In the run-up to this fall’s Synod on the Family, we’ve been hearing a lot from the German bishops. They argue that church teaching and discipline must be informed by Lebenswirklichkeit, the reality of life. The Church should engage “the reality of human beings and of the world,” they say, formulating her doctrine and discipline in more relevant ways. This is the German bishops’ claim—and their hope.
It was Germany that gave us Luther’s sola scriptura, Scripture alone, as the ultimate norm for church teaching. When Tridentine Catholicism repudiated sola scriptura as an anti-ecclesial heresy, insisting instead on Scripture and tradition, Protestants charged that Catholic tradition was usurping the authority of God’s Word. The leaders of today’s German Catholic Church seem determined to do Trent one better, proposing that Scripture and tradition together are incomplete. We need a third element—the reality of life—in order to navigate theologically. Doubtless the few Protestants of strict observance left in Germany find their suspicions of Catholicism vindicated.
The appeal to “experience” is a predictable stratagem for established or culturally dominant churches. Such churches have a stake in the status quo. In good times, they affirm the Lebenswirklichkeit, staying on good terms with the powers that be. When times are turbulent, when the Lebenswirklichkeit is in flux, they fear expulsion from a volatile establishment. They work hard to defend or restore the reality of life with which they had made their peace.
