Last year, a record number of believers left the German Catholic Church, according to an open letter entitled 'Church 2011 - Change badly needed', signed by 144 of the 400 theologians who teach at German universities. Therefore, as it is further stated, "2011 must be a year of change for the church".
In the letter, alluding to numerous scandals surrounding the abuse of residents by representatives of the church, it is stated that "one difficult year" is behind the church, but that "after the storm there should not be a calm".
"The church must correctly interpret these signals and get out of the ossified structures on its own in order to gain new life force and persuasiveness," the letter states.
Theologians are asking the church for a more open approach to the faithful and to abandon the previous strict norms
"Smug moral rigor is not good for the Church," the letter reads. "The Church cannot preach reconciliation with God if it does not itself create the conditions for reconciliation with those it has threatened: either through violence, through denial of rights or through turning the biblical message of peace into a rigorous morality without mercy".
In the six main points of reform, in the shadow of increasing personnel problems with the clergy, theologians demand the abolition of celibacy and the opening of the priestly vocation for women.
"The Church is in great need of married priests and women in the ranks of the church," reads the letter, which was first published by the Suddeutsche Zeitung daily.
They evaluate this letter as the greatest resistance to the official line of the Vatican in the last 22 years.
In 1989, over 200 German theologians in the so-called The "Cologne Declaration" protested against the authoritarian style of Pope John Paul II and the appointment of conservative theologian Joachim Messner as Archbishop of Cologne despite opposition from broad sections of the Church.
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