A root that sustains you: the Church in Germany facing the temptation of blood and soil

Novels 11, 17–18

¹⁷But if some of the branches were cut off, and you, who were only a wild olive tree, were grafted in their place and made a sharer of the root and sap of the olive tree, ¹⁸Do not boast against the branches. If you boast, know that it is not you who supports the root, but the root that supports you.

Acts 10, 34–35

³⁴Then Peter opened his mouth and spoke thus: «Truly I acknowledge that God is impartial, ³⁵But in every nation, he who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Ephesians 2:14

¹⁴For he himself is our peace, he who has made the two people one: he has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility,

When more than 43 out of every 100 voters in a state cast their ballots for a party, a minority church can no longer simply comment. It must state its position. In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD obtained 43.8% of the vote, its best result ever, and stands on the threshold of power. Catholics there are only a handful, around 66,000 out of just over 300,000 Christians. In Fulda, from September 28 to October 1, sixty bishops gathered in plenary assembly responded with words of discernment, rather than with electoral directives.

What happened in Fulda

A threshold, not a turning point.

Bishop Heiner Wilmer, president of the German Bishops' Conference since February, used words rarely heard from a bishop. He said that AfD participation in the government would be a "rupture" in the history of the Federal Republic, a "paradigm shift." He added that this party challenges the fundamental values of social cohesion and wants "a different Germany." This expression is loaded with meaning. It doesn't refer to a change of policies, but to a different vision of the country and of humanity.

The bishops also emphasized the context of this moment in relation to their 2024 declaration. Völkisch nationalism, that is, nationalism based on the concept of the people as a community of blood, is incompatible with Christianity. Therefore, there is no reversal of position. There is a continued fidelity, like a watchman repeating the same cry as the night progresses.

Perhaps the harshest word was the briefest: antisemitism is a sin. Wilmer said it at the outset, then reiterated it at the close, specifying that the Episcopal Conference was "devastated" by its rise, "from both the right and the left." Symmetry matters. The Church does not choose sides in condemning hatred: it judges hatred, wherever it comes from.

A statement that commits the doctrine

The final text criticizes the AfD for a program and rhetoric that contradict the Christian conception of God and humanity. Wilmer speaks of a "diametrical" disagreement. The bishops did not say: this program is economically bad or politically clumsy. They said: it clashes with the image of God and humanity that we receive from Revelation. The boundary is therefore drawn in the realm of anthropology, where faith is competent, and not in that of governmental technique.

They finally demanded the continuation of the compensation fund for victims of abuse. This is not a minor point. A Church that claims to speak of human dignity must be judged on how it treated injured children within its ranks. The credibility of public pronouncements is inseparable from the truth about one's own failings.

What faith rejects, and why

Man is not a belonging

Christianity rests on a truth that neither blood nor soil can absorb: every human being is created in the image of God, before any nationality, language, or lineage. To the centurion Cornelius, a foreigner, a man from an occupying army, Peter makes this profound discovery: «I now understand that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right» (Acts 10:34-35). This passage is less straightforward than it appears. Peter, a devout Jew, must relinquish an instinct of belonging to enter the house of another. Nothing compelled him to do so, except the Spirit who had gone before him.

Völkisch nationalism asserts the opposite. It makes origin a criterion of being, not merely of memory. It is not content with loving one's homeland, which the Church has always recognized as a virtue linked to filial piety. It decides who belongs to the people and who never will. It is this line that the bishops consider incompatible with the faith. Loving one's country is a form of gratitude. Defining one's country against others is a form of idolatry.

Many readers, in France and elsewhere, will think the distinction is subtle. Yet it is very concrete. Imagine a parish in Magdeburg or Halle where a family who has arrived from Syria comes to pray on Sunday. Are they "at home" in the Church? The Catholic answers yes without hesitation, because he has no choice: baptism has made him a brother to those who are there. An ideology of ancestry cannot answer yes without ceasing to be itself.

German memory is not a backdrop

The Church in Germany does not speak of a neutral place. In 1937, Pius XI had the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge read in all the churches of the Empire; it denounced the divinization of race, people, and the state. This text remains one of the few papal documents written first in German, in haste, out of fear of being arrested for disseminating it. Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Münster, preached in 1941 against the murder of the sick. His pulpit became a refuge for public conscience. And Edith Stein, a Jewish woman who became a Carmelite nun, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942, a victim of the racial delusion that sought to strip her of her humanity.

These names are not invoked to accuse anyone of being a Nazi. That would be an intellectual shortcut, and the bishops avoid it. They are recalled because they show what happens to a Church when it hesitates to name what, in discourse, contradicts the Gospel. Many German Catholics in the 1930s voted for ordinary reasons: economic anxiety, fear of disorder, weariness with established parties. History records that these ordinary reasons sometimes made the extraordinary possible.

We must also face the truth from the other perspective. After 1945, the same nation witnessed the emergence of a culture of remembrance, a collective act of penance. "Never again" is not a mere slogan. For many, it has become a Christian conviction as much as a civic one. The Church in Germany sees itself as the guardian of this conscience. When it sees thresholds crossed, it knows that its voice is expected, and that its silence would already carry the weight of an answer.

The Jewish roots of the Catholic faith

Antisemitism, which the bishops name so clearly, is not just another issue for a Catholic. It touches the very identity of the faith. Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, who came from the nations and were tempted to consider themselves superior to the Jews: «If some branches were broken off, and you, a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, […] do not boast against the branches. If you boast, you do not support the root, but the root supports you» (Romans 11:17-18). The image is precise. The Church is not an autonomous tree that has replaced another tree. It is a graft onto an ancient trunk. Contempt for the Jews is therefore, in the literal sense, a sawing motion against the branch on which one sits.

John Paul II said it in Mainz in 1980, referring to the Covenant that is "never revoked." He reiterated it in the synagogue in Rome in 1986, speaking of "elder brothers." These words transformed, without negating, the way Catholics read their own Scriptures. Wilmer's statement, "anti-Semitism is a sin," is part of this continuity. It is not a slogan of the moment: it is a consequence of faith in the Incarnation. The Word became flesh in a people, the people of Israel, and in a genealogy that begins with Abraham.

A practical consequence follows from this. When bishops speak of antisemitism on the rise, both on the right and the left, they refuse to allow indignation to become selective. It is tempting to denounce only the hatred of the adversary. Christian integrity consists of first denouncing the hatred that infiltrates one's own camp. A Jewish community cannot be protected by choosing, based on the perpetrators' skin color, which cases might warrant a warning.

Keep the door open without yielding the threshold

Thirty percent of Catholics

The figure shocked even the bishops themselves: roughly thirty percent of Catholic voters in these elections cast their ballots for the AfD. Wilmer called it "frightening." The word isn't a reproach directed at the faithful. It's the observation of a pastor who is measuring the gap between what he preaches and what people experience. There's an honesty here that isn't always found in political pronouncements: the Church acknowledges that its teachings don't automatically translate into votes.

How can we understand this vote without justifying or dismissing it? The reasons are varied: the feeling of being forgotten in regions marked by deindustrialization, the fear of losing one's identity in the face of migration, distrust of elites perceived as distant, the impression that the Church talks too much about morality and not enough about work, rent, and villages emptied of their shops. Some of these fears are real. A serious pastor doesn't dismiss them out of hand. But he refuses to allow them to be transformed into the designation of a scapegoat, because that's where what the Gospel calls the division of the heart begins.

This is why Wilmer insists: it is essential to maintain dialogue with those who vote for the AfD, to create more opportunities for discussion, and to give time and space to their voices. This stance may seem paradoxical after such harsh words. It is not. The Church condemns an ideology; it does not dismiss individuals. A doctor who diagnoses an illness does not close the patient's office door.

The wall that Christ has already torn down

It remains to be explained why this twofold attitude—firmness on principles and hospitality toward people—is not a tactical compromise, but the very essence of the Gospel. Paul writes to the Ephesians, divided between Jews and Gentiles, that Christ «is our peace, who has made the divided against us one, and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility» (Ephesians 2:14). The verb is strong: destroy. The wall is not simply bypassed or softened; it is brought down in the flesh of Christ. Whoever, in the name of faith, rebuilds this wall, reconstructs what the Lord has torn down.

This changes the way we look at current events. A Church that opposes the policy of the internal border, the one that separates "true" Germans from others, is not engaging in partisan politics: it is protecting the work of Christ. And it is also protecting those who might be tempted by the wall, because no one is free when they are building partitions. The hater is always the first prisoner of their hatred.

What can the faithful do in concrete terms, in Germany and beyond? Three simple actions. First, understand the bishops' teachings without reducing them to mere leaflets; read them in context and discuss them. Second, reach out to those who think differently—a neighbor, a colleague, a relative—with the patience of someone who listens before responding. Finally, translate one's faith into visible actions toward foreigners and the Jewish community in one's city, through a visit, an invitation, or simply being present. The Gospel is more convincing when it is seen than when it is proclaimed.

A Church that allows itself to be judged

There remains the final point, discreet but crucial: the request to extend the compensation fund for victims of abuse. A Church that speaks out must be held accountable. If it condemns ideologies that oppress the vulnerable, it must demonstrate that, within its own ranks, the vulnerable have been heard. The victims are not a thing of the past. They are the measure of the episcopal word. Without this consistency, any appeal to human dignity would ring hollow, and rightly so.

There is a lesson here for every Catholic reader, regardless of nationality. The Church's political discernment is only valuable if it is grounded in ongoing conversion. The German bishops do not claim to be pure. Rather, they say: we know the cost of silence, we know the cost of institutional pride, and we want our word to be verifiable.

More broadly, all of Europe is watching. In several countries, identity movements are seeking a veneer of Christianity to legitimize exclusion. The Church cannot accept that its name be used for this purpose. Christianity is not a tribal flag; it is a family open to all nations. What the German bishops said in Fulda, others will have to say elsewhere, in their own words and at their own risk.

The root, Paul reminds us, sustains us. No border, no genealogy, no election will move it. It is up to us not to forget this, and to live simply enough from this dependence so that we no longer need to dominate anyone.

Lectio divina

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