German bishops were left hot under the dog collar after it emerged last month that a publisher co-owned by 12 of Germany's Catholic dioceses was a prolific producer of "erotic fiction."

The German Bishops' Conference has now ordered executives at the Weltbild publishing company to sell their stake "without delay," the church authority said in a statement on Tuesday.

The bishops referred to "media that contradicted the ideals of the shareholders," by which they presumably mean the more than 2,500 titles that until recently appeared in the "erotic" section of Weltbild's website.

They're hardly books you'd expect to find next to The Lives of the Saints. According to The Local, titles included "Boarding School for Sluts" and "The Lawyer's Whore."