Lenten missions launched in 12 European cities Report, page 30
AUSTRIA
Schönborn hits back at rebel priests
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt In Vienna
AUSTRIA’S MOSTsenior cleric has told hun- dreds of priests who pledged to give Communion to non-Catholics and to support calls for married and women priests that they should back down or leave the Church. Cardinal Christoph Schönborn accused more than 300 priests and deacons who make up the Austrian Priests’ Initiative for church reform of damaging church unity. Under the initiative members have published a “Call to Disobedience” listing seven “actions” they intend to carry out (The Tablet, 9 July). Cardinal Schönborn countered the initiative with an “Appeal for Unity” last Saturday in the online edition of Thema Kirche, an arch- diocesan publication for priests and church employees. He said he had not reacted sooner to the priests’ initiative because he had wanted to wait for the initial fury and sadness it had aroused in him to subside. He announced that he would arrange to meet the members of the initiative as soon as he could, to discuss the way forward. “I am shattered by this public appeal to dis- obedience,” Cardinal Schönborn said, adding:
GERMANY Dioceses open archives for abuse research
EVERY CATHOLICdiocese in Germany is to open its archives to an independent crimi- nological institute in a bid to restore its credibility after last year’s abuse revelations, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. The German bishops’ conference’s press
spokesman, Matthias Kopp, confirmed a report in last Saturday’s Der Spiegel that on 20 June the conference unanimously decided to go ahead with two three-year research proj- ects on church sex-abuse cases. All 27 German dioceses will open their archives to the Criminological Research Institute in Lower Saxony. Criminologists will be given full access to all personnel files dating back to the year 2000. Nine dioceses have decided to give access to files dating back to 1945. Church employees supervised by a
team of retired attorneys and judges put together by the institute will search the files for reports of abuse. All reported victims who are still alive and can be found will be sent a questionnaire and asked to describe what happened in their cases. They will also be invited for interview as will alleged perpetrators. The bishops’ con- ference is keen to find out under what circumstances a report of sex abuse was made, how the Church reacted in the past and how children can be better protected in future. In the second project, a group of psychia-
trists from Essen, under the well-known forensic psychiatrist Norbert Leygraf, will be asked to assess around 50 cases of priests and Religious who faced charges of abuse in court and were examined by psychiatrists.
“Whosoever renounces the principle of obe- dience, disrupts unity.” He pointed out that priests promise the bishop “reverence and obedience” of their own free will and that he, as a bishop, had promised to obey and be loyal to the Pope, adding: “And I will stand by that even if there have been moments when it wasn’t easy.” Anyone who came to the decision “that
Rome is on a wrong track which seriously contradicts the will of God” must “in the extreme case” leave the Catholic Church, said the cardinal.
Schönborn then gave Blessed John Henry
Newman and Blessed Franz Jägerstätter as examples of men who were faced with grave decisions of conscience. Newman had come to the conclusion that the Church of England had “erred from the truth” and that “the Church of Christ continued to live in the Roman Catholic Church”, and had therefore become a Catholic. Similarly, Jägerstätter had refused to serve in Hitler’s army and had paid the price with his life. In support of the rebel priests, the lobby groups We Are Church, the Austrian Lay Initiative and several prominent Austrian Catholic publicists responded by quoting Newman’s toast “I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards”, and pointed out that Jägerstätter was one of the very few Austrian Catholics to disobey their bishops in April 1938, when the bishops called on Catholics to vote for the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany, but that he did not leave the Church. Jägerstätter was rehabilitated and beatified, they noted.
UNITED STATES
Inquiry opens into embattled diocese
A VATICAN investigation into an extensive programme of parish closures by the Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio, began this week following a request to Rome by its bishop for an apostolic visitation, writes Michael Sean Winters in Washington DC. It is being led by John Smith, the retired Bishop of Trenton, New Jersey, who arrived in Cleveland following complaints over the closures. There are currently 15 cases pending in Rome challenging specific parish closures. In a statement released by the diocese’s chancery, Bishop Richard Lennon confirmed that he had asked for the apostolic visitation, saying: “While I am confident that I am faithfully handling the responsibilities entrusted to me, I personally made this request earlier this year because a number of persons have written to Rome expressing their concerns about my leadership of the diocese.” In 2009, Bishop Lennon ordered that 41 of the diocese’s 224 churches would merge with other churches and another 29 churches would permanently close, prompting many to question his authority.
THE NETHERLANDS
Salesian on child pornography charges
THE DISGRACED former head of the Salesian order in the Netherlands, Fr Herman Spronck, was last week charged by Dutch police with possessing child pornography, writesTom Heneghan. He had been arrested but the 75-year-old priest was later released because of his age and the fact that his computer contained only “a small number” of pornographic images, police said. In 2006 Fr Spronck was convicted of a similar charge of possessing child pornography. Current Salesian Provincial for Flanders and the Netherlands, Fr Jos Claes, said the news was an embarrassing surprise and the order had no prior knowledge of the present charge. Fr Spronck was dismissed as head of the order in the Netherlands in May after he said paedophile sex was “not always wrong” (The Tablet, 28 May).
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