The Apostasy of the German Hierarchy: Electing a Modernist to Deepen the Schism
The EWTN News/CNA Deutsch portal reports that Bishop Heiner Wilmer of Hildesheim was elected chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference on February 24, 2026. Wilmer, a noted supporter of the controversial German Synodal Way, struck a spiritual tone in his inaugural remarks, stating his main task is “placing God at the center” and expressing hope for Vatican approval of a permanent synodal conference granting laypeople equal voting rights with bishops. This election, occurring amid Vatican warnings about schism, solidifies the German hierarchy’s commitment to a path of doctrinal revolution and ecclesial suicide. The article reveals a profound and willful rejection of the immutable Catholic faith in favor of a naturalistic, human-centered “reform” that is, in reality, the final stage of the Modernist infection condemned by St. Pius X.
Empty Rhetoric Masking Naturalistic Humanism
Bishop Wilmer’s opening with the Gloria—“Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth”—is a grotesque parody of Catholic worship. His invocation is not an act of latria due to the Most Holy Trinity but a performative utterance designed to lend a veneer of piety to a fundamentally naturalistic program. The phrase “placing God at the center” is modernist doublespeak. In the integral Catholic faith, God is already ontologically and juridically at the center of the Church, which is His mystical body, governed by His laws and sacraments. To speak of “placing” God at the center implies He has been absent or marginalized, a notion that reduces God to a symbolic principle and the Church to a human association. This is the precise error of the Syllabus of Errors, which condemns the idea that “the State… has a right to an indirect negative power over religious affairs” (Error 41) and that “the civil power may interfere in matters relating to religion, morality and spiritual government” (Error 44). Wilmer’s “center” is not the God of Revelation but the idol of immanent human experience, the “god” of the Synodal Way’s “sensus fidelium” divorced from the magisterium.
His call for “peace on earth” in the context of the Ukraine war, divorced from the necessary condition of the public and social reign of Christ the King, is sheer sentimentality. Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, definitively established that true peace is impossible without the obedience of nations to Christ: “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” Wilmer’s peace is the false peace of the world, which “is in opposition to the kingdom of Satan and the powers of darkness” only in name, while in practice it capitulates to them by endorsing moral doctrines (like the blessing of same-sex unions) that incur divine wrath.
The Heresy of Lay Governance and the Destruction of Ecclesial Hierarchy
The core of Wilmer’s agenda is the establishment of a “permanent synodal conference” with “laypeople equal voting rights alongside bishops on matters of Church governance.” This is not reform; it is the formal incorporation of Lutheran and Masonic principles into ecclesial structures. The Catholic Church, by divine constitution, is a perfect society with a hierarchical structure founded by Christ. The pope and bishops, by divine law, possess the full and ordinary power of jurisdiction. The laity, while sharing in Christ’s priestly and prophetic offices in their own sphere, have no part in the governing, teaching, or sanctifying office proper to the hierarchy. This is not a disciplinary matter but a doctrine of faith defined by the Council of Trent (Session XXIII, Chapter 4) and implicit in the entire tradition.
The Syllabus of Errors explicitly condemns the notion that “the ecclesiastical power ought not to exercise its authority without the permission and assent of the civil government” (Error 20). The German proposal is a more insidious variant: the ecclesiastical power is to be exercised only with the assent of a lay body. This is the democratic, secularist principle applied to the Church, reducing the Body of Christ to a political club. St. Pius X, in Lamentabili sane exitu, condemned the proposition that “the organic structure of the Church is subject to change, and the Christian community… is subject to continuous evolution” (Proposition 53). The German Synodal Way is the living embodiment of this condemned error. It seeks to “develop” the Church by stripping her of her divine constitution and making her a creature of the sensus fidelium as interpreted by a self-selected, modernist laity.
Furthermore, the very concept of a “permanent synodal conference” as a governing body parallel to or above the episcopate is a rejection of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. It creates a national church, a “synodal church of Germany,” in direct opposition to the unity of the universal Church under the pope. This is the error condemned by Pius IX: “National churches, withdrawn from the authority of the Roman pontiff and altogether separated, can be established” (Syllabus, Error 37). The Vatican’s hesitant “concerns” are a failure of duty. A true pope would have already excommunicated the authors of this project. The fact that “Pope Leo XIV” (the antipope Robert Prevost) and “Pope Francis” have “affirmed synodality” only proves their complicity in the apostasy. They affirm a “synodality” that is a Trojan horse for heresy, not the genuine collegiality of bishops in union with the pope.
Bätzing’s Confession: The Intent to Change Doctrine
The article quotes outgoing chairman Bishop Georg Bätzing stating: “there are ‘points where I believe we may change Church teaching for the sake of people without touching the core of what is Catholic.’” This is a breathtaking confession of apostasy. Catholic doctrine is not a human construct to be “changed for the sake of people.” It is the revealed truth of God, immutable and eternal. The “core of what is Catholic” is precisely the whole of revealed doctrine. To suggest one can alter “points” of teaching while preserving the “core” is to adopt the Modernist principle of the “evolution of dogma,” which St. Pius X defined as the heresy that “dogmas are not truths of divine origin but are a certain interpretation of religious facts, which the human mind has worked out with great effort” (Lamentabili, Proposition 22).
Bätzing’s admission that the Church’s sexual morality is “ineffective” because “Catholic faithful just leave it aside” is a surrender to the sin of the ages. The Church’s task is not to adapt her moral law to the fallen will of man but to proclaim it with authority and provide the grace of the sacraments to help the faithful live it. To change the law because people violate it is to make the Church the servant of concupiscence, not its doctor. This is the spirit of Antichrist, who will “change times and laws” (Daniel 7:25). Bätzing’s claim “I stand by the teaching of the Catholic Church. This is my Church” is a lie. He stands by a heretical, evolving construct of his own making. The true Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent and the popes before 1958, anathematizes the positions he seeks to “change.”
The Nuncio’s Futile and Deceptive Warning
Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Nikola Eterović warned of schism by recalling the example of Marcantonio de Dominis, a reformer who broke with Rome. This is a deliberately misleading and weak analogy. De Dominis was a man who ultimately rejected Catholic doctrine on the papacy and the sacraments. The German bishops, in contrast, are not breaking with Rome; they are occupying Rome with the approval of the current antipopes. They are implementing the revolution from within, using the structures of the post-conciliar “Church of the New Advent.” The real schism is not a future possibility but a present reality: the German bishops are in schism from the Catholic Church by their public adherence to condemned propositions and their deliberate undermining of the divine constitution of the Church. The nuncio’s call to remain “firmly rooted in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” is a cruel joke when the “Church” he refers to is the conciliar sect that has systematically dismantled Catholic doctrine and practice. His “guarantor of unity” is the antipope who promotes the very synodality that causes division.
The Synodal Way: The German Disease as the Logical Fruit of Vatican II
The article identifies Wilmer as a “firm supporter” and “consistent voter” for the Synodal Way, which passed resolutions for the blessing of same-sex unions. This is not a “tension” or a “reform.” It is public, obstinate, and manifest heresy and apostasy. The blessing of homosexual acts is a direct contradiction of the clear and constant teaching of the Church, from Genesis to Romans to the consistent magisterium, that such acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “objectively grave sins.” To approve their blessing is to approve the sin, which is to teach false doctrine. This alone constitutes automatic excommunication for a Catholic (Canon 1364 of the 1983 Code, reflecting the perennial law) and, for a bishop, deposition from office.
The Synodal Way’s methodology—empowering laypeople to decide doctrine and governance—is the practical implementation of the Modernist errors condemned by St. Pius X: “The Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching… that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Lamentabili, Proposition 6). It makes the “people of God” the source of revelation, not the deposit of faith guarded by the hierarchy. This is the inversion of Catholic order. As Pius IX taught in Quanta Cura and the Syllabus, the errors of the day seek to “subject the Church to the will of civil power and the arbitrary dominion of men.” The German bishops are doing this themselves, subjecting the Church to the will of a secularized laity.
Conclusion: The Abomination of Desolation in Germany
The election of Heiner Wilmer is not a routine leadership change. It is the formal enthronement of Modernism at the head of the German episcopate. It is a public act of schism from the Catholic Church. His program of “placing God at the center” is a lie, for the “God” of the Synodal Way is the god of human autonomy, not the God who revealed Himself in Christ and demands exclusive worship and obedience. His push for lay governance is a direct assault on the hierarchical, apostolic constitution of the Church. His predecessor’s admission that doctrine must be “changed” exposes the entire project as a revolution against the faith.
Pius XI, in Quas Primas, warned that when “God and Jesus Christ… were removed from laws and states… the foundations of that authority were destroyed.” The German bishops are now doing this within the Church itself, removing Christ the King from the law of the Church and replacing it with the law of the “sensus fidelium” as interpreted by modernist theologians and activist laity. The result is not a renewed Church but the “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place (Matthew 24:15). The only Catholic response is total rejection, as St. Pius X demanded in Pascendi Dominici Gregis: to “tear away the mask from Modernism” and “unmask its hidden deceit.” There is no dialogue, no reform, no “center” to be found with these men. They have chosen the path of apostasy, and the faithful must flee their false communion and hold fast to the immutable faith of the centuries before the revolution of Vatican II.
Source:
New German bishops’ chairman calls for ‘God at the center’ amid reform tensions (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 24.02.2026