The Fulda Bishop Michael Gerber sees the Catholic Church in a profound and painful process of transformation. An “if-then logic” does not help in the current phase.
In his pastoral letter on Lent, published over the weekend, Gerber wrote: “More than ever, we are experiencing a state of affairs in our church these weeks that can be described as ‘poor’.”
Financial resources are “still available, even if they are melting away alarmingly quickly,” said Gerber.
“But the credit that the church has in the truest sense of the word, its credibility, it tends sharply downwards,” wrote the bishop. That is very painful.
“We are facing a decisive learning step”
The question must be asked whether the current situation, with its internal contradictions and hardly resolvable tensions, does not have the potential to become a time of profound “internal formation” of the church.
Gerber was convinced that the church in Germany was “facing a decisive learning step in everything that is required of us in terms of necessary information, processing and self-correction.”
“God makes the church”
It is the step out of an if-then logic that follows the principle: “If we would only do this or that, then …”. Because it is not people who “make the church”, but God himself.
“It is possible that the Lord will lead us into a form of church that will appear pathetic to us at first and also at second glance, a form that is beyond what we would like to have.”
The pastoral letter is read out in the diocese of Fulda in the evening masses on Saturday and Sunday. The episcopal letter is also available on the diocese’s homepage, also as an audio file.
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