When German Bishop Franz Kamphaus called a press conference two weeks ago, journalists wondered if the 68-year-old bishop had finally been excommunicated. He had, after all, openly defied a papal directive designed to end a dispute over abortion that had divided the Catholic church in Germany. All bishops, except Bishop Kamphaus, had complied with the directive before the December 31st deadline. In fact, he had called the press conference to announce an unprecedented compromise: the Vatican had agreed to allow him to continue in his diocese a controversial practice that conservatives in the German Catholic church have condemned as church-sanctioned abortion. A woman may only have a legal abortion in Germany within the first three months of conception if she can produce a certificate to show she has received counselling at one of 1,600 pregnancy advice centres around the country. More than 200 of these centres are run by the Catholic church, something which caught the eye of the Vatican two years ago.
In September, 1999, Pope John Paul II ordered all German bishops to stop counselling centres run by the Catholic church from issuing certificates allowing women to have abortions. Nearly half of Germany's 27 Catholic diocesan bishops wrote to the Pope asking him to reconsider, saying more than 25 per cent of women counselled at their centres decided to continue their pregnancy to full term. When their request was denied, Bishop Karl Lehmann of Mainz, the president of the German Bishops' Conference and recently-appointed cardinal, made a last, desperate plea in December, 1999. He asked the Pope to allow each bishop to follow his own conscience in deciding whether to continue or abandon the counselling service.
But the Pope's reply could not have been more clear: "After praying on the matter, I request you, and through you all other diocesan bishops in Germany, to do what you can to apply a uniform solution, because I consider it highly damaging to accept different approaches within one and the same episcopate in such a crucial matter."
With that, the fate of Catholic pregnancy counselling in Germany appeared sealed. Last December was the deadline for all Catholic bishops in Germany to comply with the directive and reorganise their centres to provide "recommendations" instead of counselling and to cease issuing counselling certificates. However, Bishop Franz Kamphaus of Limburg, a diocese in the state of Hesse, was not prepared to give up. He wrote to the Pope late last year to ask him to reconsider. Of the women counselled at church-run centres in his diocese, he said more than half had decided to keep their babies and . only four per cent were know n to have used the certificate for an abortion. He visited Rome earlier this month and was granted an audience with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
After he returned from Rome, Bishop Kamphaus announced at a press conference the Limburg diocese had secured the personal permission of the Pope to continue issuing counselling certificates until the end of this year. Next December, the Vatican will compare figures from Limburg with other dioceses that no longer issue counselling certificates "to determine how best the life of the unborn can be preserved: with or without the certificate". The announcement caused a sensation in Germany. Bishop Kamphaus was the David who took on the Goliath of the Catholic Church, and won. However, not everyone welcomed the decision. Theodor Bolzenius, spokesman for the Central Committee of Catholics in Germany (ZdK), is angry about what he calls an "unintelligible" situation created by the Vatican. As a result of the agreement, the only counsellors in Germany's 270 Catholic church-run centres permitted to issue counselling certificates for the next year are those in the diocese of Limburg. "This was already hard enough for an ordinary person to understand. The Vatican has just made a difficult situation even more difficult," says Bolzenius. The row has caused a splintering in crisis pregnancy counselling. Many counsellors in church-run centres now refer women to new centres, and many have even left to work in these centres themselves.
The Association of Donum Vitae (Gift of Life) was founded by members of the Central Committee of German Catholics in September, 1999, to "maintain pregnancy conflict counselling based on fundamental Christian convictions". By next month, the organisation will have more than 50 centres, with the majority in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria. The association is part-financed by private donations but receives most of its funding from individual state governments. Though primarily concerned with "the protection of human life", counsellors are still permitted to issue counselling certificates that could be used by women for abortions. "We welcome the compromise reached by Bishop Kamphaus and the Vatican, but we are continuing our work regardless," said Donum Vitae spokesperson, Birgit Mock. The dispute between German bishops and the Vatican has ensured there is a high demand for the services Donum Vitae offers. Six months after a Donum Vitae centre opened in the state of Saarland, it had already handled four times the number of cases the established Caritas centre dealt with in a year. Most of Germany's bishops disagree with the papal directive on counselling certificates and have called for the decision to be left to each bishop's individual conscience.
For conservative bishops, however, the directive liberated them from their own pangs of conscience. They felt that by issuing a counselling certificate to a woman, their counselling centres cleared the path for a morally wrong, but legal, abortion - practically with the church's blessing. Before his death last July, the conservative Bishop Johannes Dyba referred to the counselling certificate as a "licence to kill" and a Donum Mortis or "gift of death" and banned them from his diocese in 1993. It was the in-fighting between liberal and conservative bishops in Germany that attracted the Vatican's attention in 1999 and lead to the papal directive. The Catholic church in Germany has spent DM4 million (£1.6 million) in the last month on a campaign reiterating that the church still provides help for women with unexpected or unwanted pregnancies. In Cologne, the church has united all its counselling services in new Esperanza centres. But counsellor Christa Pesch believes she and her colleagues are "honour bound" to inform any woman who calls that they cannot issue the counselling certificate a woman needs for a legal abortion. As a result, only one in five of callers actually turns up for counselling.
Catholic bishops in Germany are confused by the Vatican's decision and are worried that it will complicate matters further as the year wears on. Bishop Kamphaus has refused to elaborate on how he managed to get the Vatican to agree to the compromise. But Andrea Gurkel, a counsellor at a church-run centre in Limburg, says the bishop was a determined man motivated by "a simple solidarity with the women". Is he a hero? "If being a hero means being true to yourself, then he is a hero," she says.