Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Gangolf Parish in the small, northern Bavarian city of Bamberg. The priest takes out the parish registry and turns to the section marked " Kirchenaustritt ", a procedure to have one's name struck from the baptismal rolls.
It indicates that 32 parishioners left the Church in And it shows that 21 others have already done so this year. Bamberg, which dates back to the 9th century, has long been Catholic and conservative.
Bamberg Cathedral, named for St. Peter and St George, stands on a cobblestone hill overlooking the half-timbered houses of the medieval old town. Beer lovers and university students quench their thirst in one of the 60 breweries in this city of 77, inhabitants. Like everywhere else in Germany, this thousand-year-old diocese where Catholics and Protestants live side by side has not yet recovered from the shock suffered three years ago. In the wake of this, the country's bishops, led by the ebullient Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich, launched the so-called Synodal Path der Synodaler Weg.
Since January , its participants have been discussing the future of the German Catholic Church through four themes: distribution of power, the place of women, priesthood today and sexual morality. But the Synodal Path has aroused concern among Catholics outside of Germany and particularly at the Vatican. In this quiet Bavarian archdiocese, most Catholics seem to be in favor of this reflection on the Church.
They are motivated by the urgency of re-establishing trust between the Church and its people, deeply damaged by the abuse scandal. In Erlangen, 40 kilometers south of Bamberg, the energetic Klaus Koschinsky still hopes that the Church in Germany will recover from this crisis. He's the president of the parish council of Sacred Heart Parish and — together with two bishops, a priest and another layman — is part of the Archdiocese of Bamberg's delegation at the Synodal Path.
