Germany's Roman Catholic bishops bowed to pressure from Pope John Paul II yesterday by declaring the church will stop issuing counselling certificates which allow women to have an abortion. The bishops' decision follows a letter from the Pope asking them to find ways of avoiding issuing the certificates from Catholic advice centres.
A German woman seeking an abortion must first attend a counselling session to discuss the decision and learn about alternatives to termination. Once issued with a certificate to prove she has been counselled, the woman is allowed to have an abortion, providing the pregnancy is no more than 12 weeks old.
The Catholic church runs 264 of Germany's 1,685 pregnancy advice centres, all of which are funded by the state. According to official statistics, 20,000 of the 140,000 German women who had an abortion last year were issued with certificates from Catholic advice centres.
In his letter to the bishops, the Pope said it was unacceptable for the church to give women what amounted to the key to securing an abortion.
"The woman can use the certificate, after a delay of three days, to have her child aborted in public institutions and sometimes with public funding, without incurring punishment. It cannot be overlooked that the legally required counselling certificate, which was originally designed only to confirm that counselling took place, has in fact acquired a key function in securing legal abortion," he wrote.
Bishop Karl Lehmann, head of the German Bishops' Conference, said yesterday the church would seek ways of continuing its counselling role without issuing the certificates. "We will meet the Pope's request. In no way will we withdraw from the state counselling system and we will fully use the room we have for manoeuvre," he said.
Church-run advice centres will not stop issuing certificates immediately but the bishops hope to establish a working group in March to work out how to square the counselling circle.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl gave a cautious welcome to the bishops' statement and expressed the hope that the church would remain part of the state-run counselling system. But his junior coalition partners in the Liberal Free Democrats warned that government funding could be withdrawn from Catholic advice centres as soon as they stop issuing the certificates.
The Protestant Church in Germany described the Pope's intervention as disturbing and said it did not serve the cause of church unity. The liberal Roman Catholic pressure group "We are Church" also criticised the bishops and claimed the Pope misunderstood German law if he believed that issuing counselling certificates implied approval of abortion.
The dispute over pregnancy counselling threatens to drive a wedge between German Catholics and the Vatican and has prompted some liberal theologians to call for a campaign of disobedience against the Pope. Most lay church members and many priests believe that running pregnancy advice centres is the best way to persuade pregnant women not to have an abortion. The bishops hope the country's politicians will reform the abortion law to take account of their difficulties but few observers believe any change is likely. Opinion polls suggest that Dr Kohl's government will be replaced in September by a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens, likely to be less sympathetic to the bishops' position.
The current law is a compromise that took more than a year to draft and divided Dr Kohl's government. However, Bishop Lehmann said yesterday he was determined to find a solution to the Catholic dilemma. "We will consult all political parties. I am convinced we will find a way. If we don't, we will have to speak to Rome again," he said.
