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How Progressive is German Catholicism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Charles Boxer O.P.
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That the question should protrude out of English Catholicism and start prodding about in German Catholicism seems like irreverence, biting the hand that fed, or just plain scandalmongery. The revival of theological interest amongst English Catholics owes, after all, much to the activity of German-speaking theologians like Rahner and Kung. Here, we have said, is a Catholicism that takes theology seriously. The German bishops brought this activity in their train to the Council in the form of theological advisers. They were very well advised theologically. The Council was for German Catholicism something like a Trade Fair; its stands were stocked with the latest models of German theology, and the bishops quite overreached themselves in attempting to express it.

Meanwhile back in Germany there was considerable surprise in many quarters that the German episcopate should be, as Simplicissimus put it in a front page cartoon, marching like a mitred army on Rome behind its two cardinals. The weekly magazine Der Spiegel rummaged through its considerable files and produced a number on Cardinal Frings setting out dialectically his record as a conservative churchman in Cologne, and his activity as leader of the progressives at the Council. How were the two conflicting images to be reconciled? Certainly the German Church can never be the same again. Things have been said by its leaders in Rome which will have to be said in Germany.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 47 , Issue 547 , January 1966 , pp. 172 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © 1966 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Dear Spiegel 11th December 1963

2 Cited in ‘Schwarze Demagogie’; Die Zeit, 22nd October 1965.

3 Carl Amery: Freiheit eines Christen heute, oder wie weit zwr nächsten Kapitulation? A lecture given at Dusseldorf, 31st July 1965.

4 Quoted in Pastoralblatt fiir die Diözesen Aachen, Berlin, Essen und Köln, August 1965.

5 I have seen it maintained by Catholic social theologians of the party that the English Health Service is somehow offensive to christian principles.

6 The use of the parallel between our Labour Party and the SPD is suggested by the political propaganda the CDU made out of the difficulties of the Labour Government. cf. an article entitled ‘Breach of Contract’ in the CDU youth magazine Die Entscheidung (September 1965) attacking our Government ‘s attitude to payments for the Rhine Army begins’ Britain's Social Democrat Prime Minister, Harold Wilson

7 Der Spiegel, 4th October 1965.

8 Kirchen Zeitung für das Erzbistum Köln, 3rd October 1965.

9 Sendung Aktuelles aus der Christenheit, 10th August 1965; II Programme WDR.

10 Düsseldorfer Nachrighten, 2nd August 1965.

11 Unser Diözesanverband der KAB in der Erzdiöze Köln, Heft, March 1965.

12 Norbert Greinacher, from an article in Wort und Wahrheit, October 1965: ‘Die Katholiken in der Bundesrepublik’.

13 Emigration‐ein Makel? by Egon Bahr. Die Zeit, 29th October 1965.

14 Der Monat, November 1965. An excerpt from ‘Rede über das Selbstverständliche’ ‐ on the occasion of receiving the Büchner‐Preis, October 1965.

15 Echo der Zeit, 7th November 1965.

16 Die Ztit, 22nd October 1965.

17 Schwarze Demagogie, Die Zeit, 22nd October 1965.

18 Der Monat, November 1965.

19 Mann in der Zeit, April 1965.

20 DerMonat, November 1965.

21 ‘Schwarze Demagogie’, Die Zeit, 22nd October 1965.