A Very Serious Call To Action In Austria

Depending on the next month or two, Cardinal Schonborn may get another up close and personal meeting with you know who.

Just when I am too angry and frustrated and saddened to even want to attempt to write a coherent sentence, God gives me another reason to keep on keepin' on.  This article from The National Catholic Reporter about the call to reform in Austria from 300 priests came as a breath of serious fresh air.

300 Austrian clerics call for women priests, reform

Cindy Wooden - Catholic News Service - 7/12/2011

VATICAN CITY -- Austrian bishops have criticized an effort by a group of priests calling for reforms in church practice, including opening the priesthood to women and married men, but the bishops have not taken or threatened disciplinary action.

Michael Pruller, spokesman for Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, said the cardinal plans to meet in late August or September with the Viennese priests who are among the leaders of the "Initiative of Parish Priests," which launched a "Call to Disobedience" in June.

The initiative, which says it has just more than 300 members, suggested saying a public prayer at every Mass for church reform; giving Communion to everyone who approaches the altar in good faith, including divorced Catholics who have remarried without an annulment; allowing women to preach at Mass; and supporting the ordination of women and married men.

In a telephone interview from Vienna July 11, Pruller said that as far as he knew, the Austrian bishops have not discussed a common response to the priests.

"No bishop has threatened disciplinary actions, but at the end of the day if a priest leads his parish away from what the church teaches, action would have to be taken," Pruller said.

The "Call to Disobedience" said the priests felt forced to follow their consciences for the good of the church in Austria because the bishops have refused to act.

Cardinal Schonborn issued a statement June 22 and said he waited three days to respond because he did not want to react "out of the anger and sorrow" the priests' initiative caused him.

"The open call to disobedience shocked me," he said.
The cardinal said none of the priests was ordained by force and all of them vowed obedience as they strive to do God's will. (Operative words here are 'strive to do God's will'.)

Cardinal Schonborn said righteous human beings must follow their conscience, and if the priests really believe they have such an extreme conflict of conscience with the church, they probably should consider whether they still belong in the church.

"I believe and hope, however, that this extreme case does not occur here," he wrote. But ultimately, "we all decide whether we want to walk the path with the pope, the bishops and the universal church or not." (Our first choice is to decide whether we want to walk the Way of Christ and that path is not always the same as the one walked by the pope and the bishops in a given era of time.  In fact, the universal church is a large road atlas of paths.)

Bishop Egon Kapellari of Graz, vice president of the Austrian bishops' conference, issued a statement June 28 saying the priests' proposals "seriously threaten the identity and unity of the Catholic Church." (Yes it does.)

While pastors are right to be concerned about providing more and better pastoral care to Catholics in the country, the situation in Austria is not so drastic that it would require priests to act outside communion with the universal church, he said. (Depends on what one is referencing as drastic.  Mass attendance in Austria could easily be considered a drastic situation.)

It is one thing to call public attention to the needs of the church, Bishop Kapellari said, and it is another to encourage people to disobey church teaching and practice. (The situation with Bishop Morris would seem to say that calling public attention to the needs of the church is determined to be disobedient by the Vatican.)

Bishop Kapellari said that while personal conscience is a "highly respected value" in the church, it is wrong to imply that the pope and bishops are not acting out of their own good conscience when promoting the unity and tradition of the church. 

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Cardinal Schonborn has a problem which could get out of hand very quickly if he isn't careful.  300 priests is about twenty per cent of the priests in Austria.  That is not an insignificant number.  In contrast, SSPX's Archbishop LeFebvre started his 'call to disobedience' with far far fewer numbers.  Even today SSPX has only slightly more than 500 priests and yet they have proven to be a major head ache to the Vatican.  It's not hard to imagine how 300 priests in Austria could snowball very quickly into thousands world wide in this day and age of internet access and utter frustration with the Vatican.  Yes indeed, Cardinal Schonborn has a problem.

I doubt any of this actually shocks Cardinal Schonborn, except maybe the actual numbers and he probably knows there are a bunch more priests behind those who did sign.  The signing or not signing may have a lot to do with which diocese a given priest works in.  Schonborn's first problem will undoubtedly be trying to keep his bishops reacting from the same playbook.  Good luck there.  I seriously wonder how many Austrian bishops would have signed this initiative is they only had the courage.  The 'Bishop Morris solution' has to have been very fresh in their minds.


This weekend, after reading the CNA article on Archbishop Thomasi's views on the UN Declaration for Human Rights, and then sitting stupefied reading Archbishop Gomez's response to a California bill to include the achievements of GLBT people in California's school curriculum, I had pretty much concluded all things Catholic were beyond my stomach.  They say though that the night gets coldest just before the breaking of dawn.  Maybe there's more truth to this than just the ambient air temperature.