Germany’s bishops have been increasingly criticized for leading the Church into heresy with impunity.

The latest example of this came on Tuesday when over two-thirds of country’s bishops voted to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics and those living in homosexual unions to continue employment in Church-run institutions, almost without exception.

The German bishops also recently released the results of a pre-synod survey which unsurprisingly showed the majority of German Catholics dissented from Church teaching.

The hierarchy has clearly shown that it wants the Church to accommodate these views, and had these results translated into five languages in a bid to influence the upcoming Synod on the Family along these lines.

In a March 6 article that drew on the preparatory questionnaire results, Vaticanist Sandro Magister highlighted just how dissenting the German Church has become. To give some examples:

• In almost all the dioceses of Germany, sacramental absolution and Holy Communion are given to the divorced and remarried;
• The majority of bishops express the hope that civil second marriages be blessed in church;
• They hope that Holy Communion be given to non-Catholic spouses;
• They would like to see the “positive aspects” of homosexual relationships and same-sex unions recognized.

But despite these positions, Rome appears powerless, and no matter how much this dissent is reported, the German bishops are expected to carry on regardless (in fact plenty of evidence shows they have a well orchestrated campaign to see their pastoral innovations adopted at the synod). The consequences of this could be very grave, with some believing it could lead to schism.

The Vatican has been strong in holding bishops accountable when it comes to clerical sex abuse within their dioceses. Pope Francis has even asked his commission on the protection of minors to draw up a system for bishops on handling sex abuse cases.

It therefore raises the question why the Pope and the Vatican cannot be equally strong in holding Germany’s bishops accountable for driving the episcopate into heresy, leading many souls astray, and causing significant harm to the Church.