BishopAccountability.org
	Austrian Priests" Group Renews Defiance on Church Teaching Catholic Culture October 10, 2011 http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=12016 The dissident clergy of the Austrian Priests’ Initiative have announced that they will not back away from their “Call to Disobedience” against Church authority. Responding to a plea from Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, who urged the group to avoid an ecclesiastical showdown by acknowledging Church teaching authority, the newsletter of the Priests’ Initiative said that the organization’s 400 members “cannot do so in good conscience.” “Disobeying certain valid and strict church rulings and laws has for years been part of our life and work as priests,” the newsletter said, justifying the call for disobedience of Church teaching and discipline on issues including clerical celibacy, sharing the Eucharist with Protestants, the ordination of women, homosexuality, and Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics. In June, Vienna’s Cardinal Christoph Schonborn said that he was “shocked” by the group’s original call to disobedience, and urged members of the group to reconsider. More recently, in September the cardinal said of the dissident movement: "If it comes to actions that clearly contradict Catholic teaching on faith then it can lead to serious conflict." The Priests’ Initiative—led by Msgr. Helmut Schuller, who was vicar general of the Vienna archdiocese until Cardinal Schonborn removed him in 1999—continue their defiance.
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