Polémiques et enjeux d’une campagne électorale aux accents cléricaux. « Wahlkampf von der Kanzel » (1980) ?

The “Pastoral Letter on the forthcoming elections” of August 1980 is inscribed in West German history as the last manifestation of a specific genre, and one which had been regularly deployed by the German Catholic hierarchy in the immediate post-war years and into the 1960’s. On this occasion, however, it led to a media debate in September 1980 that was at once intense and also short-lived. The text of the “Questions to the German bishops”, published subsequently by Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde and three other academics in response to this debate, apparently sought to avoid being seen as an “open letter”. Was that because the “questions” which it raised were intended to be primarily a constructive contribution to an internal discussion within the Church? What were the issues specific to the complex relationships between religion and politics in the public sphere that played into this debate? How representative of Böckenforde’s other theologico-political works are these “questions”? This contribution considers these matters, and questions the specificity of the epistolary genre in the context of the evolving relationship between Catholicism and social democracy in the German Federal Republic.