Cardinal stirs controversy. (News in Brief: Germany).

Cologne--In December 2002, Cardinal Joachim Meisner attacked the loss of family values, comparing the nation's current policy in this field with that of the old Communist East Germany. "Everyone talks of values, but no one respects them," the Archbishop of Cologne said in the Kolner Express. "Our values are not fetishes, but are anchored in one point: the living God."

"Only someone who knows God, knows man," he said. "It is a concept we hear again at Christmas: God created man in His image. Therefore, man, also as image, must always refer to his archetype. Otherwise, man forgets his origin and no longer has a future."

The Archbishop of Cologne described the crisis of the family as a "disaster that is not being stopped." The "disintegration of marriage and the family in our society represents the lowest point of our present reality," he warned. "All applications of social care are the result of an erroneous marriage and family policy and an ideology that disparages maternity and paternity," he said.

In particular, the archbishop criticized the family policy pursued by the federal Social-Democratic government of Gerhard Schroder, which he said, is the same as that "practised in the former German Democratic Republic."

Two months earlier, the same Cardinal had lashed out at the large bureaucracies in Catholic institutions, including diocesan chanceries. He warned that these risk obscuring the faith (Die Tagespost, Oct. 5/5).

The Cardinal encouraged a return to an "encounter with the person of Christ." Today, he said, the Catholic Church in Germany is the largest employer after Volkswagen, and equal to the Lutherans.

His article reflected a homily delivered at an earlier annual meeting of the German bishops, which created a heated debate. There, he had critized the "structures, commissions, statutes, and secretariats" which form the framework for endless fatuous controversies and debates (Zenit, Dec. 11, Dec. 24/02).