priestly
celibacy as countermeasures to the clerical sexual abuse crisis.
But surely the German Catholic bishops realize that the ordination of women is a direct violation of God's law,
authoritatively reinforced in 1994 by Pope John Paul II in Ordinatio Satri Todolis.
where he writes, quote, the church
has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination
on women, and that this judgment is
to be definitively held by all of the church's faithful,
end quote.
What part of the church has no authority to break God's law
do the German bishops fail to comprehend?
Any push to ordain women
would be an act of rebellion against the bride of power.
worthy of Martin Luther himself, which is why we have no alternative but to resist
the sonata process here in Germany which, if allowed to continue, will set
dangerous precedents for the entire church.
During World War II, my German-American father spent three and a half years of his life fighting in the U.S. Army against National Socialism,
the socialism that sought to change the world according to notions of German supremacy and superiority.
Please, for God's sake, do not allow the German bishops to embarrass the Fatherland
again by creating a new order in the Church based on notions of German supremacy over
the word of God and the infallible teachings of the Catholic Church.
Let history show that there was German resistance to this just as there was German resistance
to the Nazis then.
In 1956, my own grandfather, Joseph Matt,
made a Knight of St. Gregory by Pius XI,
took his duty as a Catholic journalist
and newspaper publisher in America now.
He was immigrated from Germany to America.
He took his duty to resist similar German aggression
so seriously that he was awarded the Federal Meritorious
Cross by the post Nazi German government
for his defense against Nazism.
And it is in that spirit, in this spirit, my grandfather and so many other Germans who resisted that we are here today
to speak against the scourge of a German-led ecclesiastical totalitarianism.
The last thing that the world needs right now is more rebellion against the bride of Christ, against the Catholic Church,
that we have seen that rebellion tear her apart over the past 50 years.
And yet the German episcopate's synodal assembly
promises exactly that, more rebellion,
when it threatens to review church teaching,
consider church teaching, that cannot be changed,
and can only be changed by an act of revolution
and rebellion against the church herself.
The German bishops would have us believe that abolishing clerical celibacy, for example,
would also reduce clerical sexual abuse. But this is not only demonstratively false,
it is dangerous, and that it places liberal ideology above the protection of future abuse victims.
Those who are called to the vocation of the single life,
the consecrated virgins, the celibate clergy,
they are not sexually repressed.
They have made celibacy a gift which they willingly chose to give to their God.
And to even suggest that they now require marriage in order to quiet the temptation to abuse children, child molestation.
This amounts to a satanic effrontery to the very end.
idea of religious vocation to the priesthood. It also recklessly fails to
consider the millions of children in our sad world who are abused by their
married parents. It is not a solution.
Furthermore, since clerical sexual abuse most often involves priests preying on post-pubescent
males, for example high school students and seminarians, to suggest that abolishing celibacy
was somehow reduced, the same-sex attraction involved in the majority of the cases is again
to reveal profound ignorance of both homosexuality and the nature of the abuse crisis in the
church itself.
Finally, are the German bishops seriously suggesting that the health of the Catholic
Church, already plagued by a massive priest shortage, that that health is going to be
improved when the few remaining priests left in the Church would all at once find themselves
married and with a house full of babies to raise?
Only a celibate male who knows nothing about marriage would suggest such an absurdity.
So the bottom line is this.
Abolishing celibacy will do precisely nothing to reduce the plague of clerical sexual abuse.
and yet the German bishops are proposing it anyway.
As if their own agenda somehow supersedes
the magisterial authority of the church,
the word of God and scripture,
and the special charism of the priesthood itself.
Because women priests and sexually active priests would also Protestantize the priesthood,
this entire German bishops agenda will inevitably lead to defections among the faithful,
who will recognize this as the church's further surrender to the modern world and to the zeitgeist,
and a lack of resolve to adhere even to her own teachings and mandates.
If even the priests are no longer expected to live up to the challenges of their own vocations
Why should anyone else?
I thus add my voice to those calling upon the German people to act in the spirit of
Klaus von Stauffenberg, Sophie Scholl, and Cardinal von Fallhaber to resist the new regime
in the German Catholic Church, to refuse to pay the ecclesiastical tax, and to pledge
fidelity to the immutable teachings of Holy Mother Church.
What our world, drowning in sex and sewage as it is today, what it needs is the restoration of a strong moral Christian authority, the authority of the Catholic Church based on the law of God and the law of nature,
defended by the self-sacrificing example of celibate priests for a thousand years, willing to deny themselves everything in order to bring the light of Christ, the Lumen Christi, into the darkness of the world.
As a German-American Catholic, I therefore begged the German bishops not to proceed in this way.
I plead with the German people to resist and I call upon the Pope to condemn this with the full weight of his office."
Thank you very much for listening.