Austrian abbots say Schönborn alone cannot prevent schism in Church

Christa Pongratz-Lippitt
The Tablet
3 September 2011

THE HIGHLY influential Austrian abbots said this week that talk of schism in the Austrian Church could not be damped down, nor the current conflict resolved, by a meeting between the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, and representatives of dissident priests.

The Church has been in turmoil since more than 300 priests led by Mgr Helmut Schüller called for disobedience on matters such as priestly celibacy and Communion for re­married divorcees (see The Tablet, 9 July). Having told the members of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative on 10 August that he could not allow their call to be left as it stood, and that they should back down or leave the Church, Cardinal Schönborn gave the priests time to “reflect” before a second meeting, behind closed doors, planned for 10 September.

But the Austrian abbots and provosts said the positions are now so hardened that a second round of talks could not possibly solve the problems. There are roughly 40 abbots and provosts in Austria and half of all parishes have Religious as parish priests.

The head of the Conference of Religious Superiors in Austria, Abbot Maximilian Fürnsinn, of Herzogenburg Abbey, said a church summit is called for as certain of the reforms the Priests’ Initiative is pressing for, such as allowing older married men to say Mass, could be taken up and were at least worthy of discussion. Abbot Martin Felhofer of Schlägl Abbey said: “This can no longer be solved by the Cardinal [Schönborn] alone. Everyone – ­bishops, abbots, Religious and representatives of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative – must sit down and discuss the problems together.”
While Cardinal Schönborn was in Madrid for World Youth Day – where he was apparently repeatedly asked about the Priests’ Initiative by his fellow bishops – and subsequently in Rome for this year’s Schülerkreis meeting, the initiative has continued to make almost daily headlines in the Austrian media.

Four priests have left the Initiative, but 86 more have joined so that it now numbers 400 priests – roughly one in 10 – and 12,000 active supporters. In his many media interviews within the last three weeks, Mgr Schüller has confirmed that he has received support from all over the world, in particular from Brazil, the US, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Mexico. The international reactions showed that the Vatican was “obviously” faced with problems worldwide and that “our concerns are certainly not Mickey Mouse issues”, Mgr Schüller said on 25 August. He admitted that the Initiative had also come in for some very sharp criticism. “Some want to throw us out of the Catholic Church altogether and even go so far as to curse us. They call us schismatics and rebels who are destroying the Church,” he told the weekly News magazine.

Cardinal Schönborn returned to Vienna on 29 August and sources close to him say he is extremely worried. It is rumoured that he has little alternative but to suspend the leading rebels, but there are fears that this may lead to a schism as the latest poll (by the Oekonsult Institute commissioned by the Austrian Press Agency) shows that 76.5 per cent of Austrians back the Initiative.

Bishop Egon Kapellari of Graz, the number two in the Austrian bishops’ conference, told Profil in Cardinal Schönborn’s absence that questions like mandatory priestly celibacy or women’s ordination which the Priests’ Initiative wanted to see discussed were “tasks which lie before us and which we have to master in the long term but which cannot be adequately answered in the short term”.