Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg
“In reality, the problem does not seem to be the money spent on the building (taken mostly from a foundation established in the nineteenth century, which the bishop was free to use under the supervision of a board of directors)—though that was a perfect excuse—but that Tebartz-van Elst stepped into a hornets’ nest. His predecessor Kamphaus had the reputation of being a liberal (he refused, for example, to follow John Paul II’s directives on getting out of the state’s abortion-counselling which implied signing a certificate, thereby allowing the woman to have an abortion, and thus providing close material cooperation in the act) and his conservative successor was thus bound to make enemies. The list of clashes is long.”
Read more at The Real Scandal in Germany | Crisis Magazine.
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Reblogged this on Catholic Glasses.
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The article in Crisis makes some very interesting points about the work that was carried out and the costs involved; what has gone unreported over here is that the works were part of a development of a diocesan centre, renovating some historic buildings that had fallen into disrepair, the but reserved for the bishop was only an apartment within that larger complex.
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I live in Germany, and I can say that everything in the very insightful Crisis article seems to me to be absolutely correct. As soon as the “scandal” about Bishop Tebartz-van Elst broke, the media flooded the country with condemnations of the good bishop. Everyone was absolutely convinced he had done something seriously wrong. Now, many of us are beginning to understand that he has suffered a grave injustice at the hands of people who reject the Church’s most important traditional teachings and who are, as the article indicates, bringing the Church in Germany close to schism.
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