German groups rap timing of bishops’ guidelines on blessing same-sex unions
April 25, 2025
» Continue to this story on CNA (German)
CWN Editor's Note: A group of lay Catholics has protested the timing of new guidelines released by the German bishops’ conference for the blessing of same-sex unions.
The Neuer Anfang [“New Beginning”] movement charged that the episcopal conference, which approved the guidelines on April 4, had withheld publication to avoid a Vatican rebuke. “They were probably just waiting for the Pope’s death and the interregnum to make news during a period of weaker ecclesiastical authority,” the group said.
Neuer Anfang said that the bishops’ instructions conflict with the Vatican instruction Fiducia Supplicans by encouraging liturgical ceremonies to celebrate same-sex unions. The document “distorts what the Church truly teaches,” the group said.
A spokesman for the German bishops denied that the release of the guidelines had been postponed until the papal interregnum, saying that the publication had been scheduled weeks earlier.
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