Lutheran, Baptist, Catholic...What's the Difference?

 CNA Staff, Feb 26, 2021 / 04:00 am MT (CNA).- The president of the German Catholic bishops’ conference said on Thursday that he would continue to give Holy Communion to Protestants who ask for it.

Bishop Georg Bätzing told journalists at a press conference on Feb. 25 that it was necessary to respect the “personal decision of conscience” of those seeking to receive Communion.

Bishop Batzing

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner, reported that Bätzing was responding to a question about a controversial proposal for a “Eucharistic meal fellowship” between Catholics and Protestants.

The proposal was made by the Ecumenical Study Group of Protestant and Catholic Theologians (known by its German initials, ÖAK) in a 2019 document entitled “Together at the Lord’s Table.”

OAK arrives for another meeting

The ÖAK adopted the text under the co-chairmanship of Bätzing and the retired Lutheran Bishop Martin Hein. 

Asked how he would respond if a Protestant came to him seeking the Eucharist, he told reporters: “I have no problems with it and I see myself in line with papal documents.”

The 59-year-old bishop added that this was already a “practice” in Germany “every Sunday” and that priests in his Diocese of Limburg would not face negative consequences if a case were reported to him.

He underlined that one should not “simply invite everyone.” But while a general invitation to receive the Eucharist was not permitted, he said it was important to show “respect for the personal decision of conscience of the individual” seeking Communion.

“I do not deny Holy Communion to a Protestant if he asks for it,” he said.

The ÖAK was established in 1946 to strengthen ecumenical ties. It is independent of both the German Catholic bishops’ conference and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), an organization representing 20 Protestant groups. But the ÖAK informs both bodies about its deliberations.

The ÖAK document raised concerns at the Vatican, prompting an intervention by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in September 2020.

In a four-page critique and letter to Bätzing, the doctrinal congregation emphasized that significant differences in understanding of the Eucharist and ministry remained between Protestants and Catholics.

“The doctrinal differences are still so important that they currently rule out reciprocal participation in the Lord’s Supper and the Eucharist,” it said.

“The document cannot therefore serve as a guide for an individual decision of conscience about approaching the Eucharist.” 

I'm Too Smart to Be a Bishop

This Guy is a BISHOP?

 From Father Z:

At Novena News which leads to Kathpress.at we read:

Bishop of Limburg Georg Bätzing made the observation about the Church’s oppression of women and boycott from ordained office in a New Year’s Eve message.
The prelate admitted that he must “take seriously as a bishop that the exclusion of women from ordination offices is perceived as fundamentally unjust and inappropriate in a social environment that has long equated women and men in their rights”.

I’ll tell you what’s unjust.   Hearing this garbage from a bishop – anywhere.  Hearing nutty stuff from Germany constantly is oppressive.

Oh, Those Wacky Germans!

Once again, the German archbishop, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, responded positively to the question, “What do you do when a homosexual couple asks you for an episcopal blessing.”  He claims not to be promoting a general ecclesial solution and, hence, a general public liturgical blessing for same-sex relations. And he even rejects calling such a relationship marriage. Nevertheless, he says, “the decision should be made ‘on the ground, and [considering] the individual under pastoral care’.”

Another German, this time Johannes zu Eltz, the Catholic Dean of the city of Frankfurt am Main, is engaged in the pastoral care of homosexuals. He says, “the question is whether the church is able to learn that good things happen in those relationships; that homosexual couples . . . by their companionship give birth to moral goods for themselves and for others: love, loyalty, commitment, fecundity, chastity. If this is true, then there is the possibility to confirm these goods and to ask for God’s providence and guidance for this couple. That is what we call a blessing.”
Similar reasoning comes from Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, the deputy chairman of the German Episcopacy.
Well, let's see what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about it...
 Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.” They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. (CCC §2357).

The Trouble With Jesuits, Part 74

 What is it with Jesuits and homosexuality?

Mainz, Germany, Feb 4, 2019 / 12:15 pm (CNA).- In an open letter published Sunday by a German daily, nine German Catholics, including two prominent Jesuits, demand a break with the Church's teaching on sexual morality.
The signatories call for a reworking of ecclesial structure, namely a "separation of powers", the priestly ordination of women, an end to mandatory priestly celibacy, and other changes.

Published in the Feb. 3 edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the letter is addressed to Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, president of the German bishops' conference, and tells him that if he and other bishops were to decide to "spearhead the Reform movement", they would be assured of the signatories' full support.
Among those who signed the letter are the rector of the Sankt Georgen Graduate School in Frankfurt, Jesuit Father Ansgar Wucherpfennig, as well as Jesuit Father Klaus Mertes and the Frankfurt City's Catholic Dean, Fr Johannes zu Eltz.

Father Wucherpfennig re-election as rector was recently called into question by the Vatican, because of comments made in 2016 in which claimed, among other things, that passages condemning homosexuality in the Bible had been "misread". He has since been reinstated.

The three priests are joined by former Jesuit Jörg Splett, an academic philosopher, as well as his wife Ingrid, the "Greens" politician Bettina Jarasch, the Frankfurt Caritas director Gaby Hagemans, and two members of the Central Committee of German Catholics, Claudia Lücking-Michel and Dagmar Mensink.
The signatories demand the Catholic Church should hit "reset" and make a fresh start when it comes to the Church's teaching on sexual morality, including a "reasonable and just evaluation of homosexuality".

Not To Be Confused With the Anna Baptists

Visitors to St. Lambert’s church in Münster, Germany may notice something odd about the building’s facade. Three gleaming iron cages, 7 feet tall and a yard wide and deep, hang empty from the church spire. Once home to the mutilated bodies of three revolutionaries who shaped one of the strangest chapters in the Protestant Reformation, the cages have hung there for nearly 500 years. They remain on the spire as a testament to their former occupants’ experiment in religious utopia—and the tremors they sent through German religious and political life for years after their occupants' deaths.

Here's where things went south for the citizens of Münster:

 On February 11, 1534, the Münster city council granted full religious toleration to Anabaptists, who began referring to Münster as the “New Jerusalem.” They sent out messengers far and wide to recruit new believers to the city. As the month went on, armed city employees reportedly moved through the city warning those who refused adult baptism to flee, reportedly crying "Get out of here, you godless. God will punish you!" When Matthijs arrived, he delivered a sermon calling for the execution of Catholics and Lutherans alike. He preached, "Everywhere we are surrounded by dogs and sorcerers and whores and killers and the godless and all who love lies and commit them!" When the execution idea failed to fly, his advisors convinced him to settle for expelling the Catholics and Lutherans from the city.

It turned out poorly for the Anabaptists in the end:

With von Waldeck's victory, events took an even more gruesome turn. On January 22, 1536, the prince-bishop gathered a crowd in front of city hall to see Jan of Leiden, Knipperdollinck, and Kretchtinck tortured and killed. Executioners ripped the flesh from their bodies with hot tongs for an hour before stabbing them each in the heart. Their bodies were bound into iron cages and then hoisted from the tower of St. Lambert’s church.