The German Bishops’ Conference, Over the Cliff

When it was first published in 1993, Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical on the reform of Catholic moral theology, Veritatis Splendor, dealt a severe blow to the pride of many German theologians, who had long thought themselves the cutting edge of Catholic intellectual life. Indeed, within a year of the encyclical’s publication, a book composed entirely of essays critical of John Paul’s deeply humanistic explication of Catholic teaching on the path to happiness and beatitude was published in Germany—because, its editor explained, Germany had a special obligation to police the Church’s theological precincts. Who had appointed German theologians to this supervisory role was left unstated. So was the idea that seemed to undergird much of the German Catholic intellectual resistance to John Paul II: German theologians must be smarter than a Pole.