Who is Catholic – Pope Francis or Julia Klöckner?
At Easter, Bundestag President Julia Klöckner offered some advice to Christian churches.
If they no longer focus on fundamental questions of life and death, but instead offer advice on current issues like a non-governmental organisation, they will become interchangeable. Ms Klöckner does not want to pay church tax for this, complained the CDU President of the Bundestag. She finds the churches too political.
So should the churches remain silent when it comes to social injustices in society, when the right to asylum is in question, when it comes to protecting the weak and defenceless, when it comes to dealing with people drowning in the Mediterranean?
Pope Francis was a political pope
He advocated for ‘a poor Church of the poor.’ His first trip was to the refugees on the island of Lampedusa. There he uttered the unforgettable words: ‘The globalisation of indifference has robbed us of our ability to cry.’
And shortly before his death, in his last Easter address, he called for peace, justice and reconciliation. A highly political indictment of the injustices in this world. This is especially true of his environmental encyclical ‘Laudato si’, the world’s most ambitious eco-programme for the preservation of creation, and of his criticism of prevailing capitalism and the prevailing economy: ‘This economy kills,’ he wrote in his first papal statement ‘Fratelli tutti’.
So who is Catholic now? The political Pope Francis or the Catholic President of the Bundestag from the CDU?
Even Klöckner’s Union faction paid tribute to the late Pope on Easter Monday as ‘eminently political’. And the former CDU Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet (CDU), said of Klöckner’s criticism of the Church: ‘The Church has always been political… Anyone who derives from the Christian message that one should change the world, change it for the better, shape the world, then that is always a political message.’
Pope Francis was and remains so popular with many non-Catholics because he took the fundamental teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, his Sermon on the Mount, seriously. With Francis, the world has lost perhaps the most important advocate for the poor and weak, for refugees and the persecuted. Pope Francis was Catholic in the best sense of the word, that is, ‘universal’ and political. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus praises the peacemakers and the merciful. This message made Jesus the most important person in world history and the Christian Church the most successful community of all time.
A church that, in the words of Julia Klöckner, no longer speaks out clearly on injustice and war, on humanity and humaneness, on social cohesion, charity and love for one’s enemies, betrays Jesus’ message and mission. Pope Francis deliberately chose the name of the great saint from Assisi. This Saint Francis is the patron saint of all environmentalists and climate activists. Pope Francis says so in his encyclical ‘Laudato si’. Even the papal name Francis was a political programme.
Dear Julia Klöckner: As a Christian and theologian, please read the Sermon on the Mount again. Migration policy is about humanity every day, defence policy is about war and peace every day, social policy is about greater justice every day, and dealing with the AfD is about defending freedom and democracy every day. As long as the CDU has the letter ‘C’ in its name, you and your party should be concerned with precisely these values. They are highly political and not ‘interchangeable’.
Heribert Prantl says about the church struggle within the CDU: ‘It is not the church that is too political, but the politics of the CDU/CSU that are not Christian enough.’
- Franz Alt ‘The Green Pope and the Green Dalai Lama’ | Pope Francis called for a new attitude towards nature in his eco-encyclical ‘Laudato Si’ back in 2015: ‘Nature is usually understood as a system to be analysed, understood and managed, but creation can only be understood as a gift.’
- Pope Francis ‘LIFE’ – My Story Through History—An Autobiographical Account of the Pope’s Life and Legacy (English Edition) | Harper Collins 2024
