German Bishop opposes AfD members in the Catholic Church
A person holds a banner with images of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, which reads 'You are enemies of the state', in a demonstration called for by the AfD. Photo EPA, Hannibal Hanschke
Central Europe
Bishop Reinhard Marx wants to keep right-wing voters outside Catholic church offices in Germany. “A clear line must be drawn.”
The Catholic Church of Germany should be free from right-wing voices. That states the Munich Archbishop Cardinal Reinhard Marx. He spoke out against Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) supporters in church offices. According to him, the right-wing AfD and its positions are incompatible with the values of the Catholic Church.
In October, the German conservative-populist AfD party became the third-strongest party in the Bavarian state elections. The Eurosceptic party has been monitored by the German intelligence services since 2021.
According to Archbishop Marx, the German bishops’ conference was “shocked” by the party’s recent successes. The Cardinal is, therefore, “convinced that a clear line must be drawn against right-wing extremism.”
However, Marx did not want to propose rules to ban AfD supporters from church offices because of their legal uncertainty. But he made it clear: according to him, it is “not acceptable” for Christians to vote for a party that represents anti-constitutional positions.
Conflict
It is not the first time that right-wing politics and the church come into conflict with one another. In the 1930s, in the Netherlands, the Reformed Churches, one of the major Calvinist denominations, banned people who were party members of the National Socialist Movement (NSB) from the Lord's Supper.
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