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	A National Church Faces a Challenge From Within By Alan Cowell New York Times June 24, 1995 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/24/world/innsbruck-journal-a-national-church-faces-a-challenge-from-within.html INNSBRUCK, Austria— For most of this year, a quiet insurgency has been building among Austrian Catholics, prompted by doctrinal differences with the Vatican and by scandal surrounding Hans Hermann Cardinal Groer, the 75-year-old primate of the Austrian church who was accused of sexual abuse 20 years ago. The results have been startling: In April, more than 5,500 Austrians left the church -- twice as many as in the same month one year earlier -- joining some 350,000 people who have forgone Catholicism in Austria over the last 10 years. In June, a group of protesters began an unprecedented attempt here to gather 100,000 signatures to protest the Vatican's rulings on the celibacy of priests, sexual morality and the ordination of women. Such are the divisions over the petition that some Catholics have refused to deliver parish newsletters to protest what Martha Heizer, an organizer of the campaign here, called "the dictatorship of priests" opposing the petition. Clerics have warned religion teachers that they will lose their jobs if they support the protest. Church newspapers are filled with arguments for and against the petition. [ By late June, some 50,000 signatures had been gathered. ] In part, the turbulence draws on the same questions as beset Catholics in the United States and elsewhere: How does the church reconcile doctrinal conservatism with the challenges that accrue from feminism and from modernity's approach to human sexuality? But here, in a land that traditionally found a huge part of its national identity in the church, the debate is both unsettling and divisive and may even herald a change in the way Austrians perceive themselves. By Austrian law, those wishing to renounce their church membership must do so before a magistrate and pay any outstanding taxes to the church -- usually worth about one percent of net income -- before their decision is marked on their birth certificates. One recent opinion survey showed that more and more Austrians say they feel a need for spiritual renewal, but fewer and fewer of them believe the church can deliver it. Another poll said Austrians place the church just above the politicians in institutions they mistrust. "Austria was once one of those Catholic countries where you could only really call yourself Austrian if you were Catholic," said Paul M. Zulehner, a professor of pastoral theology at Vienna University. "That is starting to disappear now." Some Austrian Catholics say the church does not even listen to them. "We feel we are not heard," said Dr. Heizer, who works as a professor of religious studies. The accusations against Cardinal Groer date to March, when a former student at a Catholic boarding school for boys claimed to have been sexually abused 20 years ago -- an assertion that recalled similar recent episodes in Ireland, the United States and other places. But beyond a brief and ambiguous dismissal of the allegation by the Cardinal, the church declined to investigate the case or explain the circumstances surrounding it. Pope John Paul II quietly summoned Cardinal Groer to Rome and appointed another cleric, Bishop Christoph Schonborn, as Archbishop coadjutor, meaning that he will succeed Cardinal Groer at some unspecified date. Yet neither the Vatican nor the Austrian church addressed the substance of the controversy. Indeed, Bishop Schonborn at first likened the Cardinal's accusers to Nazi persecutors -- a comparison he later withdrew. Nonetheless, the damage had been done, particularly to the credibility of the church, which claims a following of 87 percent of Austria's seven million people. "The way these allegations were handled by the local church and the Vatican was unworthy," said Heide Schmidt, a leading liberal politician in Vienna who left the church in April. "When there are allegations of the sexual abuse of children, you cannot just say nothing." Indeed, the reticence of the Austrian church seemed all the more striking when, on June 2, a 44-year-old Bishop in neighboring Switzerland, Hansjorg Vogel, openly resigned after fathering an illegitimate child, renewing the debate in Austria about the conflict between priests' celibacy and sexuality. The case of Cardinal Groer, though, was only the latest sign of discontent among Austrian Catholics, long troubled by the Pope's insistence on appointing theological conservatives as bishops, including Klaus Kung from the secretive and traditionalist Opus Dei movement. Another of the Pope's appointees, Kurt Krenn, was so contested that worshipers sought to block his path to the cathedral in the Austrian capital in 1987 when he became an auxiliary bishop. When he was awarded the diocese of St. Poltner two years ago, opponents gathered 54,000 signatures protesting his appointment. For Austrian Catholics, the petition in Innsbruck has become a touchstone of where they stand in the church's division, although the extent of its support among the people who form the church bedrock -- in villages rather than cities, among women rather than men and among the relatively poor rather than the wealthy -- is still unclear. "I would emphasize that this initiative, which has much support in the media, is in fact rather marginal," said Bishop Schonborn, Cardinal Groer's designated successor. "The normal life of the church is very vital." Nor, he said, was there any likelihood of the church's changing its doctrine in response to the protest. The danger behind the petition, he said, "is to raise false expectations that cannot be fulfilled." Photo: Hans Mosher, Rector of the University of Innsbruck, signing a petition opposing Vatican rulings on sexual issues while two petition organizers, Thomas Plankensteiner and Martha Heizer, look on. Doctrinal differences and a sexual scandal have prompted an insurgency in the Austrian church. (S.N.S./Nosko, for The New York Times)
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