Dealing with the Austrian “Priest's Initiative”

At CatholicCulture.org, Jeff Mirus comments on the call for open disobedience emanating from the Priests' Initiative of Austria, a group that unilaterally threatens to allow laity to lead Communion services and preach, to ordain women, to end priestly celibacy, and to institute open communion: and of course they are only getting warmed up, bet on that.

Mirus says that Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna must be resolute. He says, in part:

There is only one way to resolve situations like this without completely disrespecting the rights of the faithful, and we may pray—in fact, we ought to pray—that Cardinal Schönborn will have the courage to do what needs to be done, and that he will enjoy the full support of both the Vatican and his brother bishops.

In my previous essay, I emphasized the need for bishops to rule if they are to restore order in Catholic theology; the same thing applies to restoring order in the ministry, and in particular those aspects of the ministry which ought to reflect a sound Catholic theology firmly rooted in the teachings of the Church. It may, then, be fortuitous that a group of clearly Modernist priests is finally threatening to defy both Church doctrine and Church discipline openly, which saves a bishop the painful and arduous task of sifting through various complaints to try to determine which of his priests defy the authority of the Church only when he is not around.

The welcome clarity of this situation consists in the fact that it cannot be papered over without immense and obvious harm to the faithful. That doesn’t mean it won’t be, but in general internal Modernist dissent has been characterized by a strategy of avoiding the contradiction of one’s own bishop to his face. When a priest actually directly challenges his bishop, and does so publicly, it is much harder for a bishop to pretend that things are really not all that bad.

In the present case, barring public repentance, it is impossible to retain any of these priests in active service without signaling to the entire Church that Catholics may believe and do whatever they want. That’s why the only way to resolve the problem is to give the priests who support the Initiative a direct and personal choice of either taking an oath of obedience which repudiates the Initiative or being excommunicated (or, at the least, removed from active ministry). Anything less is a victory for those who wish to overthrow the Church herself.