By Steve Ryan
Ministry Values
March 11, 2010
http://ministryvalues.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=860&Itemid=127
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In Washington D.C., one month ago at Catholic University, Cardinal Schonborn towards the end of his lecture offered an interesting concession by saying Christianity and the Catholic Church have leaned from secular society by listening to what he described, somewhat playfully, as their "nasty questions" He called this a "good thing", The dialog, he says, leads to a "credible Christian life" Was he talking about the need for the Church to reexamine the idea of priestly celibacy?
Now today, Times Online has reported that Cardinal Schonborn, seen as a future candidate for the papacy, "has rattled a Vatican taboo by suggesting perhaps priestly celibacy is a cause of the sex abuse crisis that is engulfing the Roman Catholic Church."
Times Online reported that Cardinal Schonborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a protege and former student of Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his archdiocese's magazine this week that "the Church must make an "unflinching examination" of the causes of the scandal. He said that these included "the issue of priests' training, as well as the question of what happened in the so-called sexual revolution of the generation of 1968".
Schonborn added: "It also includes the question of priest celibacy and the question of personality development. It requires a great deal of honesty, both on the part of the Church and of society as a whole."
According to Times Online, his remarks came days after Father Hans Kung, "the dissident Catholic theologian, blamed the Church’s “uptight” views on sex for child abuse scandals in Germany, Ireland and the US."
Times Online also said "The cardinal's spokesman, Erich Leitenberger, later issued a "clarification" claiming that the cardinal was not "in any way seeking to question the Catholic Church's celibacy rule" after headlines in the German and Italian press such as "Schonborn says priestly abuse is the fault of celibacy" and "Celibacy must be reconsidered, Schonborn says".
The cardinal's office said that he had been misinterpreted. Some observers said that he had been obliged to issue his "clarification" under pressure from the Vatican.
For years theologians and lay Catholic organisations have called for priestly celibacy to be abolished or made optional. The Vatican has staunchly stood by it policy for Priestly celibacy. Cardinal Schonborn, 65, is a leading conservative theologian of aristocratic origin. Born Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert von Schonborn at a castle in Bohemia, he studied theology and Church history in Paris and philosophy and psychology in Austria.
He was ordained in 1970 in Vienna and later studied theology at Regensburg University under the then Professor Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. He was a theologian in France and Switzerland before becoming auxiliary Bishop of Vienna, rising to be Archbishop of Vienna in 1995 and a cardinal three years later.
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