By Gaetano Masciullo, European Conservative.
What is occurring in Germany is a true attempt at ecclesiological subversion.
t is said that Georges Danton, one of the minds of the French Revolution, when he was tried in 1794 by those who had once been his allies in the war against the Ancien Régime, uttered before the judge the famous words, “The Revolution is like Saturn: it devours its children.”
A similar logic is unfolding in Germany, where the German Synodal Path seems truly to be taking a bad turn. For those unaware, the Catholic Church in Germany is at the forefront of theological and pastoral progressivism, to the point that Cardinal Marx—nomen omen—explicitly stated, during the Extraordinary Consistory of January 2026, that his goal is to make the Synodaler Weg “a model for the universal Church.” I have briefly reconstructed the history of this reality and explained its significance for Catholicism in a previous analysis.
The article concluded with an observation: we have entered a new phase of the “synodal process” with the announcement by Georg Bätzing that he does not intend to seek re-election to the leadership of the German episcopate, and with a question: for whom is space being made?
During the spring plenary assembly of the German Bishops’ Conference, held February 23-26 in Würzburg, the bishops addressed two central issues: the election of the new president and the establishment of the Synodal Conference (Synodalkonferenz), a permanent body of laity and bishops with decision-making powers not only pastoral but also doctrinal and governmental. Among the proposed reforms are the separation of powers in a democratic-parliamentary sense, the introduction of the female diaconate and priesthood, optional priestly celibacy, the stable admission of the divorced and remarried to the sacraments, and the official recognition of LGBT Catholics.