Watch Rome Squirm This Coming Fall

I hope I'm not engaging in hyperbole when I say a big event in Christian history is coming this Fall. It is the report of the Catholic Church of Germany on gay marriage, women in the clergy and some other liberal views. Recently in Germany, Catholic clergy blessed gay marriages and there was a preaching tour of Catholic women. There is no doubt the report of the German Catholic Church will be directly at odds with the Vatican. The link, written by a priest academic, gives three alternative scenarios that might follow the report.

The three alternatives are, more or less, the Pope excommunicates German Catholics including its clergy, German Catholic split up among themselves to follow Rome or Germany and the third is some combination of those two. The authors three alternative can be ignored. None of these will happen.

As an overview, lets review Germany. The government collects a lot of money from German Catholics and gives it to the church. The German Catholic church employs so many people it is second only to the government itself as an employer. This huge number of people wants to hold onto their jobs. To keep their jobs political support for government collection of "tithes" must be protected. Thus, policies of the church need to be aliened with policies popular with the German public.

Also, the former East Germany is mixed into the money and politics. It is largely secular and/or Protestant. This area of the country barely knows the Vatican exists.

The contribution of money from Germany to the Vatican is so large its disappearance would cause Vatican layoffs. There is then an economic motive in both Germany and the Vatican to maintain the money pipeline. 

What can the Pope do, then, to resolve an unresolvable dilemma? Every Christian should know the answer. He can pray. He can ask the entire world of Catholics to pray that the Germans come to their senses and not endorse sin as they are doing. 

German Catholic leaders can do the same, pray that the Vatican comes to its senses and liberalizes its theology about gays, women and its other mid evil views. 

This will be the way the dilemma will be resolved. It will remain unresolved. We know this will be the outcome because for several years both Germany and the Vatican have known it is coming. They did nothing about it. There is nothing they can do.  

Older readers may remember the complicated story of the Watergate break in while Nixon was President. When the public was still trying to figure out who did what and why a pundit advised everyone to "follow the money." 

Money allows us to predict the outcome of conflicts between German Catholics and the Vatican.