Posted by Archbishop Anthony Bondi on Saturday, Feb, 1, 2020 2:00 PM (EST):
As an Orthodox Bishop I have observed what happened in the Episcopal Church when the laypeople begin with clergy to vote on moral theology and discipline. Schism follows. Do not touch the moral theology of the Church or the sacrament of orders. The closer you get to Protestantism the further you go from Orthodoxy.
A telling paragraph from the article cited above in support of a schism is quoted as follow without hyperlink [2]:
[Jesuit Father Hans Langendörfer's] comments, which echo Cardinal Reinhard Marx’s famous 2015 comments that the Church in Germany is “not just a subsidiary of Rome,” come after the Vatican made clear last year that the synodal process was not in any way binding, and that Germany’s bishops must exercise their authority in unity and obedience to the authority of the Pope.
Should Rome be afraid? Perhaps the following paragraphs quoted from apnews.com will shed some light on the question [3]:
BERLIN (AP) — A court in the western city of Cologne has ruled that Germany’s richest Catholic archdiocese doesn’t have to reveal what it does with the billions it receives from taxpayers each year.
The investigative journalism group Correctiv had sued for the information, arguing that the Archdiocese of Cologne should be bound by laws granting media access to government information because much of its revenue comes from an income tax paid by Catholics in Germany.
But Cologne’s administrative court ruled Thursday that the way the archdiocese invests its annual income of almost 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) is protected by the church’s constitutionally guaranteed autonomy.
That is just one of the seven Catholic archdioceses in Germany. [4]
It is doubtful that the Vatican has income of 3 billion euros annually. Even if it did, it probably does not have enough smart people to invest the funds to make it grow, but rather lose some by having Cardinal Angelo Becciu and likely Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, as well, authorize the purchase of a "luxury development project [in London involving] two recently suspended Vatican employees, and a nest of Vatican-controlled holding companies led by an architect linked to accusations of money laundering and fraud involving Vatican accounts." [5]
The Vatican is plagued with a serious financial crisis, according to "'Universal Judgement [sic],' a new book by Italian investigative journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi which scrutinized more than 3,000 confidential Vatican documents, [saying that] the Vatican is in dire financial shape." [6].
In this desperate state, the Roman Catholic Church is unable to defend itself against a well-funded, well-managed German Catholic Church that wants its own "moral theology and discipline," borrowing words from Orthodox Archbishop Anthony Bondi quoted above.
Therefore, the answer to whether Rome should be afraid is this: Rome should not be just afraid, but very afraid.
[1] https://www.ncregister.com/blog/edward-pentin/german-synodal-path-aims-to-influence-vatican-decisions-says-plans-architec
[2] Ibid.
[3] https://apnews.com/557bc902571841788dc1c3f1f02f62bf
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_dioceses_in_Germany
[5] https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vaticans-london-luxury-development-company-with-ties-to-alleged-financial-crime-offered-to-raze-parish-rectory-95153
[6] https://www.irishcentral.com/news/vatican-financial-collapse
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