The German patriot party Alternative for Germany is only 5 points away from being the most voted party.
It doubles the environmentalists and surpasses the socialists by nine points, according to a survey.
The German bishops, especially those of Bavaria, found words of condemnation, even exclusion, while this vocabulary seemed to have been abandoned beyond the Rhine. In fact, a few weeks before Christmas, they carried out a sort of excommunication against people who were members of Alternative für Deutschland—the Alternative for Germany party.
The motive for this ban? To counteract the recent election victory of the national conservatives of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), a political party which seems to constitute, in the eyes of prelates beyond the Rhine, the only true danger awaiting a country already in a bad way.
Victory, for that matter, is a big word: breakthrough would be a better term, since the right-wing party gained third place during the Bavarian legislative elections which took place on October 8, 2023. And what worries the German episcopate is in particular the growing number of Catholic voters—14%--who are now turning toward the AfD.
“A clear line must be drawn against right-wing extremists. [...] it is unacceptable for Christians to vote for parties that spread nationalist, racist, or anti-Semitic opinions, or tolerate them in their ranks,” the Bavarian bishops reacted in a statement published on November 30.
The accusation of racism against the AfD is debated: the party defends itself vigorously. If anti-Semitism and its substitutes remain “inadmissible” in the Church, to use the words of Popes Pius XI, Pius XII, and their successors, it must be admitted that the bishops are moving hastily and in one-sidedly.
Excluding AfD Members
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, seems ready to hunt down Catholics who vote in favor of the AfD. The Pillar reports that he “said he believed that membership of the AfD was incompatible with holding Church offices.” The cardinal also said that he was “hesitant about putting the rules in writing at the moment.”
It is a proposal which only relays the insistent request of Irme Stetter-Karp, the president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), accused of supporting abortion. For her, “Active support for the AfD contradicts the basic values of Christianity.”
From this perspective, AfD sympathizers could be excluded from all responsibility within institutions managed by the Church: schools, clinics, parish committees—which represent numerous jobs, because the Church is the third largest employer in Germany.
What is particularly revealing in this affair is that the Fourth Assembly of the Synodal Path approved a text reforming the rules of hiring in structures managed by the Church, which opposes all forms of discrimination against remarried divorced people and same-sex couples...
In other words, Catholic members of the AfD are considered people to exclude, to banish, and in a way to excommunicate.
We must add, however, that Cardinal Marx’s position is not unanimous: in September 2023, Bertram Meier, Bishop of Augsburg, asked whether it was necessary to exclude members of the conservative party from the office of lector during Masses, stated that “Party membership alone is not a criterion for excluding people.”
(Source : The Pillar – FSSPX.Actualités)