GERMANY_____________________________________________________________________
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An Unresolved Dilemma
German Catholics are still sparring over the moral
issues involved
in counseling women who are contemplating abortion
By Cristina Zimmerman
Four years have passed since the German government passed legislation that forced the country’s bishops to face a moral dilemma. Eighteen months have passed since Pope John Paul II—responding to the bishops’ invitation—suggested a way to resolve that problem. Yet the problem remains, still unresolved.
Four years ago, German Catholics were thrust into a debate over the involvement of Church-related agencies in abortion counseling. Were Catholic agencies being drawn—however reluctantly—into cooperation with abortionists? Were the bishops being tempted to make an unacceptable ethical compromise? Was the German Church passing up a chance to make a powerful moral statement? Were the bishops ignoring the wishes of the Holy Father? On every one of those questions, the debate continues.
How much cooperation?
The involvement of Church-related agencies in abortion counseling has been a bone
of contention since 1995, when a new law went into effect in Germany, requiring every
woman who seeks an abortion to discuss her situation with a counselor at a
government-approved agency. The counselor, having met with the woman, would then issue a
certificate testifying to the fact that their conversation had taken place. Without such a
certificate, the woman could not procure a legal abortion.
In other words, in the context of the new German law, the certificates issued by counseling agencies would constitute permission to obtain an abortion. Among the 1,500 counseling centers approved by the government, 250 were affiliated with the Catholic Church. So the debate began: Could the Church be involved in a process which frequently led to the destruction of human life?
Pro-life activists insisted that the Church could not be involved in the process of issuing certificates, since that would mean cooperation in the process of abortion. Others replied that the Church-related agencies did their best to discourage women from having abortions. If those agencies withdrew from the counseling process, they reasoned, the Church would lose any opportunity to dissuade women from going ahead with their abortion plans. Women considering an abortion would go to the centers which issued those crucial certificates—bypassing the Catholic agencies—and never hear the arguments in favor of continuing their pregnancies. In the end—so the logic ran—more abortions would take place.
After months of inconclusive wrangling on the subject, the German bishops found themselves deadlocked; they could not reach a decision by consensus. So they looked to Rome for direction, appealing to the Holy Father for guidance.
In January 1998 John Paul responded to the bishops’ request, saying that the Catholic agencies should continue to counsel women who were facing difficult pregnancies, but should not issue the certificates that allowed those women to obtain abortions. The German bishops’ conference promised to abide by the papal directive. Bishop Karl Lehmann, the president of the German episcopal conference, announced that a committee would now be charged with the duty of translating the Pope’s general guidance into a concrete plan.
Then months passed without any change. German Catholics continued their debate about the propriety of the counseling process, but since the issue had apparently been settled—at least on a theoretical level—the discussion took on a desultory quality—an almost academic tone.
Nevertheless, the problem remained unsolved. Catholic agencies still issued certificates, which women still used to fulfill the legal requirements for abortion. Although the German bishops had agreed in principle to accept the Pope’s guidance, it became clear that, when it came time to put that principle into practice, the consensus among them dissolved. The debate dragged on.
In February Bishop Lehmann reported back to the Pope, admitting that once again the episcopal conference was deadlocked. The committee assigned to propose a new solution had suggested that the counseling should continue, but the wording of the certificate should be altered to underline the Church’s opposition to abortion. Some bishops were prepared to accept that compromise; others insisted that the certificates should not be issued at all.
Spin control?
Finally, in June 1999, there were signs that the logjam might finally be
breaking. In May Pope John Paul had met privately with Bishop Lehmann, and reportedly
pushed for a speedy resolution of the abortion-counseling problem. Soon after that
meeting, German journalists reported that the Pontiff had again written to the German
bishops, providing more explicit guidance.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, June 18, Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls confirmed that the Pope had indeed written a new letter, but said that the contents of the Pontiff’s letter would not be made public for another week. The German bishops had scheduled a news conference for June 23, at which they would explain both the Pope’s directives and their own response. The Vatican, Navarro-Valls said, would make no public comment prior to that date.
In Germany, however, inquisitive journalists were already looking for some advance notice of what the latest note from Rome might say. Bishop Lehmann told reporters, “The Pope has not stipulated directly that we must stop counseling pregnant women.” The president of the German bishops’ conference did reveal that John Paul was asking for a change in the type of certificate to be issued by Catholic counseling agencies. Bishop Lehmann did not explain the nature of the changes proposed by the Holy Father, but he did hint that it might be difficult to accommodate those changes without rendering the certificates legally invalid.
So now it seemed that the German episcopal conference was engaged in the process that American political analysts call “spin control.” Bishop Lehmann was gently shaping the German media coverage of a document which was not yet available to the public; he was telling reporters how to understand words which they had not yet read.
Perhaps hoping to thwart that effort, the Vatican released the contents of the Pope’s letter slightly ahead of schedule: on June 22. In that letter, which was dated June 3, the Pope acknowledged the complexity of the issue, and thanked the German bishops for their efforts to avoid material cooperation in the process that often led to abortion. Nevertheless, he reiterated that Catholic counseling centers should never be placed “in a situation which conflicts with their fundamental dedication to the defense of life and with the goal of their counseling.”
The new phrasing of the certificate, as proposed by the German bishops’ drafting committee, did not eliminate the “serious ambiguity” of the counseling process, the Pope found. “Certainly, it shows that this consultation is oriented toward life,” he explained, “but it equally can be used for the execution of abortions according to the legal code.”
The Pope proposed a straightforward solution. The Catholic agencies should continue to counsel women, he said, and they should continue to issue documents certifying that the counseling had taken place. But on those certificates, the Church agencies should explicitly state: “This certificate cannot be used for legal access to abortion.”
There was a deceptive simplicity to the Pope’s approach. The Catholic counseling centers could continue to meet with women, and do their best to dissuade them from aborting their babies. The certificate issued by those centers would leave no doubt that the Church agencies were opposed to abortion; indeed they would bear testimony to the agencies’ refusal to participate in the abortion process. If abortionists and government authorities decided to accept the validity of those certificates—to use them in fulfillment of the counseling requirement for legal abortion—they would do so against the express wishes of the Church agencies, and the explicit terms of the documents themselves.
A plea for unity
In his June 3 letter, Pope John Paul also observed that he had written to the
German bishops well over a year earlier—in January 1998—to urge a change in the
policies of Catholic counseling centers. At that time, the Pope observed, “Bishop
Karl Lehmann, the president of your bishops’ conference, told me that it was your
firm intention to conform to my urgent request.” There was no need to underline the
fact that Bishop Lehman’s promise remained unfulfilled. Now the Holy Father set a
deadline: “I beg you, for the cause of life, to accept my decision unanimously and to
put it into practice by the end of this year.”
“All of the polemics are irrelevant,” the Vatican announced on June 22. While
conceding that the Holy See had been engaged in “intense dialogue” with the
German bishops’ conference on this issue, the official Vatican announcement suggested
that the bishops—having twice asked for the Pope’s advice—should now join
ranks in support of his decision. John Paul himself, in his June 2 letter, voiced his hope
that the “decision helps to restore the unity of the episcopal conference on this
significant problem, and to overcome the tensions within Catholic public opinion.”
The time had come, the Pontiff wrote, when “every dispute is out of place, and it is now exclusively a question of moving forward, in truth and love, for the benefit of mother and child.” If the problem were finally laid to rest, he observed, “The only winners should be the women in difficulty and the unborn children.”
Unfortunately, the controversy was not ended, and the confusion on this issue was not resolved. When the German bishops issued their own statements about the newly revised certificates, Bishop Lehmann told reporters that the document would still fulfill the legal requirement for abortion. A few days later, during an interview with the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, he explained:
The state is only interested in the fact that counseling has taken place, and that is on the certificate. It is not interested in whatever else is on the certificate. The doctor knows that this Church-issued certificate, signed by a counselor, does not contradict or negate federal law.
But of course bishops do not have the authority to issue definitive interpretations of the law. Would the German courts agree with Bishop Lehman? Some abortionists reported that they would not accept the revised certificates, for fear that they could be prosecuted under the terms of the 1995 law. Renato Schmidt, deputy party chairman of the governing Social Democrats, said the added clause would render the certificates invalid and accused the bishops of a “trick that places extra burdens on women who are in need.”
At the time this article is being written, it is not yet clear how the German courts will rule on the new certificates. Nor is it clear, in the first few weeks since the German bishops unveiled their plan, whether women who are inclined toward abortion will avoid the Catholic counseling centers, in order to be sure that they receive a certificate which will be acceptable to the local abortionist. Will the Catholic centers be able to continue their active participation in the counseling process? Will they still have opportunities to dissuade women who are leaning toward abortion. Those questions remain unanswered.
Moreover, the controversy which has now worried the German Church for four years continues unabated, in spite of the wishes expressed by Rome. In fact, by this summer the dispute had spilled across national borders, and an Austrian bishop had jumped into the fray. In an open letter to his brother bishops in Germany, Bishop Andreas Laun of Salzburg wondered aloud how the German hierarchy could ever have allowed Church agencies to “get so bound up in the system that, despite their intentions, they became accomplices.” It was unthinkable for the Church to have any association with abortion, Bishop Laun argued —especially since the ordinary penalty for complicity in abortion is excommunication.
Even now, the Austrian bishop complained:
Bishop Lehmann does not want to challenge the law. He has openly expressed his hope that, despite the wording of the Pope’s letter, the amendment [to the certificate] will be understood only as a moral appeal, with no legal meaning.
“If the German Church truly wants to obey the pontifical decision,” Bishop Laun concluded, “she must literally get out” of the process altogether. He explained that, in his view, the problem could be resolved only by issuing a certificate which could not possibly be accepted as fulfilling the requirement for legal abortion. If no such certificate can be designed, the Austrian bishop wrote, “One can only plead with the German bishops: Get out!”
Cristina Zimmerman is a student and free-lance writer temporarily stationed in Bonn.
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