I got this piece via Mundabor:
Good Lord…. In Germany we have a very interesting development in the matter of the AfD, the party that has, by now, conquered the hearts and minds of one fifth of the population. The powers t…
mundabor.wordpress.com
We have here indeed a really brazen case of shitlib clerical parasites - people who have nothing but contempt towards traditional Romanist dogma, but still try to act holier-than-thou towards AfD supporters. This AfD representative
Maximilian Krah is himself a trad-Cat, so he knows exactly what kind of scum he is dealing with here:
A prominent German lay leader has called for members of a surging hard-right political party to be excluded from Church offices.
www.pillarcatholic.com
ZdK v. AfD: A new battle line in the German Church
LUKE COPPEN
September 6, 2023 . 5:49 PM
A prominent German lay leader has provoked debate with a call for members of a surging hard-right political party to be excluded from holding Church offices.
Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), speaks during a February 2022 assembly of Germany’s synodal way. © Synodaler Weg/Maximilian von Lachner.
Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), made the appeal in an Aug. 15
interview with
Kirche und Leben, the online magazine of the Diocese of Münster.
She said that members of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party should not be allowed to hold lay offices within the Church.
Stetter-Karp argued that the party had “moved further and further to the right” since it was founded 10 years ago and “it is clear that anti-Semitic, racist, inhumane attitudes and statements have no place in a Catholic organization.”
“Active support for the AfD contradicts the basic values of Christianity,” she said.
The interview was conducted after the AfD rose to a new high of 21% in opinion polls, meaning that it would be the country’s second-strongest party, behind the center-right Christian democratic CDU/CSU, in the event of a federal election.
Stetter-Karp’s remarks prompted a swift backlash from AfD members.
Maximilian Krah, a Catholic who represents the AfD in the European Parliament (a legislative body of the European Union), strongly criticized the ZdK, Germany’s most influential lay group and a driving force behind the country’s controversial “synodal way.”
“The ‘Central Committee of Catholics’ … does not emerge from elections at all, but is a club of functionaries who mostly live full-time from church taxes, are unemployable on the first job market, and therefore hate themselves, the Church, and the faith,” Krah wrote Aug. 16 on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Stetter-Karp clarified, in comments to
Bayerischer Rundfunk, that by “offices” she meant all positions within Germany’s expansive world of Catholic associations, from parish councils to daycare centers.
...
Germany is not the only European country where far-right political parties are perceived to be making inroads among Catholic voters.
Spain’s Vox party, also founded in 2013, has sought to appeal to the country’s Catholics with its rejection of abortion and euthanasia. But its success has prompted concern among bishops’ conference officials, particularly for its opposition to immigration.
According to the Catholic newspaper La Croix, 40% of practicing Catholics voted for the extreme right in the first round of France’s 2022 presidential election, compared to a national average of 32%.
Italy, meanwhile, has its most right-wing government since the Second World War following the triumph of Giorgia Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party in last September’s general election. Meloni, who promised to “defend God, country, and family,” is believed to have secured the votes of many Catholics.
...
Stetter-Karp told Kirche und Leben that the current situation in Germany was dangerous.
“Anyone who looks closely has been observing for some time that not only do populist simple answers to complex challenges catch on, but that trust in democratic parties and processes is also being eroded step by step,” she said.
“2024, with the European elections and the elections in Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia, will be a litmus test as to whether the seeds of right-wing forces will take root. All democratic parties are now called upon to actively tackle the competition for the trust of the population and to actively prevent AfD participation in government.”
Stetter-Karp renewed her call for a ban on AfD members holding Church posts in an Aug. 31
interview with the Christ & Welt supplement of
Die Zeit newspaper.
“My position is clear: Whoever is in the AfD must not be given power in the Church,” she said.
She also said that no elected AfD officials would be invited to speak at next year’s Katholikentag (Catholics Day) in the party’s stronghold of Erfurt.
“In the Catholic Church, extreme right-wing tones are becoming louder and shriller. Even members of our Church increasingly represent restorationist points of view, want to emphasize the traditional, and are susceptible to agitation from the right,” she commented.
Writing for the Catholic weekly Die Tagespost, journalist Sebastian Sasse argued that Stetter-Karp’s reference to restorationist tendencies in the Church showed the “actual thrust” of her comments.
“So that’s what it’s all about: The ZdK president wants to pillory her Church-political opponents, the critics of the synodal way,” he
wrote.
“By linking these critics with AfD supporters, she is proving to be an unwilling PR agent for the party.”
