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	Vatican Needs to Discuss Celibacy Straits Times June 16, 2010 http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/World/Story/STIStory_527317.html VIENNA - THE Vatican needs to discuss the issue of celibacy and whether to ordain married priests, Austrian bishops said at a conference. 'We hear this question as bishops and we are telling Rome that we have this problem,' Bishop Alois Schwarz of the Carinthia diocese told the three-day congress in Mariazell south of Vienna, which wrapped up on Saturday. The Roman Catholic Church is struggling with a series of high profile paedophile priest scandals that critics have linked to the issue of celibacy. The debate in small parish churches over celibacy and married priests should not be ignored but should be an 'amplifier' for the Catholic Church worldwide, Schwarz insisted. The role of women in the Church was also among the 'many open topics which we need to discuss with sensitivity and from different viewpoints,' he argued. Without addressing directly the sex abuse scandal, the bishops called for 'broad reforms' during their congress. Vienna's archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn stayed silent on the crisis when he opened the meeting, although in March he said the Church should take a look at celibacy when considering the possible causes behind the sex abuse scandal. Several calls have been made within the Austrian Church lately for a re-think on issues like celibacy and women priests. On Wednesday, the bishop of Eisenstadt, Paul Iby said in a newspaper interview: 'It should be left up to every priest whether he wants to live a life of voluntary celibacy or in a family.' -- AFP
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