So some context on German bishops breaking with the Vatican to create validating rituals for same-sex unions:

• In recent history Germany is mixed Catholic-Protestant, both identities more a matter of regional heritage than theology
• The Protestantism is of the North/Baltic Sea type that remained a matter of historic identity largely by shifting with the population over the 20th Century
• German Catholics therefore have direct experience of Christianity being made compatible with post-heteronormative norms
• The Catholic Church’s failure to keep pace is therefore understood as an unforced error embarrassing German Catholics before their Protestant compatriots
• Tension with the Vatican is not understood as undermining the bishops’ authority; Catholic Germans never considered themselves Catholic by virtue of being aligned with the Pope, but by virtue of being Bavarian, etc.