Not all German bishops are bad!!

Well, of course they aren't. Joseph Ratzinger and Gerhard Mueller are, after all, both Germans and both bishops.

But there are others. Good has been heard of Bishops
Oster of Passau;
Zdarser of Augsburg;
Hanke of Eichstaett (a See founded by the English S Willibald*, relative of S Boniface of Exeter);
Ipolt of Goerlitz;
Voderholzer of Regensburg (a See founded by S Boniface himself);
and Hofmann of Wuerzburg.

The penultimate of these has already been mentioned on my blog; so just a brief word, today, about the Bishop of Eichstaett. One of his predecessors in the See of S Willibald was the (later Cardinal) Count von Preysing who subsequently went on to be Bishop of Berlin. He was a most resolute opponent of Hitler.

Count von Preysing did not see eye to eye with the Chairman of his own Episcopal Conference, a Cardinal Bertram. It isn't that Bertram was a Nazi. He was nothing like a Nazi. He said some bold things. But his instinct was to do what business one could do with the government; not to break off relationships just for the sake of rhetoric which might not do any actual good. Is there really any harm in sending Birthday Greetings to Hitler? (Von Preysing, on the other hand, rather strongly thought that there was.)

That is always the temptation for the Ecclesiastical Statesman: failure wholeheartedly to resist the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, the Consensus of Society. Keeping contacts, if possible, open, for the achievement of some deal. Not to be too "shrill". This is not the temptation to which the heroic Count von Preysing ... or the equally heroic (Blessed Cardinal) Count Clement von Galen ... fell victim. They were what the second century Church used to call confessores. (Hitler is recorded to have said "Count von Galen is an intelligent man and must know that when I have won this war, I shall have an account to settle with him". Von Preysing he described as the very worst of the "carrion crows".)

Bertram was not a confessor.

I am sure that Bertram's successor as Chairman of the German Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Marx, is also not a Nazi ... what I mean by that is: he is not a modern day slavish follower of every aspect of the modern Zeitgeist. I would not be surprised to learn that he has indeed spoken against aspects of our modern post-Christian, sexually corrupt European Culture of Death. But he believes in keeping open the lines of communication between the Church and the mores of the German society within which she has to operate; his praxis is not to be too shrill.

Marx is not a confessor.

Perhaps we should ask our English Saints Boniface and Willibald, who brought the Gospel to Southern Germany with much parrhesia, to multiply by their intercessions the Spirit of Eichstaett; the Spirit of Confessio, of Martyrion to which bishops especially are called. And not only in Germany.

*If you look up S Willibald on Wikipedia, you will find a photograph of an attractively Baroque statue of the Saint wearing the Rationale, a pontifical vestment historically worn round the neck by the bishops of Eichstaett and a few other German bishoprics. It is good that Bishop Hanke has resumed its use; bishops are not mere Vicars of the Roman Pontiff, nor are they regional managers of a multi-national corporation. Anything that emphasises the Hiccitas, the 'here-ness', of a particular bishopric through the ages is to be commended. Anything that establishes the continuity between the present Bishop and his predecessors in Sede ... back to the Founder of the See ... and behind him to those who sent him ... and, of course, his identity with their teaching ... 

This is why Good Marini used to ransack the sacristies to provide Papa Ratzinger with vestments designed for his predecessors. Those who deemed this foppishness were simply too blind to recognise Acted Theology.