The German Church’s revolution can wait. The fireworks have been postponed

Rome. The first meeting of the German Synodal Conference has been postponed to a date yet to be confirmed. Everything was ready: the launch was scheduled for 6 and 7 November in Stuttgart, and a second meeting had even been planned for Würzburg in the spring. It was the President of the Bishops’ Conference himself, Bishop Heiner Wilmer, who officially announced this, having already expressed pessimism back in May – during the Catholic Day in Würzburg – about whether the timetable would be adhered to. He had blamed this on the constant buck-passing between the Roman dicasteries. This time, he expressed confidence that the plans would go ahead – “Progress will be made” – even if “it will still take a little more time”. How long? Nobody knows. The reason for the postponement is simple: the expected green light has not arrived from the Vatican. The statutes approved by the bishops and the Committee of German Catholics, which will establish the Synodal Conference, are still under scrutiny by the bodies in Rome which, as history teaches us, are masters at allowing the most thorny situations to settle. The fact that this is not a foregone conclusion stems from the fact that this Synodal Conference, given its structure, jeopardises the hierarchical structure of the Church. The body, born out of the Synodale Weg through its six plenary assemblies and the tireless, meticulous work of the various ad hoc committees, is composed of twenty-seven bishops, twenty-seven members of the highly influential Committee of German Catholic Laity, and a further twenty-seven elected Catholics. In short: the laity will outnumber the bishops two to one. The Conference will have not only advisory but also decision-making powers, and will be able to meddle in the internal affairs of individual dioceses. This aspect led in January to open criticism from Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who is himself one of the architects of the German synodal path; whilst he is very much in favour of openness regarding celibacy, the diaconate and moral issues, he takes a far more rigid stance on budgets and accounts. Only two bishops – apart from the four “rebels” who had declared from the outset that they were absolutely unwilling to participate in the Conference – had expressed concerns about fifty-four laypeople having access even to detailed data on diocesan financial situations, but in the end they did not oppose the creation of the body. As far back as four years ago, when the idea of establishing a conference with full powers, comprising bishops and laypeople – each with equal voting rights according to the ‘one person, one vote’ principle – emerged from the synodal discussions on the banks of the Rhine, the Vatican had warned that it was not possible to proceed, as such a body would place itself “above the authority of the Bishops’ Conference”, ultimately replacing it. 

Despite this, Germany carried on as if nothing had happened, warning that by spring 2026 at the latest, the Conference would be christened Pope Francis – who, from the very beginning of the Synodale Weg, had admonished the Germans to avoid rushing ahead – publicly expressed doubts about the “Catholicity” of the German bishops, causing surprise and irritation to the then president of the bishops’ conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing. The crux of the matter, in essence, is this: is it acceptable, under current canon law, for a local bishops’ conference to establish a body in which bishops and laity decide together on “important matters of ecclesial life of supra-diocesan significance” (point 94 of the approved Final Document)? So far, Rome’s position on this matter has appeared to be opposed: the current Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, Monsignor Iannone, had expressed a similar view when he was President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts. Leo XIV, responding to a journalist’s question during one of his international trips, said he was “aware that many Catholics in Germany believe that certain aspects of the Synodal Path celebrated in Germany to date do not reflect their hopes for the Church or their way of living out their faith”. The bishops remain silent and wait, perhaps out of obedience. The one speaking out – and loudly at that – is the chair of the Committee of German Catholics, Irme Stetter-Karp. In May, she warned that if the Vatican were to heed the bishops hostile to reform and block the Synodal Conference, this “would be catastrophic for our local Church”. Now that Bishop Wilmer has officially confirmed the suspension, she is doubling down: the Synodal Conference will go ahead and will not be a “paper tiger”.