Posted on 05/08/2010 7:55:53 PM PDT by marshmallow
The head of the Austrian Church has launched an attack of one of the most senior cardinals in the Vatican, saying that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, “deeply wronged” the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy when he dismissed media reports of the scandal. In a meeting with editors of the main Austrian daily newspapers last week, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, also said the Roman Curia was “urgently in need of reform”, and that lasting gay relationships deserved respect. He reiterated his view that the Church needs to reconsider its position on re-married divorcees.
On Easter Day, Cardinal Sodano called the mounting reports of clerical sex abuse “petty gossip”. This had “deeply wronged the victims”, Cardinal Schönborn said, and he recalled that it was Cardinal Sodano who had prevented Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, from investigating allegations of abuse made against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, the previous Archbishop of Vienna, who resigned in disgrace in 1995.
Cardinal Schönborn said that Pope Benedict was “gently” working on reforming the Curia but he had the whole world on his desk, as the cardinal put it, and his way of working and his style of communication did not make it easy to advise him quickly from outside.
Cardinal Schönborn studied under Joseph Ratzinger at Regensburg University and is known to be close to him. Questioned on the Church’s attitude to homosexuals, the cardinal said: “We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships,” adding: “A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous.”
The cardinal also said the Church needed to reconsider its view of re-married divorcees “as many people don’t even marry at all any longer”.
The primary thing to consider should not be the sin, but people’s striving to live according to the commandments, he said. Instead of a morality based on duty, we should work towards a morality based on happiness, he continued.
Cardinal Schönborn said clergy had often primarily protected perpetrators of abuse instead of the victims. “It was said in the Church that we must be able to forgive, but that was a false understanding of compassion,” the cardinal insisted. Since the Groer affair 15 years ago, however, the Austrian Church had appointed an ever-increasing number of lay people, especially women, to investigate abuse cases. However this new openness on the part of the Church was not shared by everyone in the Vatican, he said.
Asked if he thought celibacy was one of the causes of clerical sex abuse, Cardinal Schönborn said he had no answer and psychotherapists were divided on the issue.
Asked how he would rate the Church’s loss of credibility due to the abuse “tsunami” on a scale of 1 to 5, the cardinal said, “In Ireland the situation is catastrophic – almost a 5. In Austria it is dramatic – I’d say a 3.”
The Vatican press spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, praised the Austrian Church for its openness in dealing with the clerical abuse crisis and told the Austrian daily Kurier on Monday that Cardinal Sodano’s words at Easter were “certainly not the wisest”.
Gaydar alarming on full alert.
Schonborn has made a number of strange comments about various things over the past year or two which have caused my antennae to twitch but I've always given him the benefit of the doubt.
Assuming that he has been quoted correctly here (and this is The Tablet), he's really wandered off the reservation. I'm starting to think that this guy is a real danger and part of the problem.
I thought Schonborn was dead ... but maybe he’s just gone dotty.
Didn’t Sodano take money from Maciel?
This is a bit of a popcorn moment for me, but both sides will find a way to use their pissing contest to injure the Pope.
A worthy member of the Whore of Babylon - along with multitudes of his Protestant brethren.
He has gone Dotty, as you say, because he used to be very orthodox.
So sad to see it happen....
Old age is coming for all of us.
Schonborn was actually thought to be conservative once upon a time, but I think he was just an opportunist. He has consistently been on the wrong side of things with this Pope, and has also been very devious and treacherous.
I can’t figure out this one for the life of me. Schonborn was the main editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. After Pope John Paul died, I honestly thought that Schonborn was going to be elected the next Pope.
What he’s saying about homosexual relationships has no relation to the actual teaching of the Church, or the truth regarding homosexual psychology, and the nature of marriage.
It sounds like a kind of arm wrestling with his teacher. This is tragic for Pope Benedict, Schonborn’s soul, and the souls of the Catholic Viennese, not to mention the personal pain of B-XVI.
We should not trust him, we have seen his type before.
It READ like his comments were butchered beyond recognition. His quotes were too short, and too distantly related to the assertions they were supposed to support. I’ve got a bad feeling Schonborn might be a bit of a squish, but on the other hand, I’d never accept he promotes the rank heresies this paper attributes to him without reading much longer, far less ambiguous statements,
IOW, this article is absolutely useless.
Schönborn, Mahony, and their group are all one and the same. These cardinals are politicians in robes in attempting to placate their domestic gay constituencies that now wield disproportionate power in major capital cities.
He is orthodox. The problem seems to be the confusion among those who confuse orthodoxy with social convention. Learn the difference between core doctrines and social teachings informed by core doctrines and you’ll be able to figure out why a stalwart of orthodoxy can be intelligent enough to say what the good cardinal is saying.
http://gregorianrite2007.blogspot.com/2010/01/cardinal-schoenborn-brings-sufferings.html
http://cathcon.blogspot.com/2008/11/cardinals-mass-in-vienna.html
no, Schoenburn’s comments were typically pastoral.
Promiscuity is a “double” sin, because it is sex outside of marriage and often is exploitative of the partner, plus often exposes both to disease (a third sin if one is aware of the disease)..
If a person is in a relationship, there is less personal degradation. So a mistress is better than running around with prostitutes (and risking giving your wife STD’s) but both of these is better than seducing the maids out of sexual frustration.
All of these are moral sins, of course, but when one can’t stop a sin, one tries to limit the damage...
Keep in mind the Tablet is Britain’s answer to the U.S. Jesuit magazine “America” so take what they report with a grain of salt. Also I have learned to never trust first translations of what churchmen have said.
Better to commit just one mortal sin, rather than two, in other words?
The end result in both cases will be hell of course, if the sinner dies unrepentant but I guess we can hope for a slightly lower flame temperature in the case of the former?
you need to read your Dante.
But those with fewer sins might have a better chance to repent...
What bothers me is the idea which you expressed as "when one can't stop a sin". Shouldn't that be "when one does not want to stop a sin?" We're both agreed that free will is an important ingredient in the process of sin, I think. Even if one is ensnared by a particular sin and one should fall again and again, the desire to be free of this sin is an essential part of eventually being free of its bonds. The idea that this sin "can't be stopped" is anathema to the process of repentance and is a sin against the Holy Spirit. Of course, the less we sin, the better. However, to accept some sin, any amount of sin, even temporarily, is essentially to start playing chess with the devil and in a chess game with the devil, we lose every time.
Schoenborn's statement that "we should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships" (if quoted correctly) needs clarification, at best. At face value, it is flat wrong. A homosexual relationship is gravely sinful and this, ipso facto voids the entire meaning of "quality".
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