In March 2022, the Nordic Bishops’ Conference sent an open letter to the president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg. The Nordic bishops began by mentioning their historic debt of gratitude to the German Church: In Norway, for instance, the nineteenth-century Catholic revival owed much to German missionaries, and to this day the Bonifatiuswerk charity funds Norwegian church buildings. Yet the Nordic bishops wrote that in the “German Synodal Way” they saw the threat of a “capitulation to the Zeitgeist,” rather than an answer to the challenges of the present out of the riches of Scripture and tradition. “True reforms in the Church,” they note, “have set out from Catholic teaching founded on divine Revelation and authentic Tradition, to defend it, expound it, and translate it credibly into lived life.”
One year later, in March 2023, the Nordic Bishops illustrated the point by issuing a pastoral letter on human sexuality. The document is full of sensitivity to the aspirations of those who pursue sexual liberation of various kinds, and of merciful love toward those dissatisfied with their sexual nature, but it challenges those aspirations and dissatisfactions with an attractive presentation of a theological view of our embodied being. Now, one of the letter’s signatories, Erik Varden, bishop of Trondheim and Cistercian of the Strict Observance (Trappist), has written a full-length treatment of the subject.
