By Richard Owen
The Times
March 11, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7058065.ece
AUSTRIA -- A cardinal seen as a future candidate for the papacy has broken a Vatican taboo by raising the possibility that priestly celibacy is among the causes of the sex abuse scandal sweeping the Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna and a protégé 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.
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| Cardinal Christoph Schönborn is seen as a future candidate for the papacy Photo by Ronald Zak |
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".
He 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."
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.
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 "Schönborn says priestly abuse is the fault of celibacy" and "Celibacy must be reconsidered, Schönborn 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.
Despite calls by a number of theologians and lay Catholic organisations for priestly celibacy to be abolished or made optional, it has been repeatedly reaffirmed as untouchable by successive Popes, including Pope Benedict XVI.
It may be raised, however, at a conference today and tomorrow at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome marking the "Year of the Priest".
The Lateran conference is being organised by Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the Brazilian head of the Congregation for the Clergy, who once observed that celibacy was "not dogma".
The celibacy rule for priests was not part of the early Christian Church but was introduced in the Middle Ages. A number of early Christian fathers were married, including St Peter himself, according to St Mark's Gospel.
Tomorrow Pope Benedict is to meet Robert Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg and head of the German bishops' conference, to discuss the growing crisis over clerical sex abuse in several countries, including the Pope's native Germany.
Archbishop Zollitsch has described clerical abuse as outrageous and asked the victims for forgiveness, but has denied any link between sex abuse and celibacy.
In his article Cardinal Schönborn said that he could understand the frustration of many of the faithful over the paedophilia scandals.
"Enough is enough. That's what many people are saying and thinking," he wrote. "Enough of the scandals!"
A number of sex abuse scandals involving priests have come to light in Austria recently, one involving a man of 53 who says he was abused repeatedly for six years from the age of 11 by two priests.
Pope Benedict is due to issue a pastoral letter to the faithful in Ireland on the sex abuse issue after meeting Irish bishops in Rome last month.
The scandal has come closer to the pontiff himself after it emerged that a former chorister in Regensburg – where the Pope once taught – had claimed he was abused while a member of the Cathedral choir, which was led for three decades by Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, the Pope's older brother.
Monsignor Ratzinger admitted this week that he had slapped choirboys but said he knew nothing of sexual abuse allegations.
An article published today in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, by the historian Lucetta Scaraffia suggested that a greater presence of women in high-level decision-making bodies in the Church would have helped to lift the "veil of masculine secrecy" over clerical sex abuse cases.
This week Father Kung, who was stripped of his licence to teach Catholic theology in 1979 after he rejected the doctrine of papal infallibility, said in The Tablet that denials of any link between abuse and celibacy were "erroneous".
He said celibacy was not the only cause of the misconduct but described it as "the most important and structurally the most decisive" expression of the Church's repressive attitude to sex.
Father Kung added: "Compulsory celibacy is the principal reason for today's catastrophic shortage of priests, for the fatal neglect of eucharistic celebration, and for the tragic breakdown of personal pastoral ministry in many places."
Four years ago Pope Benedict reaffirmed the value of priestly celibacy after the issue of allowing priests to marry was raised at a Synod of Bishops. Last November the Vatican made clear that its new rules facilitating the conversion of Anglicans, including married Anglican priests, did not signify any change in its rules on priestly celibacy.
Cardinal Schönborn, 65, is a leading conservative theologian of aristocratic origin. Born Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert von Schönborn 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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