Liquid Catholicism and the German Synodal Path

Twenty years ago, during the Long Lent of 2002, I began using the term "Catholic Lite" to describe a project that detached the Church from its foundations in Scripture and tradition: a Catholicism that could not tell you with certainty what it believes or what makes for righteous living; a Church of open borders, unable or unwilling to define those ideas and actions by which full communion with the Mystical Body of Christ is broken. The Catholic Lite project was typically promoted as a pastoral response to the cultural challenges of late modernity and postmodernity; late modernity and postmodernity responded, not with enthusiasm for dialogue, but with a barely stifled yawn.