\nSo some context on German bishops breaking with the Vatican to create validating rituals for same-sex unions:
- In recent history Germany is mixed Catholic-Protestant, both identities more a matter of regional heritage than theology
- The Protestantism is of the North Sea type that remained a matter of historic identity largely by shifting with the population over the 20th Century
- German Catholics therefore have direct experience of Christianity being made compatible with post-heteronormative norms
- The Catholic Church’s failure to keep pace is therefore understood as an unforced error embarrassing German Catholics before their Protestant compatriots
- Tension with the Vatican is not understood as undermining the bishops’ authority; Catholic Germans never considered themselves Catholic by virtue of being aligned with the Pope, but by virtue of being Bavarian, etc.
Also reminder that between Lutheranism, the Old Catholic Church (formed in response to Vatican I!), and investiture controversies, the German Catholic hierarchy has ample precedent for “cultivate local support and break from Rome” as a viable tactic
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