VATICAN CITY—Germany’s Catholic bishops vowed to continue their national debate about changes to church teachings on controversial topics, including homosexuality and the ordination of women, defying a Vatican call to halt their discussions. 

The bishops met on Friday with several of the Vatican’s highest officials, who expressed their “worries and reservations” about a process that could throw into question “nonnegotiable” elements of church teaching, according to a joint statement issued by the Vatican and the German Bishops’ Conference,

The discussions intensified long-festering tensions between Vatican officials and the German bishops over the country’s synod, a series of meetings of bishops and lay Catholic leaders which started in 2020 and is scheduled to conclude next March. 

Leaders of the synod say that a 2018 report on historical sex abuse in Germany, which found that priests there had sexually abused at least 3,677 minors over seven decades, showed the need for overhauls in the church’s governance, the role of women, the celibacy requirement for priests and teaching on sexuality.

But critics of the German synod, including prominent U.S. bishops, have warned that it could provoke a schism, or permanent split, in the church. 

Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, told reporters on Saturday that Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, had asked the Germans to observe a “moratorium” on the synod. 

The cardinal “played the role of bad guy in the discussion—somebody had to do it,” said Bishop Bätzing, adding that he supposed the cardinal saw the German synod as “like a fire that might spread everywhere” in the church.

But stopping the synod was “not an option,” Bishop Bätzing said. “Many bishops said that in a very clear way and it was taken off the table.”

“The people of God in Germany are very impatient,” he said.

Cardinal Ouellet didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The German bishops were in Rome this week for a periodic visit to the pope and other Vatican officials, a tradition that bishops from all countries observe every few years.

A special meeting was organized on Friday with some of the Vatican’s top officials, including Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, specifically to discuss the German synod.

Pope Francis during an audience with bishops of the Federal Republic of Germany at the Vatican.

Photo: VATICAN MEDIA/Zuma Press

Pope Francis didn’t take part in Friday’s discussion, as he had been scheduled to do, suggesting that he is reluctant to intervene directly in the synod. He has previously expressed his unease about the German initiative, warning the Germans not to stray too far from the rest of the church. 

Bishop Bätzing said he was at first annoyed at the pope’s absence but later concluded that it had facilitated better discussion.

The pope did meet with the bishops on Thursday, when the conversation didn’t focus on the German synod, Bishop Bätzing said. In remarks to Vatican officials the next day, the bishop said the pope told the German visitors that “the church lives from tensions, which is why tensions are part of a living church on the move.”

In his almost 10-year reign, Pope Francis has opened up discussion on formerly taboo issues such as women’s ordination, priestly celibacy and homosexuality. He has initiated a global synod, currently under way and scheduled to end in 2024, in which clergy and laypeople have raised those topics among others. Such openness has encouraged the church’s liberals, of whom Germany’s bishops are the vanguard, while distressing conservatives, including most bishops in the U.S.

In another sign of the tensions that have marked the current pontificate, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Tuesday elected new leaders who are expected to pursue a public policy agenda that emphasizes opposition to abortion. Pope Francis, by contrast, has given greater weight to other issues such as poverty and climate change. 

Bishop Bätzing on Saturday praised the “conciliatory atmosphere” of the previous day’s discussion, but didn’t suggest that the Germans were ready to compromise. When asked about blessings for same-sex couples by German clergy, which the Vatican last year banned on the grounds that God “cannot bless sin,” the bishop said he wouldn’t deny such blessings.

But the bishop dismissed warnings of a schism, saying that leaving the church wasn’t an option for the bishops or the laypeople in the German synod.

“We are Catholics, but we want to be Catholics in a different way,” the bishop said.