Professor Michael Schulz of Bonn University is going to marry. I think this is nice, I married just some weeks ago and it was wonderful, I don’t have any regrets. But why write about this personal decision of some professor don’t know? Well, I am not the only one writing about this in Germany.
The reason: Schulz is professor for Catholic Theology. Expert for Dogmatic*. Even dean of the catholic-theological faculty and he became a member of the commission on catholic theology of the Vatican some month ago. That is why he has to live in ‘priestly celibacy’. But now love was stronger.
He therefore loses his position as a priest in the catholic church (he was immediately suspended by cardinal Karl Lehman, of his Mainz diocese). But there is more to come: The cologne archbishop cardinal Joachim Meisner, responsible for the faculty in Bonn, will notify Andreas Pinkwart, the minister for scientific affairs of the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia, that the professor made a ’severe or annoying violation’ of the priestly moral conduct. This forces the minister to replace the professor. Because of a contract (German) between Prussia and the Holy See, dated to 1929. Obviously nobody cared to replace it in the past 80 years!
Luckily for the professor, he will keep his job, because as a federal employee he can not be fired. But he will not be allowed to teach catholic theology, so the university has to find him another position. They are thinking about philosophy. I am not sure, but I think I get it right when I say that the university now has to pay another professor to replace him. I agree that nobody should loose his or her job because of the highly private decision to marry and not stick to the silly celibacy-stuff. But I don’t accept that the church can demand his removal from a state-run university forcing it to probably have extra costs. It can not be that in the 21st century our state is so strongly influenced by the church, via an ancient contract. The minister for science is told by the church what to do! Because of a decision by a professor concerning his private life. Ridiculous.
It is time to effectively separate church and state in Germany.
*: Funny what kind of professorships there are. To me this seems to be the complete opposite to science, both paid by the state to teach at the same university, but maybe I miss something here …
Tags: Preußenkonkordat, Professor Michael Schulz, Bonn, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Cardinal Karl Lehman, Catholic Church, Catholic Theology, Catholic, Celibacy, Church, Cologne, Germany, Priest, Prussia, Religion, Sceptic, University of Bonn, Vatican
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