Conservative Catholic news outlets have thoroughly covered growing turmoil in Germany's Catholic Church, making available solid backgrounding for "mainstream" media who've generally been sluggish in picking up on this story.
That neglect presumably won't last, considering factors The Religion Guy will now underscore for colleagues' consideration.
A significant phalanx of German bishops, united with prominent lay activists, seem intent on revisionist change to come from their "Synodical Way" project, which the Vatican has sought to suppress, so far without success.
The German go-it-alone demands set up an inevitable showdown with the Holy See. The global repercussions were captured in a blunt Wall Street Journal headline April 16: "Can Pope Francis Head Off a Schism?" One week earlier a headline in the conservative National Catholic Register declared that "U.S. Theologians Echo Fears of Schism in Catholic Church in Germany."
The Religion Guy proposes a different hed that uses the P-word rather than the S-word: Will German Catholicism Go Protestant, Five Centuries Late?
Peg-hunting reporters will want to watch the "wires" (to use an anachronistic term) May 10 for the latest pageant of defiance. On the heels of the Vatican's papally-approved statement reaffirming opposition to church blessings and marriages for same-sex couples, a large network of German Catholics — with clergy involved — plan to stage same-sex blessing ceremonies across the nation. Watch for how many bishops are silent, or even pleased, when their priests are willing to participate.
The LGBTQ issue is only one aspect of the German imbroglio that dates from the 2019 launch of the "synodical" process, which is co-sponsored by the German Bishops' Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics, an influential group of lay activists.