Search results matching tag 'tyskland'

Canon lawyer: German Church tax dispute needs more reflection

Anonymous — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 22:24:00 GMT

Vatican City, Sep 27, 2012 / 04:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A leading canon lawyer has called for further reflection on the German Church’s decision to refuse the sacraments and Christian burial to Catholics who do not pay the country’s Church tax.

Dr. Edward Peters, a canon lawyer and the first layman to serve as a consultant to the Church’s highest court, explained that excommunication is invoked today “only against the gravest ecclesiastical offenses, things like abortion, desecration of the Eucharist, or certain illegal conferrals of Holy Orders.”

“To invoke the consequences of excommunication, even if that term is not used, against those who object to paying a civil Church tax, raises some very serious questions about justice toward the faithful,” Peters said.

At present, all Germans who officially register themselves as Catholic pay a religious tax of 8 to 9 percent of their annual income tax bill. Therefore, if a German Catholic has a tax bill of 10,000 euros per year, they will also incur an extra 800-900 euros in Church tax. The money is used to by the Catholic Church to help run its network of parishes, schools, hospitals and welfare projects.

In recent years, however, some Catholics have stopped paying the tax, saying they’re disillusioned with the Church over issues such as clerical abuse. Meanwhile, the German bishops have become increasingly concerned at the number of Catholic immigrants to Germany, including many Polish workers, who also do not pay the tax.

“At issue …is the credibility of the church’s sacramental nature. One cannot be half a member or only partly a member. Either one belongs and commits – or one renounces this,” Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, President of the Germans Bishops’ Conference, said Sept. 24.

Dr. Peters says the issue is “very complex” and “needs to be thought through by both sides very carefully,” since “the obligation of Catholics to contribute to the support of the Church is itself a serious one.”

Peters, who was recently appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as a canon law expert for the forthcoming synod on the New Evangelization, suggests that all sides should continue further discussion while avoiding hasty decisions or actions.

“Long-standing civil-canonical mechanisms for rendering that support – even if those mechanisms are in need of reform – should not be challenged piecemeal, lest greater confusion about the duties of the faithful and the proper role of the state in regard to religion be spread thereby,” he said.

Königssee

Bengt Malmgren — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 17:37:45 GMT

Påvens besök i Tyskland 22-25 sept 2011

Bengt Malmgren — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:35:32 GMT

Samtliga tal och videoupptagningar

Påve Benedikt XVI välkomnades av Nikolaus Schneider, ledare för Evangeliska kyrkan i Tyskland till det tidigare Augustinerklostret i Erfurt 23 sept 2011. Här ordinerades Martin Luther som katolsk präst år 1507 och levde i klostret fram till 1511. (Foto: CNS)

Tyska biskoparna skall sälja aktierna i förlaget Weltbild som marknadsfört pornografi.

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:14:00 GMT

Cologne, Germany, Nov 22, 2011 (CNA).- The Catholic Church in Germany says it will act "without delay" to sell its stake in a publishing company that offers pornography among its products. "We cannot earn money during the week with what we preach against on Sundays," Cardinal Joachim Meisner told Germanys Welt am Sonntag newspaper Nov. 22.

The Weltbild Publishing Group is one of Germanys largest publishers, with an annual income of $2.2 billion dollars, nearly 6,500 staff and book stores on the main street of many German towns and cities. However, it also publishes and distributes nearly 2,500 pornographic titles, largely through their Internet sites. At present, 12 of Germanys 27 dioceses own just over 24 percent of the shares in the publishing firm. Some dioceses have already divested themselves of their stock in recent years, including the Archdiocese of Cologne which is led by Cardinal Meisner.

Todays announcement comes only weeks after Pope Benedict XVI criticized the German bishops for their investments...

Church must protect universal values, Pope tells German ambassador

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 23:48:00 GMT

Vatican City, Nov 7, 2011 (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI told Germany?s new ambassador to the Holy See on Nov. 7 that the Catholic Church has the duty to defend truths and values that are under threat, especially those values basic to human dignity. At the Monday audience, the new German ambassador Reinhard Scheppe presented his official letters of credence.

Vatican spokesman rejects claim German bishops disrespected Pope

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 20:13:00 GMT

Rome, Italy, Oct 12, 2011 (CNA/EWTN News).- Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., dismissed what he called "ridiculous" claims circulating online that the German bishops disrespected Pope Benedict during his recent visit to the country. Fr. Lombardi said that a YouTube video showing the Pope and German president Christian Wulff has been misconstrued by bloggers and other members of the media. The video shows the moment in which the Pope was introducing his entourage not the German bishops to the German president at his residency.
He explained that Vatican officials shown in the video such as Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop Giovanni Becciu, Archbishop Jean-Claude Perriset, Bishop Josef Clemens who was a long-time personal secretary to the Pope when he was Cardinal Ratzinger and the pontifical masters of ceremony don´t shake the Popes hand and they certainly have no intention of offending him. He went on to note that among the few who did shake the Popes hand, although it was not necessary, were Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, president of the German Bishops Conference, and Archbishop
Rainer Woelki of Berlin, the only two German bishops seen in the video and who were included in the Popes entourage when he arrived in Berlin and who did not travel on the plane with the Pope.
The video can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygeG5WFzkV8

The Pope reflects on visit to German homeland

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:13:00 GMT

Vatican City, Sep 28, 2011 / 10:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI said he was happy to see that the faith in my German homeland has a young face, that it is alive and has a future. The Pope made his comments at his weekly Wednesday audience held in Romes St. Peters Square. This apostolic trip to Germany provided me with an opportunity to meet the faithful of my own homeland, to confirm them in faith, hope and love, to share with them the joy of being Catholic, said the Pope Sept. 28. But my message was also addressed to the German people as a whole, inviting them to look to the future with trust. It is certain that where God is, there is a future.
Today he dwelt upon some of the trips highlights starting with his address to the German parliament, the Bundestag, on the first day of his visit. He said he had wanted to use the address to expose the foundation of law and free State of law and so to help civil society to broaden our concept of nature, understanding it not only as a set of functions but beyond this as the language of the Creator to help us discern right from wrong. In short, said the Pope quoting the 19th century German Bishop Wilhelm von Ketteler, Just as religion requires freedom, freedom also needs religion.
The German media had predicted that the papal parliamentary address would be subject to protest and boycott. In the end, both largely failed to materialize and the Popes remarks were well received by German civil society.
While in Berlin, the Pope met with leaders of the Jewish community with whom he had remembered Christianitys common roots in faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He also fondly recalled his meeting with Muslim leaders and their discussion of the importance of religious freedom for the peaceful development of humanity.
The Pope said he had also used his visit to reach out to protestant Christians. In fact, on the second and third days of his trip he visited Erfurt in eastern Germany. It was here in the 16th century that the founder of the Reformation, Martin Luther, had lived and taught.
Before leaving Erfurt, the Pope had made time to meet with some victims of clerical abuse to whom he had expressed his regret and participation in their suffering.
The last leg of the Popes visit to Germany took him to the Catholic stronghold of Freiburg. There he presided over a prayer vigil for young Catholics who with the grace of Christ, he said today, can bring the fire of Gods love into the world.
Finally, Pope Benedict touched upon his meeting with Catholics involved in German civil society held in Freiburg on the final day of his visit. He said he told them that times of persecution can often purify the Church as she can be free from material and political burdens in order to be more transparent to God.
Pope Benedict said he was deeply grateful to all who have contributed in various ways to the success of the visit to Germany. He concluded his weekly audience by imparting his apostolic blessing.

Ulla Gudmundson förstår vad påve Benedikt säger och lyssnar innan hon talar.

Bengt Malmgren — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 05:30:00 GMT

Ulla Gudmundson, Sveriges ambassadör i Vatikanen är en duktig diplomat som förstår att lyssna och analysera innan hon pratar, en viktig egenskap hos en diplomat. Ytterligare en god egenskap hos Ulla är att hon är medelesam mot allmänheten och för gärna dialog. T.ex. bloggar hon på UD-bloggen, och på bokmässan deltog hon i ett seminarium i anslutning till diskussion av Alan Poesners påvekritiska bok der gefährliche Papst, där han tar i så häftigt och går över alla gränser i att kritisera allt vad påven gör så att läsarnas sympati snarare förs över till föremålet för kritiken.

Det är paradoxalt att de som är mest benägna att fånga upp och stämma in i kritiken är den inomkatolska rörelsen We are Church vars tyska gren som jag skrev om i ett tidigare inlägg på sin blogg fullt bejakar Poesners påstående att Benedikt XVI är motståndare till det demokratiska och pluralistiska samhället. Också den svenska bloggen Katolsk vision har många gånger gått så långt i sin påvekritik att både humanisterna och svenska sekulära media framstår som förhållandevis moderata. Ulla Gudmundson tillhör dem som tidigare bemött kritik mot påven från Katolsk vision, och på sin blogg skriver hon i anslutning till det aktuella seminariet på bokmässan:

"...det retar mig att han (Poesner) är så slarvig. Påven är inte emot upplysningen, han är emot vissa sidor av den. Han är inte emot demokrati – läs hans tal från i torsdags i den tyska förbundsdagen -, men han anser inte att alla beslut är moraliskt riktiga för att de fattats med majoritet. Han accepterar evolutionsläran, bara inte tanken på en slumpmässig utveckling.... Med den här påven, som har ett så starkt drag av intellektuell sökare, går det inte att säga ”påven har sagt så, basta”. Man är tvungen att tänka själv."

I seminariet deltog förutom Ulla också Alan Posener själv samt teoloiprofessorn Werner G Jeanrond, en av de 600 teologerna som undertecknat Memorandum samt p Ulf Jonsson SJ. Prof Jenarond gav 2009 ut boken Kärlekens teologi där han bl.a skrev mycket positivt om påven Benedikts första encyklika Gud är kärleken.

Ulf Jonsson, religionsfilosof och redaktör för Signum har bl.a. skrivit boken Med tanke på Gud, en introduktion till Religionsfilosofin, enligt mig ett standardverk på svenska för dem som är intresserade av ämnet. Ulf påpekade under seminariet att vart än påven reser, så upprepar sig historien att en från början negativ mediabild bild av påven förvänds i en positiv när journalisterna väl ser verkligheten. Så var det i England för ett år sedan, så var det i Madrid under Världsungdomsdagen, och samma historia upprepades under det nyss avslutade Tysklandsbesöket.

Innan påven kom till Tyskland talades om att 20.000 personer skulle demonstera i Berlin, det blev 9000, samtidigt som 300.000 anmält sig till påvens gudstjänster. Då påven skulle tala i Förbundsdagen hade ett 100-tal personer valt att utebli i protest, men när han avslutat sitt tal fick han stående ovationer.

Många katoliker harlämnat Katolska kyrkan i Tyskland, inte minst i protest mot sexuella övergrepp från präster, vilket också förekommit och uppdagats i Tyskland, man räknar med att 180.000 personer lämnade Katolska kyrkan 2010. Som jämförelse kan sägas att officiell statistik visade att 150.000 protestanter lämnade sina kyrkor samma år, vilket innebär att proportionellt fler lämnade protestantiska samfund än katolska kyrkan.

Departing Pope praises "transforming power" of German Christians faith

Anonymous — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:08:00 GMT

Freiburg, Germany, Sep 25, 2011 (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI used his departure from German soil to reflect upon his four-day state visit to his homeland and to express confidence in the future of Christianity there. "I encourage the Church in Germany to pursue with resolute confidence the path of faith which leads people back to their roots, to the heart of the Good News of Christ," said the Pope at Lahr Airport near Freiburg September 25...

Påven till tyska Bundestag: Naturrätten grunden för en god politisk kultur.

Bengt Malmgren — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 06:57:00 GMT

Påvens besök i Tyskland har inte förbigåtts med samma medietystnad som besöket i Storbritannien för ett år sedan eller besöket i Madrid i samband med WYD.

DN hade två hela sidor igår, visserligen med fokus på kritiska röster mot Vatikanen och påven, men ändå relativt opartiskt skildrat.

Påvens tal är väl genomtänkta och intressanta att ta del av. 23 sept talade han i Bundestag till de tyska parlamentarikerna, synd att TT-telegrammet som återgavs i många tidningar gav en så missvisande bild av vad talet handlade om. Det sades handla om "vikten av att avvisa en intellektuell syn på Gud", när det i själva verket var precis tvärtom, vikten av att frågan om Gud inte blir rent subjektiv utan också behandlas förnuftigt och i det offentliga samtalet.

Påven pratade om Europas och Tysklands judisk-kristna, grekiska och romerska rötter och om naturrätten som grund för den politiska kulturen.

Jag refererar talet här och återger delar av det (mina fet-markeringar):

Påven började med att anslå temat om att skilja mellan gott och ont genom att referera till kung Salomos önskan, inte om framgång och rikedom utan om ett lyhört hjärta (1 Kung 3:9). Påven föreslog att detta skulle vara inställningen hos varje politiker.

"Through this story, the Bible wants to tell us what should ultimately matter for a politician. His fundamental criterion and the motivation for his work as a politician must not be success, and certainly not material gain. Politics must be a striving for justice, and hence it has to establish the fundamental preconditions for peace. Naturally a politician will seek success, without which he would have no opportunity for effective political action at all. Yet success is subordinated to the criterion of justice, to the will to do what is right, and to the understanding of what is right. Success can also be seductive and thus can open up the path towards the falsification of what is right, towards the destruction of justice. “Without justice – what else is the State but a great band of robbers?”, as Saint Augustine once said. We Germans know from our own experience that these words are no empty spectre."

Att finna och utöva vad som är rätt har aldrig varit givet, vilket många orättfärdiga regimer är exempel på, påven hänvisade till Tysklands mörka historia med nazismen. Vad som är rätt och lagligt kan aldrig vara föremål för godtycke, därför gör olika motståndsrörelser mot förtryckarregimer en stor insats för rättvisan, och för hela mänskligheten. I historien har lagarna ofta motiverats utifrån religionen, men kristen tro har aldrig påstått att statens och samhällets lagar kommer direkt från från den kristna uppenbarelsen. Istället pekar kristendomen på naturen och förnuftet som de riktiga källorna för juridiken. Det finns en harmoni melland et objektiva förnuftet (ventenskapen) och det subjektiva förnuftet (samvetet, intuitionen), där den kristna förståelsen är att de båda är rotade i Guds skapande förnuft. Genom att urskilja naturrätten övar man upp förmågan att skilja mellan gott och ont och kan på så sätt etablera rättvisa och fred i samhället. Detta har varit ett grundläggande arv som präglat den europeiska kulturen och identiteten.

The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights…. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome—from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe.

Fram till upplysningen och utformandet av FN´s deklaration av de mänskliga rättigheterna efter Andra världskriget var naturrätten den självklara utgångspunkten:

"For the development of law and for the development of humanity, it was highly significant that Christian theologians aligned themselves against the religious law associated with polytheism and on the side of philosophy, and that they acknowledged reason and nature in their interrelation as the universally valid source of law. This step had already been taken by Saint Paul in the Letter to the Romans, when he said: “When Gentiles who have not the Law [the Torah of Israel] do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves ... they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness ...” (Rom 2:14f.). Here we see the two fundamental concepts of nature and conscience, where conscience is nothing other than Solomon’s listening heart, reason that is open to the language of being."

I och med dagens positivistiska vetenskapssyn är naturrätten inte längre givet förankrad i den Europeiska kulturen, utan ses som något specifikt katolskt. Påven problematiserar detta:

"...there has been a dramatic shift in the situation in the last half-century. The idea of natural law is today viewed as a specifically Catholic doctrine, not worth bringing into the discussion in a non-Catholic environment, so that one feels almost ashamed even to mention the term. Let me outline briefly how this situation arose. Fundamentally it is because of the idea that an unbridgeable gulf exists between “is” and “ought”. An “ought” can never follow from an “is”, because the two are situated on completely different planes. The reason for this is that in the meantime, the positivist understanding of nature has come to be almost universally accepted. If nature – in the words of Hans Kelsen – is viewed as “an aggregate of objective data linked together in terms of cause and effect”, then indeed no ethical indication of any kind can be derived from it. A positivist conception of nature as purely functional, as the natural sciences consider it to be, is incapable of producing any bridge to ethics and law, but once again yields only functional answers. The same also applies to reason, according to the positivist understanding that is widely held to be the only genuinely scientific one. Anything that is not verifiable or falsifiable, according to this understanding, does not belong to the realm of reason strictly understood. Hence ethics and religion must be assigned to the subjective field, and they remain extraneous to the realm of reason in the strict sense of the word. Where positivist reason dominates the field to the exclusion of all else – and that is broadly the case in our public mindset – then the classical sources of knowledge for ethics and law are excluded. This is a dramatic situation which affects everyone, and on which a public debate is necessary. Indeed, an essential goal of this address is to issue an urgent invitation to launch one."

Påven beskriver varför det är viktigt att inte isolera den del av kulturen som är utanför det funktionella vetenskapliga förnuftet till subkulturer. Den naturliga lagen är en pålitlig källa för politiskt beslutsfattande och lagstiftning.

"Where positivist reason considers itself the only sufficient culture and banishes all other cultural realities to the status of subcultures, it diminishes man, indeed it threatens his humanity. I say this with Europe specifically in mind, where there are concerted efforts to recognize only positivism as a common culture and a common basis for law-making, reducing all the other insights and values of our culture to the level of subculture, with the result that Europe vis-à-vis other world cultures is left in a state of culturelessness and at the same time extremist and radical movements emerge to fill the vacuum." In its self-proclaimed exclusivity, the positivist reason which recognizes nothing beyond mere functionality resembles a concrete bunker with no windows, in which we ourselves provide lighting and atmospheric conditions, being no longer willing to obtain either from God’s wide world. And yet we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that even in this artificial world, we are still covertly drawing upon God’s raw materials, which we refashion into our own products. The windows must be flung open again, we must see the wide world, the sky and the earth once more and learn to make proper use of all this.

Därefter nämner påven det ökade miljö-medvetandet på 1970-talet som ett tecken på ökat medvetande.

"The importance of ecology is no longer disputed. We must listen to the language of nature and we must answer accordingly. Yet I would like to underline a point that seems to me to be neglected, today as in the past: there is also an ecology of man. Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled."

Påven avslutar med att utmana parlamentarikerna att det enda raka som lagstiftare idag är att utbe sig om samma lyhörda hjärta som Salomo gjorde:

"...the young King Solomon was invited to make a request. How would it be if we, the law-makers of today, were invited to make a request? What would we ask for? I think that, even today, there is ultimately nothing else we could wish for but a listening heart – the capacity to discern between good and evil, and thus to establish true law, to serve justice and peace. I thank you for your attention!"

Talet i sin helhet här. Videoupptagning från talet i parlamentet

Fler länkar från påvens besök i Tyskland

SR Dagen