In late November, the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference announced that an assembly of diocesan representatives had approved changes to the rules for homosexual Church employees. The news came only days after the German bishops returned from their Ad limina visit to Rome, as Tagesschau reported.

A new edition of the ecclesiastical labour law was passed with a two-thirds majority during a plenary session and provides that employees, who used to be required to agree to the Church’s moral code with regard to relationships and intimacy, are now free to follow their own moral convictions, as these are considered “private matters.” The law applies to some 800,000 lay workers within the Catholic Church in Germany; the Church is, nationwide, the largest employer second only to the government itself.

“The core area of private life, especially relationships and intimacy, are not subject to legal assessment,” the revised law states. The text hails “diversity” as “enrichment” since “all employees can be representatives of God’s unconditional love and thus of a Church that serves the people, regardless of their specific tasks, their origin, their religion, their age, their disability, their gender, their sexual identity, and their way of life.”

Employees with a “sexual identity” contrary to Scripture and Church teaching are asked to “bring a positive attitude and openness toward the message of the Gospel and respect the Christian character of the institution,” as the only...

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