The John-Henry Westen Show - Analyzing the de facto schism in the Catholic Church in Germany

00:00:00.320 Welcome to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show. I'm your host, John Henry Weston, and very pleased to bring to you today Martin Bürger, who is a new journalist at LifeSite News.

00:00:11.120 He's one of our two German journalists, as you know, Dr. Micah Hickson and Martin both hail from Germany.

00:00:17.460 And Martin's going to talk to us today because of the craziness that's going on in Germany right now.

00:00:21.800 As most of you have seen, the vice president of the German bishops' conference, Bishop Bode, said some very strange things just late last week.

00:00:30.460 He said, and I quote, Christ, he said, became a human being, not a man.

00:00:35.840 For us, Christ became a human being and not a man, is what he said.

00:00:39.680 That's Franz Josef Bode, who's actually the vice president of the German bishops' conference.

00:00:44.080 We're going to talk about that, the seeming schism in the German church, and lots more.

00:00:49.180 Stay tuned.

00:00:51.800 Martin, welcome to the John Henry Weston Show.

00:01:11.400 Thank you for having me.

00:01:13.400 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:01:16.000 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

00:01:19.520 So, Martin, you hail from Germany.

00:01:22.760 Tell us a little bit about yourself, about how recently you were in Germany.

00:01:26.720 And I know that you had experience writing already, doing Catholic journalism in Germany.

00:01:31.700 But tell us a little bit about yourself first.

00:01:33.580 Yeah, as you said, I was born and raised in Germany.

00:01:35.560 Then I went to school in Austria, to university, and started theology.

00:01:39.920 And I started writing at the end of high school.

00:01:44.780 I've been writing ever since for German Catholic publications, like on and off freelance stuff.

00:01:51.980 And I came to America because of my wife, who is a citizen.

00:01:55.900 And I've been working for Lifeset News for a little while.

00:01:59.880 So, yeah, I've been last in Germany maybe like seven, eight months ago.

00:02:04.560 So, last year in the summer.

00:02:07.720 Beautiful.

00:02:08.700 So, you're very familiar with the German church up until just last year.

00:02:13.620 And you've been here.

00:02:14.360 You've still been following it very closely.

00:02:16.300 So, you have an inside look on this like very few people do.

00:02:20.400 Now, this has been going on in the German church for some time.

00:02:24.140 You know, the push from, as I said, the vice president of German bishops conference.

00:02:30.820 Talking about here, Christ came as a human being, not a man, with an obvious connotation

00:02:36.480 or obvious push for women's ordination. 1.00

00:02:39.200 In fact, Bishop Boda already said some time ago that the, as they were going into the synodal

00:02:46.000 pathway or synodal way, they were talking about women deacons already.

00:02:49.640 So, tell us a little bit about Bishop Boda himself, the German church vis-a-vis this push

00:02:56.940 and the push for all sort of modernist things.

00:02:59.680 Right.

00:02:59.980 Yeah.

00:03:00.240 As you said, he's the vice president of the bishops conference.

00:03:02.980 So, we have Cardinal Marx who's the president and then Boda as the vice president has been

00:03:06.620 for, I think, two years now.

00:03:09.260 And he's, but he's been a bishop for 25 years, the bishop of Osnablik.

00:03:14.300 And then first within the bishops conference, he was responsible for youth because he was the

00:03:18.640 honest bishop in Germany.

00:03:20.820 But then recently, his focus in the context of the synodal path has shifted to the role

00:03:26.060 of women in the church.

00:03:27.460 And he was heading the preparatory commission for the synodal path on women in the church.

00:03:33.740 And he's also now in the, the synodal path has four forums that discuss various topics.

00:03:41.660 And he is, again, in the group that will focus on women.

00:03:44.560 And, yeah, as you said, he, he said, Christ became a human being, not a man.

00:03:50.580 And yes, Christ did become a human being, but as a man.

00:03:53.920 So, he's obviously, obviously male and not female.

00:03:57.020 And to say that he did not become a man is kind of weird.

00:04:01.360 And as you already said, too, it's to be read or seen in the context of female ordination.

00:04:08.840 He has before pushed definitely for the female diaconate, but also shown his openness to the

00:04:15.160 female priesthood, as have other German bishops.

00:04:17.960 For example, Bishop Overbeck of Essen has said that, I think he's of Essen, he might be of

00:04:26.060 Munster, he has said that you can't make the access to the priesthood dependent on a Y chromosome.

00:04:34.800 So, like, on genetics, pretty much.

00:04:38.080 Yeah, unbelievable.

00:04:40.280 So, these comments are so out of touch.

00:04:44.480 We saw one bishop in the United States, and other clergy, for instance, but one bishop very publicly

00:04:52.060 confront Bishop Boda in his statement.

00:04:55.160 It was a bishop from Texas, Bishop Strickland.

00:04:59.700 And he said, and I'll quote it for you, he said,

00:05:01.780 Bishop Boda, I respectfully call you as one bishop to another to return to the truth of the deposit of faith.

00:05:09.020 And he said, for your salvation and for the good of the church. 0.93

00:05:13.940 Your statement, he continued, that Christ became a human being, but not a man, is ridiculous and heretical.

00:05:19.900 Now, those are very strong words, public words, from one bishop to another, because it's so out of touch with Catholicism, with the faith that's been professed for 2,000 years. 0.80

00:05:33.460 Yeah, it's very unusual.

00:05:34.480 I don't think I've ever seen that one bishop publicly calls out another and calls him, or his statement, a radical.

00:05:41.260 So, it's really, it's interesting.

00:05:43.640 But as far as I know, he's the only bishop who said that.

00:05:45.980 But as you said, other clergy members and theologians have said the same thing.

00:05:50.140 So, yeah.

00:05:51.300 Yes, and it's phenomenal that it's also coming from the president of the Bishop's Conference in Germany.

00:05:57.360 So, the president, as you mentioned, is Reinhard Marx.

00:06:00.020 And Marx himself has talked about this openness to women deacons.

00:06:05.960 And yet, it's not only women deacons. 0.86

00:06:08.280 What I'd like to focus on now is your article that you did at LifeSite News, which really did a very good layout of what is this synodal path, of where it's going, and really the heretical anti-Catholic proposals it's making.

00:06:23.780 It seems to make all of the same anti-Catholic proposals that the secular world is trying to force the Catholic Church to go into.

00:06:31.660 Yeah, so, the synodal path has a long history, but the German Bishop's Conference decided to embark on the synodal path only in 2019.

00:06:43.300 And then, right after that, they decided to have four different study groups to prepare and focus on four important subjects, in their opinion.

00:06:54.700 And those four subjects are, number one, power and the abuse of power among clerics.

00:07:00.780 Then, the role of women in the church, sexual morality, and priestly lifestyle.

00:07:06.020 And you can already gather that those are really the hot-button issues when you talk about celibacy, women's ordination, and then the sexual morality stuff, homosexuality, and that kind of thing.

00:07:15.460 Blessings of homosexual unions. 0.89

00:07:17.500 So, yeah, there were four groups, and those four groups prepared a working document as the basis of discussion for the actual synodal path, which we then had the first assembly of just a week ago.

00:07:32.700 Last weekend, it concluded.

00:07:34.860 And the second assembly will be later this year.

00:07:37.860 And in those four documents, there's all kinds of interesting and weird and bad stuff.

00:07:43.520 So, for example, if you look only at the sexual morality document, it actually, you know, opens the door to the use of contraception, to masturbation, and to homosexuality as a good and accepted practice. 0.63

00:08:00.580 So, yeah, there's a lot of bad stuff in there.

00:08:02.500 But those three things, in my opinion, are the most important.

00:08:05.420 Well, absolutely.

00:08:08.540 They're the ones that the world has been pushing.

00:08:11.160 I mean, right since, you know, well, it took a real, it really took off in the 60s.

00:08:16.840 But the push to get the church to allow for contraception or for anti-natalist policy has been longstanding forever.

00:08:25.140 But especially with the advent of the condom and the pill, that push became, hit sort of a fevered pitch.

00:08:30.880 And the church has been resisting this whole time, and yet now they want to cave.

00:08:36.580 I mean, it's unbelievable.

00:08:37.780 Let's go into the first of those issues of contraception and tell us a little bit about what they said.

00:08:44.000 Yeah.

00:08:44.500 So, I have the document right in front of me.

00:08:46.400 And they say not every sexual act has to be open to procreation, to the creation of life, for example.

00:08:55.460 And they say you can't plan your family with the help of artificial means, obviously referring to contraception there, even though they don't use the technical term.

00:09:04.800 Yeah, so that's just contraception.

00:09:06.580 And what I did in the article was just contrast what the document says with what the catechism plainly states.

00:09:13.940 And there's a huge discrepancy where, you know, the catechism says one thing, and then the documents, the working documents in preparation of the synodal path say something that's completely different from that.

00:09:24.580 Yeah, exactly.

00:09:26.960 And I think that's a really important aspect of what we do at LifeSite News all the time.

00:09:31.500 We always try and provide the truth of the faith in the face of such heretical things that come out.

00:09:38.440 There's unfortunately been a plethora of coverage and needed coverage of the heresies that different bishops and church leaders and sometimes even the Pope go into.

00:09:49.340 And so we have to provide the truth of the faith.

00:09:51.440 And that's why I so appreciated your article, because it laid out the truth from the catechism.

00:09:56.140 You quoted the parts that it quotes from Humanae Vitae that talk about the inseparable connection established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance, which are both inherent to the marriage act.

00:10:12.200 Right. So it is, it's really unbelievable.

00:10:15.540 Let's go on to the next of those issues that is covered or promoted or they show an opening to in the synodal path that really confronts the church's teaching that you mentioned in your article. 0.87

00:10:26.980 Yeah, the next one is masturbation.

00:10:29.240 Again, the document doesn't use the term, but it says the joyful experience of your own body could be a responsible use of your own sexuality. 0.93

00:10:39.740 And then they use the English term self-sex there.

00:10:42.220 And then it's pretty obvious that they're talking about masturbation here. 0.71

00:10:45.720 And again, masturbation, according to the catechism, is a completely different thing than what they talk about in here.

00:10:51.160 Absolutely. They're allowing for, quote unquote, self-sex. 0.97

00:10:56.580 And yet the catechism says, and I'll quote it,

00:10:59.040 both the magisterium of the church in the course of a constant tradition and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt

00:11:06.100 and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. 0.51

00:11:11.980 The catechism adds, the deliberate use of the sexual faculty for whatever reason outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.

00:11:21.740 So again, a complete and utter contradiction.

00:11:25.700 What's the next issue?

00:11:27.460 Yeah, the last issue in here is that of homosexual acts.

00:11:31.780 And they say in here that there are some positive values that come with a homosexual relationship.

00:11:38.280 They mention specifically friendship, reliability, fidelity, or loyalty,

00:11:43.400 and that you care for the other person as values that are there.

00:11:49.260 So they want to, in a different spot in the document,

00:11:52.460 they talk about overcoming the language of homosexual acts being intrinsically evil,

00:11:58.300 which again is the language of the catechism that they want to overcome in this document.

00:12:03.140 Yeah.

00:12:03.260 Well, let's break that apart a little, because I think, first of all,

00:12:06.520 I think that is so disingenuous.

00:12:08.700 They're, they're foisting a straw man on people because all those values that they talked about

00:12:13.640 inherent to homosexual relationships, of, of friendship and reliability and loyalty and support in life,

00:12:20.180 A, none of those are exclusive to sexual relationships.

00:12:25.260 And the church has always been in favor of those things in good and holy friendships.

00:12:29.880 Yes, in marriages as well, but in good and holy friendships, all of those can, can take place.

00:12:34.440 So they're foisting a straw man when the church is only against the homosexual acts themselves. 0.61

00:12:40.180 And yet the document wants to get away from that.

00:12:44.740 It's unbelievable.

00:12:46.840 So the church, as you know very well, comes at this issue from a perspective of love.

00:12:54.340 God made us.

00:12:55.160 God made our bodies.

00:12:55.940 He knows that this behavior, these homosexual acts are so harmful for the human body and for the human soul. 1.00

00:13:03.600 Doctors will tell you studies, numerous studies are there to show us the grave harm these acts cause to the body.

00:13:10.660 While at the same time, heterosexual monogamous relationship between a husband and wife united for life is healthy for the body.

00:13:18.140 These homosexual acts and acts of promiscuity and all those other sexual acts that the church opposes are actually harmful for the body.

00:13:26.100 And so here we are, or the church is, engaging in this battle to actually love men and women who have same-sex attraction enough to tell them that this behavior is harmful for their bodies and for their souls.

00:13:39.820 And yet, despite this, despite the fact that this is so clear in Catholic teaching, this is being proposed, not only in this document, actually, by, as we said, the vice president of the German Bishops' Conference, but also the president of the German Bishops' Conference.

00:13:55.900 Can you tell us about that?

00:13:57.780 Yeah, Carter Marx had also spoken of the possibility of blessing homosexual couples.

00:14:03.740 Yeah, I mean, he hasn't gone into as much detail as this document does in his argumentation, but, I mean, so he's open to that.

00:14:15.480 So it's sad to see that both the president and the vice president and a bunch of other bishops and a bunch of Catholic laity have that opinion when it should be pretty obvious what the church teaching is and how it makes sense.

00:14:28.320 I mean, it's not a difficult teaching that you hate the sin but love the sinner and that the compassionate response to somebody who is engaged in homosexuality would be to tell him what he's doing is wrong and why it is wrong and what would be better for that person. 0.91

00:14:45.640 Yeah, absolutely.

00:14:46.520 Absolutely. And it's really quite something that here is the church.

00:14:51.200 You mentioned the president of the Bishops' Conference, the vice president, and many of the bishops, or at least a good number of the bishops in Germany, are all going in this direction, this direction which totally opposes the faith, totally opposes the catechism.

00:15:04.800 It's against everything we've seen before in the church, to which the church has held for since its inception, and before that even in Judaism, and yet here this is being confronted.

00:15:16.960 Now, this is why the bishops, or many even cardinals, have warned about the Catholic Church in Germany going into schism.

00:15:27.380 Can you tell us a little bit about that?

00:15:28.500 Yeah, I mean, that's always the struggle between the German bishops and Rome is not a new one that's come up in the last few years.

00:15:40.980 So you could look, for example, at the book called The Ride Flows into the Tiber, which was looking at the influence of the German bishops specifically, but also of the Dutch and the French and a few others at the Second Vatican Council,

00:15:53.740 on how what the Germans wanted was then presented in Rome, and in many ways accepted in Rome.

00:16:01.520 Yeah, so it's not a new struggle, but it's there, it seems to be picking up steam now, because the claims in those documents are rather bold,

00:16:09.520 and the public statements of bishops are very bold in many ways.

00:16:13.940 Absolutely.

00:16:14.380 So Cardinals Brandtmüller, Cardinal Müller, Cardinal Wolki have all talked about this possibility of schism.

00:16:22.320 Schism is a very powerful term.

00:16:25.780 It's a break with the Church, a formal break with the Church, and yet even such strong talk on the warnings that they're giving,

00:16:34.340 they haven't seemed to shake the German bishops out of this course towards schism.

00:16:41.360 Right. So the Cenota Path was inaugurated specifically to be outside of what canon law,

00:16:50.760 so the laws of the Church right now encompass.

00:16:55.340 So whatever happens in Germany is not recognized by canon law,

00:17:02.120 and that's the intention of the German bishops, so they can't be reprimanded for anything or whatever,

00:17:06.740 when Cardinal, the Canadian Cardinal Wolle, sent the letter to the German bishops about the Cenota Path not being a good thing, pretty much.

00:17:20.660 He was referring to canon law, and the response of the German bishops was,

00:17:26.200 yeah, it was never our intention to be part of canon law with this,

00:17:29.360 we want to go on a new path and have the freedom to, you know, discuss and study and look at issues without being constricted by canon law,

00:17:37.560 you know, if we want to be part of the Church.

00:17:40.800 Yeah.

00:17:41.580 Yeah.

00:17:41.820 Yeah, it harkens back to what Cardinal Marx himself said around the time of the end of the Second Synod on the Family,

00:17:50.580 when they were already going towards giving communion for divorced and remarried Catholics,

00:17:55.140 before the Pope seemed to allow it in the exhortation, but also in the Acta Apostolicae Seris.

00:18:02.740 Now, very interestingly, at that time, Marx said, you know, the German Church is not a subsidiary of Rome,

00:18:10.080 so it was sort of saying that they're going to take their own path, their own way,

00:18:13.760 and yet that would exactly make the Church not Catholic, Catholic meaning universal.

00:18:19.040 Yeah, exactly, that's not a problem.

00:18:20.360 So, the confrontation that's needed in Germany, about a month ago, or last month now,

00:18:30.460 we engaged in something called an Aches Ordinata, about 100 and nearly 150 people came to Germany from all over the world, actually,

00:18:39.460 to stand in silent, prayerful protest, steps away only from Cardinal Marx's office,

00:18:46.100 to call the German Church back from the edge of schism, specifically to call Cardinal Marx himself out for leading the Church in Germany into schism.

00:18:56.880 What have you seen of that in Germany? What kind of reaction have you seen from there?

00:19:02.340 And what do you think that has done?

00:19:04.800 Yeah, so we had, among the faithful Catholic media outlets, usually online, we had good positive reaction.

00:19:11.760 But then the Church-owned, diocesan-owned media, they usually just took the Catholic news agency in Germany's take on it,

00:19:21.620 which was neutral to negative, and just ran with that on their websites.

00:19:26.260 And then, as far as the secular media goes, there was very, very little echo there.

00:19:30.420 So, that's a little bit disappointing.

00:19:32.820 But then the faithful took that lead a little bit, and then at the Senate, at the Synodepath, the assembly,

00:19:40.500 the first assembly that took place in Frankfurt just last week, or last weekend,

00:19:45.760 we had a bunch of young people, mostly, that were praying the rosary in front of the assembly hall,

00:19:51.980 and showing that there's still, you know, the faith is left in Germany,

00:19:56.340 and there are young Catholics who want to defend it, too.

00:19:58.540 So, I was encouraging to see.

00:20:00.400 That's great. That's great.

00:20:01.880 Now, is that a frequent occurrence?

00:20:03.460 Has that happened before, or is that something new?

00:20:07.240 Yeah, Alexander Tchugler at the press conference at the Archivist Ordinato event said,

00:20:11.880 the Germans tend to be a little bit lazy, and they talk about, you know, doing things, 1.00

00:20:17.140 and they have ideas, but then rarely does that, you know, translate into action.

00:20:22.000 And here we saw that, you know, Germans took the lead, conservative Germans took the lead,

00:20:28.060 and, you know, did something.

00:20:30.140 It's really not a very conservative thing, at least in Germany, in the German mind,

00:20:34.080 to go out in the street and protest.

00:20:35.740 It's a leftist thing to do.

00:20:37.560 But, I mean, it seems that in our day and age, it's necessary,

00:20:40.780 and it's good to see that there's people who take the lead and do that, actually,

00:20:45.160 and then give others the opportunity to follow,

00:20:47.040 because not everybody is, you know, called to be a leader and organizer of these things,

00:20:51.180 but they would participate if these things happen and exist.

00:20:56.600 Absolutely.

00:20:57.540 Wow.

00:20:58.000 Well, that's great.

00:20:58.620 Well, praise God.

00:20:59.760 The Archivist Ordinato seems to have sparked something there.

00:21:04.420 So let's go out and talk a little bit about the Church in Germany being so influential in the Vatican.

00:21:11.980 Cardinal Marx, after, you know, there seemed to be a letter given from the Vatican,

00:21:16.460 from the CDF, over to the German bishops to say,

00:21:21.000 no, you can't go down this pathway.

00:21:22.680 Cardinal Marx then went over, met with the Pope, and said,

00:21:25.360 nope, everything's fine, no red light from the Pope at all, we can just go forward.

00:21:30.080 What is this incredible power that the German Church seems to have over the Pope, in the Vatican?

00:21:38.880 What is all that?

00:21:39.700 Yeah, the German problem seems to be the money that they have. 0.89

00:21:46.360 So the German Church, as everybody knows, is very, very rich in many ways due to the Church tax that they collect.

00:21:52.500 So everybody who is, you know, even nominally a Catholic contributes to the Church's well-being

00:21:57.880 by being taxed at a certain rate.

00:22:02.040 And that money obviously buys influence just a natural process that happens,

00:22:07.440 whether that be in the Church or outside of the Church.

00:22:11.080 I mean, there were rumors that the German bishops financed a big part of the Amazon Senate,

00:22:16.560 even.

00:22:16.820 I don't know if that was confirmed or, you know, there's documentation for that,

00:22:20.460 but that's at least a rumor, which seems to be true.

00:22:24.140 There's indications for that.

00:22:26.120 So, yeah, money buys influence, and that's one of the main reasons the Germans are so influential

00:22:32.140 in the Vatican as well.

00:22:33.560 Yeah.

00:22:34.120 This is, it's rather unbelievable, because the German Church, being one of the most liberal

00:22:38.380 churches in the world, is, as were liberalism, infects the Church all over the place, losing

00:22:43.700 Catholics left, right, and center. 0.51

00:22:45.420 There was a study done, and in 2018, the German Church lost over 200,000 Catholics who actually

00:22:53.080 went through the trouble of renouncing their faith, and yet they're still one of the richest

00:22:58.060 churches.

00:22:58.580 How is that?

00:23:00.260 Yeah, again, so it's the Church tax, so even if you're not going to church or doing anything,

00:23:05.000 not praying or whatever, you know, then you still get taxed unless you declare, I'm no

00:23:10.920 longer part of this community called the Catholic Church.

00:23:13.980 So, at this point, it depends on the various parts of Germany, it's between 8% and 9% of

00:23:19.620 your income tax.

00:23:20.800 So, if your income tax every month is like 100 bucks, you would pay an additional 8 or

00:23:25.560 9 euros to the Church as a Church tax.

00:23:29.960 That's how the Church is sustained.

00:23:32.380 Okay, okay.

00:23:34.140 So, it doesn't depend on anybody's faith, it only depends on the numbers.

00:23:38.640 And that seems also to be a reason why the Church in Germany wants to be appealing and

00:23:43.920 open to, you know, every kind of sinful situation, you know, whether that be homosexuality or 1.00

00:23:50.200 masturbation or contraception.

00:23:51.740 And a lot of Germans are obviously using contraception.

00:23:54.960 As long as they feel welcome, they obviously are going to pay their taxes still.

00:23:58.240 And that seems to be a big part of the reasoning that's going on.

00:24:02.520 It seems to be actually killing the true faith, but helping this false faith of theirs, which 1.00

00:24:10.040 gets the money.

00:24:10.880 Because what's actually happening, much to the consternation of many in Rome, and to

00:24:16.180 anybody who learns about it, they seem incredulous about it.

00:24:18.920 Because what's happening is, faithful Catholics are the ones punished, whereas, so for instance, 0.80

00:24:25.600 Cardinal Marx will have no problem admitting to Holy Communion and the rest of the sacraments

00:24:31.100 any public sinner, politician, for instance, who supports abortion or homosexuality or anything 0.55

00:24:37.060 like that.

00:24:38.160 And yet, at the same time, a Catholic who lives the faith, loves the faith, would die for the 0.66

00:24:45.120 faith, but feels that because the German bishops are so abusing the monies that they're being

00:24:50.620 given, and abusing it in Rome to disfigure the faith, says, nope, I don't want to pay that

00:24:56.380 church tax anymore.

00:24:57.320 I can't in conscience fund this insanity, which is so harming the church.

00:25:02.160 That person, because of cutting off his funds, is then stripped of the sacraments, not given

00:25:07.560 in communion, access to confession or marriages or anything like that.

00:25:11.220 Whereas, the pro-abortion Catholic politician, oh, absolutely, the sacraments, as long as you're

00:25:16.960 paying.

00:25:17.760 Yeah, it's an absurd situation.

00:25:19.560 And it's not even just that the person is not supporting the church, because the person who

00:25:24.080 leaves the church and is still faithful, leaves the official church tax communities, is what

00:25:30.460 I'm saying, that might still be a faithful Catholic who would support the church in other

00:25:34.420 ways, and might even give more money to the church in other ways, like supporting his local

00:25:38.760 parish or his local monastery, or some faithful Catholic organization, whatever the case may

00:25:43.520 be.

00:25:44.080 So it's really unfair, and everybody sees that, you know, who uses their logic that this is

00:25:51.940 just an unfair and absurd situation that is taking place in Germany right now.

00:25:56.120 Unbelievable.

00:25:57.020 And has been taking place for many, many decades.

00:26:00.320 Yeah.

00:26:00.560 Well, as a German, as someone from this great land, I'm partially from that land myself, at

00:26:07.780 least my ancestors were, there's a great tradition of Catholicism in Germany, a tradition of saints.

00:26:17.560 And yet, for the past sort of 50 years, we've seen this unbelievable takeover.

00:26:24.600 What's your prayer?

00:26:25.560 What's your hope for German Catholicism in the next few decades?

00:26:29.860 Yeah.

00:26:30.960 Yeah, I mean, obviously, that should change.

00:26:33.060 There's still a lot of, a lot of, the foundation is still there in many respects.

00:26:38.600 So I remember growing up, we went to Mass about 50 kilometers away, because it was a Latin Mass.

00:26:44.240 And that was a Marian pilgrimage site, pretty important in the area.

00:26:48.740 And every Sunday from May to All Saints Day in November, you would see pilgrimage groups

00:26:54.240 walking to that, to that shrine along the way that we drove.

00:26:57.700 Or, you know, you still have Sundays, the stores are closed.

00:27:02.020 And on important holidays like Corpus Christi and, you know, the Ascension stores are closed.

00:27:09.300 It's a day off for everybody.

00:27:10.960 So the cultural component is still there.

00:27:13.060 We have beautiful churches, even though some of them are being closed.

00:27:16.400 That's true.

00:27:16.900 So, yeah, again, this is there, but then the faith is kind of lacking in many ways.

00:27:22.700 Whereas in this country, in America, you have kind of the opposite.

00:27:27.180 You have a lot of vibrant, vibrant Catholic communities.

00:27:30.880 But then the cultural situation is very, very different.

00:27:35.080 I mean, stores are open on Sunday and the churches in many areas are not that good looking and that kind of thing.

00:27:41.420 So, yeah, hopefully we can get that faith that in many other parts of the world is still there back to Germany. 0.63

00:27:49.040 And there are lots of organizations.

00:27:51.740 I mean, we can't just say it's all bad in Germany.

00:27:54.020 There are lots of organizations that are really doing good work and that are faithful Catholics, you know, participating.

00:28:01.920 We have a lot of people who go to adoration and that kind of thing.

00:28:05.540 Yeah.

00:28:06.080 So we have to start somewhere.

00:28:08.380 And then just with the grace of God, you know, things will work out.

00:28:13.280 Amen.

00:28:13.720 Well, let's enlist the rest of our viewers in praying also for the church in Germany.

00:28:19.420 Pray for a resurrection of the true faith in Germany.

00:28:21.940 Pray that they, you know, get out of the schism that they seem to be in right now and keep the faith.

00:28:28.980 Martin, thank you for being with us on the John Henry Weston Show.

00:28:32.680 Thank you.

00:28:33.480 And God bless you all.

00:28:34.500 We'll see you next time.

The John-Henry Westen Show - February 11, 2020

Analyzing the de facto schism in the Catholic Church in Germany

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