American English speakers are familiar with the axiomatic question Is the pope Catholic? Applied instead to the bishops of Germany, the answer isn’t obvious.

The recent announcement of a commission for “queer” pastoral care is the latest in a long line of heretical ventures from Luther’s homeland. From a theological perspective, there is little to add to assessments like Dr. Regis Martin’s here. However, when these heterodox bishops venture into the realm of secular party politics, they ought to be criticized accordingly.

In the final press conference of the 2024 Spring Plenary Assembly of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing asserted that German Catholics are not permitted to vote for the surging Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany—AfD) party. The statement decried “right-wing extremism” and alerted Catholics to “parties [that] threaten democracy, particularly the Alternative for Germany party and the milieu behind it.” Bätzing added, “Voting for such a party means going against the basic values of human coexistence and democracy in our country.” Organized Crime: The U... Thomas J. DiLorenzo Best Price: $11.82 Buy New $10.79 (as of 06:00 UTC - Details)

The statement marks an escalation of the German Church’s attempts to delegitimize AfD. Last year, the head of the lay Committee of German Catholics demanded that AfD supporters be banned from all positions within the Church. The committee “is by no means the result of elections, but is a club of functionaries who mostly live off Church taxes full-time [and] cannot be placed on the primary job market,” retorted Catholic EU parliamentarian Maximilian Krah, a representative of AfD.

Responding to the bishops’ recent statement, AfD Bundestag parliamentarian Gerrit Huy asserted the bishops’ conference had determined “they do not like the AfD and want to make this dislike binding for all German Catholics.”

The overreach corresponds to a debate that has featured in German politics for much of the last year: the prospect of banning AfD. Representatives of Germany’s largest establishment parties have supported the idea, and state security services have gained approval to spy on the party. Earlier this year, a piece from the German activist outlet Correctivalleged a secret meeting of mostly AfD functionaries to concoct a “master plan” for the mass deportation of immigrants; media outlets spun stories of “Wannsee Conference 2.0” (a reference to the 1942 conference in which Nazi leaders established the “Final Solution” toward Europe’s Jews), and nearly one million demonstrators reportedly took to the streets. Correctiv later adjusted key details of the story, but the damage was done.

A Southern View of the... Ashe, Samuel A'Court Best Price: $3.61 Buy New $8.50 (as of 02:27 UTC - Details) Catholics outside the German-speaking world, even those inclined to support AfD policies, might note these developments and assume something sordid is afoot. This has been the default narrative of the European political and journalistic establishment for decades, and various nationalist, sovereigntist, and populist parties have had to overcome the liberally deployed “far-right” moniker and ubiquitous “1933” discourse. In countries like France, Sweden, and the Netherlands, this narrative has slowly eroded with the passage of time and the manifest destructiveness of certain establishment policies.

Germany, which grapples ceaselessly with ideas of identity and historical memory, presents a unique case. Even the hint of affinity for the right has been politically ruinous in the postwar decades. When assessing AfD, establishment politicians practically fly the time machine to 1933 on autopilot.

Yet, the AfD policy platform warrants a look. It isn’t particularly extreme. The party calls for bans on foreign funding and operation of mosques and full public veiling. Such laws are already in force in other European countries like France, Switzerland, and Denmark. Its assertions that multiculturalism and the European Union are failed projects (former Chancellor Angela Merkel openly admitted the former) are mainstream ideas among average people, even if they aren’t in Berlin or Brussels. There is little, if anything, that a Catholic should find objectively immoral.

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