Strange Lent in the diocese of Essen: it is the administration of Baptism that will henceforth be deprived of priests, since seventeen women and one man, all lay people have been appointed to celebrate a sacrament that is yet reserved for priests in ordinary cases.
Gertrude Knepper, pastoral assistant of the parish of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Höntropne, one of the lucky ones, does not hide her joy: “celebrating this marvelous sacrament will be a very special moment. I never would have imagined that this would be possible,” she reacts.
For the Ordinary of the place, it is above all a question of “reacting to a difficult pastoral situation,” by mandating “parish and pastoral agents who work full-time in pastoral care and who often already have extensive experience in the baptismal ministry,” explains Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck, justifying the decision he made on March 12, 2022.
“Today we are faced with a puzzle: the priests, mostly elderly, cannot baptize ten children per mass. We need to plan more dates and hire more staff,” agrees with the Bishop of Essen, Stephanie Czernotta, who, since October 2021, has exercised the “co-direction” of the St. Joseph parish in Essen-Frintrop.
A situation that for the moment is quite new in Germany, but much more widespread in neighboring Switzerland – in the dioceses of Basel and St. Gall – as well as in that of Linz, in Austria: so many ecclesiastical territories already largely disfigured by the ravages of secularization and progressivism.
Would the “difficult pastoral situation” evoked by Bishop Overbeck – who at no time evokes another fundamental “pastoral” one, that of vocations – be just a pretext?
It’s hard not to think so when you read the remarks made by the Bishop of Essen on March 18, in the magazine Bene: “I want to commit myself to a different Church, in which equality reigns, and where no one should fear being judged because of his sexual identity or his marital status.” That says it all: Synodal path, here we come!
Likewise, the old clichés of the disastrous liturgical renewal of the post-conciliar era quickly came out of the closet:
“The requests from families have evolved, they want to personalize the baptismal celebrations and develop their own ideas. It is easier for us lay people than for priests to respond to these requests,” says Stephanie Czernotta.
The sacraments are not consumer goods of which one can choose the color or taste of what is being purchased. A recent scandal in the United States showed the result of this kind of personalization. The worst is to be feared in hearing these kinds of comments.
Mrs. Czernotta notes, however, with regret “strong resistance from certain bishops and certain teams of parish management.” For how long ?
The Bishop of Essen, Germany, has just appointed 18 lay people to administer the sacrament of baptism in his diocese, citing a “difficult pastoral situation” due to the lack of priests. But this façade seems, in fact, to be hiding the synodal ideology.