GDR

Rev dear Rev: Is the German Church going through another Reformation at the moment?

Which church? That is the question. To be or not to be, that is the larger question, if we can take our cue from the great Bard of the Midlands. Has the German Church metamorphed into lots of little churches or is there one monolithic Totus Tuus out there? We must presume from the reader, a girl from Essex, that she is speaking of the German Catholic Church since the context of the letter is tantamount to this assumption. After all the Lutheran churches have much splintered since 1517.

Providentially speaking, how to frame an adequate and fair Response? "And lead us not into temptation" are the solemn and sobering words of warning of the Lord's Prayer and they remind us of trial and temptation from time to time when we have the good grace to pray those solemn words together in communitate in ecclesia on a Sunday morning. These are the penultimate words of the Lord's Prayer in the gospels as received in Luke and they remind us that from time to time we are all subject to temptation. Germany is being tempted at the moment in these tumultuous times. The actual English words above come from the pen of Henry VIII who transposed the penultimate versicle of the Our Father into those immortal words and which gave us all hope in time of trial. But we should note that there too, a young theologian king was himself tempted and for a long while resisted as best he could, even penning a "Tractatus contra Lutherem" himself, with or without the help of major minds such as Fisher and More. Either way, he resisted the natural temptation to splinter with Luther, so that is where we shall begin. How is the German Church being tempted by a Luther?

Germany - In the 1920s and 1930s Germany too was invited to split up its churches into one Nazi favoured Lutheran Confessing Church, under the invitation and blessing of young Adolfo who thought that the greatest curse to befall Germany was the number of churches guilty of Internationalism and its impossible fonts beyond the control of the new Nazi statelet - the churches were too internationalised, and Catholicism was the worst of the lot in the minds of Adolf and his flying ace Goering leaders. It would be easier in the future, so he reasoned, to set up one national church and call it the German Lutheran Confessing Church, and this would be supine to the decretals of the State, and less given over to the disaster that he called Internationalism. But as for a figure like Martin Luther, who he? Where they? None to be found, at least not dressed in a friar's robes like the original Bro Martin. If Adolf was a Luther though, then maybe, since he sported similar views to the original historical Luther in his impatience with the German and especially Austrian peasantry - there is always a superior political class in such nations that likes to lord it over the people, as indeed the messiah of Israel once forewarned when advising and tutoring his apostles. Easy to dominate. Easy to kill.

Similarly, just as many were encouraged and tempted and cajoled even to join the new Confessing Church of Adolfo, so too in recent times, before and during and after the Amazonian Synod in 2019, a new version of Catholicism appeared out of nowhere and engulfed and englobed the young enthusiasts of the new style synoday way German dioceses, emanating chiefly out of Cantab just as the British apostles of the new way were flexing their new theologian muscles and proclaiming the rise of another Boniface the Apostle of Germany at a time when British Christians suddenly realised that Germany was a daughter to her, and England a mother, that the German Christians had a right to expect some leadership from the British Churches in their struggle with the various theological debates then raging just before the Amazonian Synod. But something happened, within a year or two of the Amazonian Synod the momentum for momentum reversed itself as more and more bishops during their diocesan listening phases kept hearing of calls for a Ta.tu model of reform, with lots of gay wedding commercials looking on. Suddenly the German Church was flooded almost to the chin. Difficult it was to stay afloat.

But the bishops realised that a great river Rubicon could not be crossed at this time, maybe something at the Synod touched them to the core - the sight of so many so-called White Christians, christian red indians who had never seen the philosophy or table talk of a Martin Luther, christian red indians untouched by the older kind of reformation from the 1500s. Strangely it was 500 years almost to the day when these new converts impressed many German bishops - and chiefly with their simplicity - 1517 to 2017. The German punkha-wallahs had gotten it wrong. The future was not about producing expensive professional theologians in comfortable university chairs - it was about soul and heart and emotions just as much as about mind. Something gave way, and the promised reformation of a Martin Luther, arguably first begun by Adolfo in the 1920s and 1930s did not materialise. The end result was the inspiring and beautiful document from that Synod - written by the able pen of the loving pope of the red indians, Querida Amazonia. Something very simple and very surprising had broken the back of the middle class and upper class appetites for reform and reformation and general Luther style chaos. It was the red indian and her devotion to the mother of Jesus. As the old emeritus German pope said it at the time - sorprendente, surprising. And surprising it was indeed. A great storm had passed right on by the German Church and merely scratched its exposed flanks. Nothing doing, at end of day.