An ecumenical working group promoting "consensual BDSM culture" will again exhibit at Germany's Catholic Congress in Würzburg this week after organizers said its guidelines pose "no contradiction with the Catechism."
BDSM is an acronym that stands for "bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism."
"The Ecumenical Working Group BDSM and Christianity has been represented on the Kirchenmeile at several Catholic Congresses now," Cosima Jagow-Duda, head of press and marketing at the Catholic Congress, told CNA Deutsch, the German-language sister service of EWTN News, in response to an inquiry.
"All organizations with an explicitly Christian reference have this right in principle, provided they are not unconstitutional or hostile to specific groups." The group's guidelines, she added, contain "no contradiction with the Catechism."
The working group was founded in 1999, according to its own website. It also exhibited at the previous Catholic Congress in Erfurt in 2024.
Organized by the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), the German Catholic Congress (Katholikentag) is a biennial gathering led by laypeople and representing the country's main umbrella organization for lay Catholic associations. The 104th edition is taking place from May 13 to 17 in Würzburg under the motto "Have Courage, Stand Up!" Around 20,000 people are expected to attend the event, which features approximately 900 events across 50 venues.
The approved booth is listed in the official program as stand number MW-R-07 on the Kirchenmeile — a German term meaning "Church Mile" — an exhibitor area where approximately 300 organizations present themselves to attendees.
'Out of the taboo corner'
On its website, the working group describes itself as "Christians from various denominations who deal with eroticism and sexuality, particularly in the area of sadomasochistic sexual preferences."
Its published guidelines open with a "preamble on the relationship with God," affirm belief in "the love and salvation through Jesus Christ," and state that the group "accepts and lives the diverse and consensual BDSM culture." The group has also said it wants to take the topic "out of the taboo corner."
Jagow-Duda told CNA Deutsch that applications for the Kirchenmeile "follow clear rules and guidelines" and that the organizers do not admit, for example, "right-wing extremist or anti-democratic groups."
The printed program book states, on page 58, that "a diversity of opinions that encourages and enriches discourse on the cohesion of society is expressly desired," with limits "where discriminatory, racist, or antisemitic convictions are represented, expressions of group-related misanthropy, or an ideological distance from the free democratic constitutional order are to be expected."
"This concerns a booth where Christians are entering into conversation about their faith," Jagow-Duda said.
Other groups presenting on the Kirchenmeile whose positions stand in tension with Catholic teaching on sexuality include the Network of Catholic Lesbians, the LGBT initiative #OutInChurch, and the Ecumenical Working Group Homosexuals and Church.
The official program also lists a "Queer worship service" on May 16 under the title "Life is colorful — diversity in the Church?!" and a Bible workshop titled "Reading the Bible queerly. Why G*D is a fan of diversity."
Pro-life panels rejected, association still present
The event's panel program, meanwhile, turned down three proposals on surrogacy, abortion, and end-of-life care from the country's largest lay pro-life association, citing limited slots, even as the association maintains its own booth at the congress.
The proposals were submitted by the Action for the Right to Life for All (ALfA) in cooperation with the Association of Catholic German Teachers (VkdL).
The proposals' titles, according to the Catholic weekly Die Tagespost, were "Life Without a Child? Is Surrogacy the Solution on the Way to a Wished-For Child?", "Taboo Topic Abortion — 'I didn't want to abort, I had to,'" and "My Death and My Dignity — Autonomy and Human Dignity at the End of Life."
Britta Baas, a spokeswoman for the ZdK, told Die Tagespost that the rejections were made on "capacity grounds." Two-thirds of all applications had to be turned down because only 40 panel slots were available, she said.
The Catholic Congress leadership had set up a so-called "topic convention" before the nationwide call for proposals opened, which pre-selected the 40 panel themes. About three times as many applications were submitted as there were slots, Baas said, and "the panel working group commissioned by the Catholic Congress leadership then had to make a selection."
According to Die Tagespost, ALfA and VkdL had already secured several speakers for the proposed panels, including psychiatrist Christian Spaemann, surgeon and medical ethicist Kai Witzel, and the jurist Felix Böllmann of Alliance Defending Freedom International.
The Catholic Congress will, however, host one panel on assisted suicide, titled "Quo Vadis Assisted Suicide? General Regulations and Individual Wishes," with Social Democratic Party (SPD) parliamentarian Lars Castellucci and the president of the German Caritas Association, Eva Maria Welskop-Deffaa, among the discussants.
ALfA itself will be present at the Catholic Congress with a booth on the Kirchenmeile, located in the "Social Cohesion" theme area.
In parallel to the official program, the association is holding its own events in cooperation with the VkdL and Die Tagespost, including a lecture on end-of-life autonomy by Witzel, a presentation on international surrogacy by ALfA national chair Cornelia Kaminski, and a panel discussion with Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg on the relationship between the Catholic Church and the German pro-life movement.
"The commitment to the protection of human life belongs at the heart of the Church," Kaminski said in a May 8 statement. "The Catholic Congress is therefore an important place to enter into conversation with people, to present our work, and to make clear how many areas there are in which the right to life and human dignity are under threat — and how needed Church members are who commit themselves to this cause."
Catholic teaching on sexuality
The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that sexual pleasure "is morally disordered when sought for itself, isolated from its procreative and unitive purposes" (No. 2351).
Chastity, the Catechism teaches, "involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift" and is realized in "the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman" (No. 2337). It requires what the Catechism calls "an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom" (No. 2339).
Consent does not, in Catholic moral theology, automatically change the moral character of an act.
