At Synod in Mainz, Germany, Old Catholic Bishop Rejects View That Abuse Is Only a Roman Catholic Problem

Matthias Ring, bishop of the Old Catholic Diocese in Germany, warned against regarding abuse as a problem confined to the Roman Catholic Church. At the opening of the diocese’s synod on Thursday, he said he had always assumed it could not have been different in the Old Catholic Church than in other churches. According to the report cited by the source, Ring said he sometimes hears the “naive thesis” in his church that abuse does not occur there because Old Catholic priests may marry. He said Protestant churches had also found comfort in such a view until the ForuM study was published.

Ring said that in the diocese since the Second World War he knows of two cases. During his own term of office, there had been two accusations against clergy for assaults. He described his church’s planned abuse study with some skepticism. He said he did not think it would reveal anything different, and he does not expect essential new insights that might be relevant for prevention. Protecting the vulnerable is the concern at the heart of these cases (Proverbs 31:8-9).

The source describes two cases from the 1950s. A priest was sentenced to probation, and he also reported attacks on ministrants. In a second case, a former vicar was sentenced to prison in 1950 for “unnatural fornication.” The youngest victim was reportedly ten or eleven years old. In total, six people were convicted of the offense. After his arrest, the priest had been deprived of his permission to perform spiritual functions and had left the service of the Old Catholic Church.

In the same address, Ring turned to secularization. He said commitment to the church is weakening within the Old Catholic Church as well. He said he sees no great potential for his church among people who have left the Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, stating: “Most of those who leave have long since lost God, if they could ever do anything about it.” He said his church should instead accompany people in their way of life and faith. “We must accept that we are often ‘only’ partners in the life of the Church,” the bishop said.

The synod is the highest decision-making body of the Old Catholic Church in Germany and meets in Mainz from Thursday to Sunday. Its agenda includes a discussion of Old Catholic identity and the handling of church members who belong to a right-wing extremist party or organization. A motion proposes that such members withdraw their passive synodal rights.

The Old Catholic Church in Germany was founded in the 1870s in opposition to the decisions of the First Vatican Council (1869-1870) on papal infallibility and the primacy of papal jurisdiction. The German diocese has nearly 16,000 members in 60 parishes. Ring has been the tenth bishop of the diocese since 2009. The church order is episcopal-synodal: the bishop, elected by the synod, leads the church together with a synod council made up of clergy and laity.

Source: Read the original report (translated from German)