The head of the Austrian Church has launched an attack of one of the most senior cardinals in the Vatican, saying that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, “deeply wronged” the victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy when he dismissed media reports of the scandal. In a meeting with editors of the main Austrian daily newspapers last week, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, also said the Roman Curia was “urgently in need of reform”, and that lasting gay relationships deserved respect. He reiterated his view that the Church needs to reconsider its position on re-married divorcees.
On Easter Day, Cardinal Sodano called the mounting reports of clerical sex abuse “petty gossip”. This had “deeply wronged the victims”, Cardinal Schönborn said, and he recalled that it was Cardinal Sodano who had prevented Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, from investigating allegations of abuse made against Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, the previous Archbishop of Vienna, who resigned in disgrace in 1995.
Cardinal Schönborn said that Pope Benedict was “gently” working on reforming the Curia but he had the whole world on his desk, as the cardinal put it, and his way of working and his style of communication did not make it easy to advise him quickly from outside.
But do re-married (formerly) long-term gay couples deserve the same respect? Does Cardinal S. deserve the same respect? Seeing as how the traditional faithful are deserting in droves (pick a church, any church, not counting growth via immigration): Is it more respectable to rent out the empty church building as a mosque, or as a gay wedding chapel?
Earlier today, I attended a vocal recital at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (a school for future professional musicians). Among the Mezzo’s choices was “General Booth Enters Heaven” by Charles Ives. Also on her program was something (Mahler?) in which St. Anthony, finding his church empty when he goes to preach there, goes out and preaches to the fishes in the river. The fishes listen attentively. But when the sermon is over, each species goes back to doing whatever it is that it does, regardless of the sermon.