Tales from Germany

by Anli Serfontein Berlin  - Church representatives at the traditional Ecumenical Reception during the 68th Berlinale International Film festival on 18 February 2018 dealt with the profound consequences of digitization. "In the course of digitization, cinema has considerably expanded its possibilities of perfecting the images and creating an immersive experience for the viewer," said the chairman of the Publishers Commission of the German Bishops' Conference, Bishop Dr. Gebhard Fürst (Rottenburg-Stuttgart), said in his greetings at the reception. “There is no substitute for the shared experience in the magical darkness of the movie theater,” he added. On the other hand, there is a tendency in the "picture industry" for ever more perfectly designed pictures. Through digital editing, the image is increasingly removing itself from reality. "The images triumph over reality," Bishop Fürst said. The Rev. Johann Hinrich Claussen, the Cultura...

(c) Anli Serfontein 2009 By Anli Serfontein Stuttgart, Germany, 22 July (ENI)--The recently retired senior Vatican official responsible for ecumenical affairs has said his biggest regret during his tenure in Rome is that he did not achieve an agreement on a common communion with Protestants. "Today, there is a lot of convergence. So, we got closer to each other but we could not achieve the final breakthrough. I regret it very much but you cannot push the issue," said Cardinal Walter Kasper, who retired on 1 July as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. "The main thing that I did not achieve is the sharing of Holy Communion," Kasper told ENInews in an interview in Stuttgart, while attending, as a special guest, the 20-27 July assembly of the Lutheran World Federation. Kasper, now 77, became president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 2001; he had served the previous two years as its secretary. Originally...

  It is seldom that I can just get on my bike and go to a press conference, but this one in Trier yesterday was a welcome change!   Trier, Germany (ENI). The Roman Catholic Church in Germany has launched an official telephone hotline for victims of sexual abuse in its institutions. At a press conference in Trier, Bishop Stephan Ackermann of the German Bishops' Conference said on 30 March the helpline will be staffed by psychologists and social workers from the diocese of Trier. Ackermann was appointed in February by the German bishops to handle mounting allegations of abuse in Germany's Catholic Church. The crisis began when a school in Berlin run by the Jesuit order announced in January that there had been systematic abuse of pupils by three priests in the 1970s and 1980s. After the school had appointed a lawyer, it appealed for victims of abuse to come forward. Soon it emerged that the priests involved also worked at other church-run schools and...

Sunday the 24th of May The faithful gather for outside the Roman Cathedral, dating from the fourth century, in Trier. (c) Anli Serfontein, 2009 Bishop Stephan Ackermann, Germany's newest and youngest bishop, exists his official residence to go to the Cathedral for the official ceremony. (c) Anli Serfontein, 2009 L ooking for a shady place to sit down in Trier on a hot Sunday, the church bells started peeling at full volume from all directions. Trier has more churches on a square kilometre than any place I know, but today was different: The new bishop of Trier, Stephan Ackermann was being inducted. And that is when we ran into a procession of Roman Catholic priests and bishops. In the hot-humid early summer air ancient traditions mixed with modern times. The procession was headed by a priest carrying a huge old Bible. All the great religions of the world are based on scriptures and this symbolised 2,000 years of Christian tradition. We are just small cogs in the wheel of time. Trier...

The Pope, or I should rather say the German Pope, caused the Germans a lot of headaches this week. The week started off with the influential political and cultural magazine Der Spiegel putting the Pope on their cover, saying a German Pope embarrasses the Catholic Church. They went further to dissect him and his views in detail. The problems the Germans have with this conservative Pope, is that denying the Holocaust is a serious punishable offense in this country. It seemed that years in the Vatican had made the Pope forget this fact. Why else would he have pardoned a Holocaust denier? In fact he was called the Panzer Cardinal by his detractors here in Germany long before he became Pope, because of the way he bulldozed through his conservative theology. By Tuesday last week, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel entered the fray more or less telling the Pope to sort out the mess. She got a lot of flak for that, but she had to save Germany’s reputation. This Pope was d...

Doing a story on a conference on Christian persecution worldwide, but specifically in Iraq that was held in Trier last weekend I could not help to think who caused the problems. Speaker after speaker, including many German Catholic Church leaders and lay people, warned that Christianity in Iraq is faced with annihilation and that little is heard about it. During the civil war that erupted between the Shiite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq after Sadam Hussein was overthrown from his post as Iraqi dictator in 2003, Christians were often caught in the middle, participants were told. Before the U.S.-backed forces occupied Iraq, 1.5 million Christians lived there, but today it is estimated only about half a million are left. 40% of the refugees in the neighbouring countries are Christians although they only made up 5% of the population. "Fleeing cannot be the solution to the problem," declared Marie-Ange Siebrecht, head of the Asia-Africa Department of Aid to the Church in Need. ...