The Old Catholic Church has no plans to change its name. On the 63rd The synod of the Old Catholic diocese took place on Sunday an application for the establishment of a naming commission was withdrawn after controversial discussion. The research committee should come up with a “programmatic name for our church”. The justification stated that the term “old Catholic” is often misunderstood today as traditionalist and reactionary. A new name is not only necessary because of the associations it arouses, but also because the Old Catholic Church has developed in recent years into an independent church and not only considers itself distinct from the Roman Catholic Church, he said in the justification of the application of the municipality of Landau. The terms “reformed Catholic”, “synodal Catholic” and “liberal Catholic” were introduced into the debate.
The debate had made it clear that the discussion on a new name was ultimately about programmatic and substantive issues, the diocese said on Sunday: “We must therefore not think about our name, but what we represent and how we do it makes this content public.” A clear majority of the synod followed Bishop Matthias Ring’s proposal to address these fundamental issues at the next synod.
New Church leadership elected
The synod of the old Catholic diocese in Germany met from Thursday to Sunday in Mainz. One of the objectives of the deliberations was Development of church finances before possible end of state benefits. In view of the difficulties in convincing people to commit long-term, the synod reduced the mandate of church leaders from six to four years and the legal anchoring of digital and non-digital forms of participation was also on the agenda. present. On Saturday the synods elected a new synodal council, the body that governs the church among the synods together with the bishop. The new synodal representation includes parish priest Alexandra Caspari (Augsburg), Beate Link (Offenburg), Lars Colberg (Münster), Dean Ulf-Martin Schmidt (Berlin), Gerd Winter (Mannheim-Ludwigshafen) and Thomas Wystrach (Krefeld).
The Old Catholic Church in Germany was born in the 1870s demarcation to the decisions of First Vatican Council (1869-1870) on infallibility and the primacy of jurisdiction of the pope. The German diocese has 16,000 members in 60 parishes. Since 2009 Matthias Ring has presided over the diocese as the tenth bishop. the The order of the Church of the Old Catholic Church is episcopal-synodal. (fxn)
–
