German Jesuit Berates Church for Imposing Natural Family as Normative

It ‘discriminates’ against people in pseudo-families!

German Jesuit Berates Church for Imposing Natural Family as Normative

No Catholicism behind his forehead: The Rev. Klaus Mertes, S.J., in 2025
(image credit: IMAGO/Frederic Kern via Alamy)

The brazen unbelief of the post-Catholic Jesuits in our day has become so common that it is par for the course. The latest example is Fr. Klaus Mertes, S.J. (b. 1954), an author, editor, and school teacher who is presently superior of a Jesuit community in Berlin, Germany.

Mertes is known for his advocacy of the LGBTQXYZ ideology and rose to prominence as a whistleblower on sexual abuse at a Jesuit college in 2010. He recently gave an interview to the left-wing German Die Zeit newspaper, which was published online on Dec. 25, 2025 and in its supplement print publication Christ & Welt (“The Christian & the World”) on Dec. 30.

The interview focuses mainly on geopolitical matters and certain politicians’ and other influential people’s predilection for invoking biblical concepts or imagery, especially relating to the end times, in support of their respective person, goals, or positions.

At some point the conversation turns to the “populist right” and its promotion of the “traditional family”. The interviewer notes that this development — which Die Zeit must be viewing with sheer horror — seems to be quite in line with the position of the Catholic Church.

Mertes comments as follows: “Yes. That is precisely why we must not make the mistake of equating the traditional image of the family with right-wing populism.”

The interviewer follows up by asking if the Church doesn’t also have to make some concessions, some changes, within itself. Mertes’ answer is revealing:

The Catholic Church must be careful that the traditional image of the family, which it expressly favors, is not misused for political purposes. It allows this to happen time and again, and that is a problem. I am a teacher. At school, I meet children from different family constellations. That’s why I know that charging the traditional family with normative significance, as the Catholic Church does, leads to the discrimination of believers who do not live that way.

(Translation by DeepL and AI. German original: “Die katholische Kirche muss aufpassen, dass das klassische Familienbild, das sie ausdrücklich favorisiert, nicht politisch missbraucht wird. Sie lässt das immer wieder geschehen, und das ist ein Problem. Ich bin Lehrer. In der Schule treffe ich auf Kinder aus unterschiedlichen familiären Konstellationen. Daher weiß ich: Die klassische Familie normativ so aufzuladen, wie es die katholische Kirche tut, führt zu Diskriminierung von Gläubigen, die nicht so leben.”)

So, according to this Modernist, the Catholic Church merely “favors” the “traditional image” of the family!

Mertes, being a post-Catholic Jesuit informed by the pseudo-magisterium of ‘Pope’ Francis (think: Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia Supplicans), sees a number of different possible “constellations” of what constitutes a family and merely holds that the Catholic Church “favors” the “traditional” one.

The German unbeliever blames the Catholic Church for “allowing” the natural family to be “politicized” time and again, and he even goes so far as to accuse her of imposing the favored model as normative (“charging the traditional family with normative significance”)! This, he maintains, leads to the “discrimination” of those who “do not live that way”!

If we take Mertes’ position to its logical conclusion, then we must conclude that the Catholic Church has no right to preach against sin because doing so would ‘discriminate’ against sinners! Then she has no right to preach the truth because it would discriminate against liars! What goes on inside such a man’s cranium?

The interview in Christ & Welt (Dec. 30, 2025), page 14

It is time someone reminded this Jesuit of some basic truths, and we are happy to oblige, free of charge:

In the divinely-created natural order, there is only one kind of family, and it consists of husband, wife, and children. We shouldn’t have to, but if we must use a qualifier, we could call this the natural family. It is the Catholic Church’s right and duty to proclaim and defend this naturally and supernaturally revealed truth. Any other kind of family ‘model’, as some like to call it, is in reality a pseudo-family; it is a travesty, a farce, an abuse, a lie — and certainly a grave sin against God.

Certainly, there are now many ‘constellations’ of people living together in a way that is unchaste and unlawful, and that concerns not only people of the same but also of the opposite sex. And, tragically, a great many of such households also have children in them. Obviously, such children are not to be blamed, for they are not responsible for the household in which they must grow up; in fact, they are but the victims of other people’s selfish choices and sinful lives.

Yes, this is tragic, but it cannot be remedied by suppressing or adulterating the truth revealed by God, or by dragging the natural institution of the family down to the level of perverted pseudo-families. If this puts certain children at some kind of disadvantage, it is the natural consequence of sin. Then the blame must be sought with the disordered household, not with the Church who refuses to become unfaithful to her Lord by altering the Gospel so that sinners aren’t made to feel bad (cf. Mt 19:3-12).

It may be news to the Rev. Mertes, but God’s Law is indeed normative: “…keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you” (Deut 4:2); “…this do, and thou shalt live” (Lk 10:28). Yes, the commandments are imposed, first by God, then by the Church in His name. Seeking to be ‘liberated’ from God’s Law would mean “making liberty a cloak for malice” (1 Pet 2:16) and would not constitute true freedom but only entrapment in “the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will” (2 Tim 2:26).

Pondering Fr. Mertes’ reprehensible twisting of the truth, we find a certain application in the divinely-inspired words of St. Paul, who, interestingly enough, was referring to sodomites when he wrote that they “changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom 1:25).

Once again we see man dethroning God. The rights of God are eclipsed, and the rights of man — with his “infinite dignity” — are enthroned in their place.

As Pope Leo XIII observed 125 years ago: “The world has heard enough of the so-called ‘rights of man.’ Let it hear something of the rights of God” (Encyclical Tametsi Futura, n. 13).

Title image source: Alamy (IMAGO/Frederic Kern)
License: rights-managed