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Indignant, a Pope on defensive: How to deal with the partially anti-Semitic Pius brotherhood split the German Episcopal ss uniforms Conference.
For 60 years, there is the "week of brotherhood" of societies for Christian-Jewish cooperation; the events have become a bit stiff and grey.
Bishops from various German dioceses sit on Tuesday (10.04.07) in the choir of the Basilica of Weingarten
This year is the opening in Hamburg, Federal President Horst K?hler speaks, the Catholic theologian Erich Zenger receives the Buber-Rosenzweig-medal. "But this year is the week a really exciting project," says Stephan Kramer, the Secretary General of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. "And I hope that now not about everything the harmony sauce is poured."
There are to clarify something between Catholic Christians and Jews. Pope Benedict XVI has the excommunication of four bishops of the traditionalist Pius brotherhood lifted, a group which rejects the belief, and freedom of religion and the Mitglieder have expressed always again judenfeindlich.
Its Bishop Richard Williamson denying the Holocaust and has now, after some thought, for this excuse that he has caused so much excitement. "That was no glitch", says Kramer, General Secretary of the Central Council, "Pope Benedict knows whom he has since upgraded." "As long as this anti-constitutional extremist force is not again excommunicated, a heavy stone is between Jews and Christians." Precisely now. For the week of brotherhood. Where at the same time and also in Hamburg the German bishops meet - on Monday morning with the rabbinical Conference.
One and a half hours nearly 70 Bishops and bishops in Hamburg want to take time for the question, which the controversy over the traditional faction means for them and the German Catholicism. At the base which is large, tens of thousands have signed a statement that criticized the Pope for the clemency towards the brothers, Pius.
The hour and a half will say more about the State of the Episcopal Conference and the German Catholicism as the day to world economic crisis, which should actually be at the heart of the discussions at the Elysee hotel.
Because the Conference of bishops is deeply divided on this issue. Many bishops are frightened and appalled by the appreciation of the aggressive opponents of the Second Vatican Council; in convoluted explanations, they have highlighted the good intentions of the Pope, condemned the breakdowns in the Vatican and made it clear that anti-Semites should have no place in the Church.
"You see that here indeed is a choice of direction," says as the Emeritus Tubingen theologian Peter Hünermann, which Herder correspondence has accused the Pope in the journal, to have made "an error of Office". "It comes to the authority of the Second Vatican Council", says he; similar to many bishops see that. To say it dare the few - we know that the Pope is angry about the excitement in Germany.
The Berlin Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky however reacted furiously, the Mainz Cardinal Karl Lehmann said clearly: when people like Williamson excommunication must apply without a real reversal again.
The opposite position to do so is currently concentrated in Bavaria; She wants, pointed said, a change of topic. Not the Pope has said clearly that he is nazi for sale any form of anti-Semitism, the German bishops have distances itself not clearly from the Pius brothers, has not Chancellor Angela Merkel's papal criticism over the target gone too far?
In this reading is just a and media campaign Pope Benedict XVI and the whole Catholic Church. Most fiercely, the Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller; holds this opinion He threatened three professors of the Theological Faculty of Regensburg with punishment, because they have signed a petition critical of Papal. The other Bavarian bishops reject that, in the key but they have connected Müller; They about the "partly very one-sided depictions in the media" and reassure their solidarity to the Pope.
The "week of brotherhood" is a heavy week for for a year-in-Office Chairman of the Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, Freiburg. He is to hold together a Conference, which auseinanderstrebt and in the individual members do all, the is going on.
The Augsburg Bishop Walter mixa said in the CSU in Dinkelsbühl world war 2 uniforms Ash Wednesday that with six million victims of course - there was the murder of Jews that
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