Cardinal Marx elected German bishops’ president; Cardinal Lehmann preaches on divorce, remarriage

March 13, 2014

The German bishops have elected Cardinal Reinhard Marx to a six-year term as president of the nation’s episcopal conference, one of the most influential in the Church. Cardinal Marx succeeds Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the retired archbishop of Freiburg im Breisgau.

Born in 1953 and ordained to the priesthood in 1979, Cardinal Marx was appointed auxiliary bishop of Paderborn in 1996 and bishop of Trier in 2001. Pope Benedict appointed him archbishop of Munich and Freising in 2007 and named him to the College of Cardinals in 2010.

In 2013, Pope Francis named Cardinal Marx to the eight-member Council of Cardinals, an advisory body that assists the Pope in the reform of the Roman Curia and the governance of the universal Church. Last week, Pope Francis named Cardinal Marx the coordinator of the newly-formed Council for the Economy, a 15-member body entrusted with the task of supervising the economic management, structures, and administrative and financial activities of the Roman Curia, the institutions connected to the Holy See, and Vatican City State.

In a March 13 homily to the German bishops, Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz said that the Gospel account of the woman caught in adultery (Jn. 7:53-8:1) should be applied to discussions of divorce and remarriage.

After reviewing the textual history of the passage and recalling that some rigorists in the early Church did not think that the sin of adultery could be absolved, Cardinal Lehmann said that Jesus showed the scribes and Pharisees, who wanted the woman to be stoned, that they, too, were sinners. “One thinks of the rigorists of all time in the Church ... All are sinners like the woman, all have need of forgiveness.”

The prelate added that Jesus’ forgiveness of the woman, his restoration of her dignity before God, and loyalty to his example of mercy to sinners are important in the Church’s discussion of divorce and remarriage, especially as applied to confession, which is intended to offer sinners forgiveness and to save people from “the sentence of God” and “also from social death.”

Jesus’ forgiveness of the woman, however, is not a call to laxism-- a reference to Christ’s words, “Go, and sin no more”-- but a “call to a new life,” Cardinal Lehmann continued.

The passage is crucial in understanding guilt and forgiveness, he concluded. “If we pastorally, spiritually, and theologically practice this more, then more doors could open than we think at the moment. Amen.”

 

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Further information:

• Predigt von Kardinal Karl Lehmann in der Eucharistiefeier in Münster zur Frühjahrs-Vollversammlung 2014 der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Deutsche Bischofskonferenz)
• Kardinal Reinhard Marx ist neuer Vorsitzender der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz (Deutsche Bischofskonferenz)
• German Catholic bishops pick pope aide as new leader (Reuters)