Dissident Austrian priests defying their Roman Catholic Church with
calls for married clergy, women priests and other reforms enjoy wide
public support, according to a new poll on a dispute that could lead to
their dismissal.
Three-quarters of people polled in the
traditionally Catholic country backed the priests' "Call to
Disobedience," a manifesto that Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna
compares to a football team refusing to play by the rules.
The
revolt, openly supported by 329 priests, threatens a split in the
Austrian Church weeks before Pope Benedict's Sept 22 to 25 visit to
neighbouring Germany. Benedict, 84, grew up in Bavarian villages close
to the Austrian border.
Rather than simply appealing for reforms,
the dissidents declared they will break Church rules by giving communion
to Protestants and remarried divorced Catholics or allowing lay people
to preach and head parishes without a priest.
Schoenborn has
hinted they would be disciplined if they do not back down in the coming
weeks.
"This cannot go on," he told the Vienna daily Der Standard. "If
someone has decided to go down the path of dissent, that has
consequences."
Dissident leader Rev. Helmut Schueller, who as
Vienna vicar general was Schoenborn's deputy from 1995 to 1999 and once
led the Austrian chapter of the international Catholic charity Caritas,
has said he has no intention of giving up.
He says many priests
are already quietly breaking the rules anyway, often with the knowledge
of their bishops, and his campaign aims to force the hierarchy to agree
to change.
About eight per cent of Austrian priests have supported his
movement.
Reformist Austrian Catholics have repeatedly challenged
the conservative policies of Benedict and his predecessor Pope John
Paul, creating grassroots protest movements and advocating changes the
Vatican refuses to make.
Paul Zulehner, a leading Catholic
theologian, said the Church must act urgently if it wants to avoid a
confrontation. "It could come to a crash, to a split," he told Austrian
radio.
The survey published this week by the Oekonsult polling
group showed 76 per cent of Austrians queried supported Schueller and
his colleagues.
Some 85 per cent said the Church should not do anything
to drive away its reform-minded members.
While the poll was not
limited to Catholics, 70 per cent of the respondents said the Church and
its leaders were "a very important moral authority" for them. Some 66
per cent said they liked Schoenborn personally.
Schueller is now a
parish priest and university chaplain in Vienna. If he is dismissed, 97
per cent of those polled said, a "very large wave" of people leaving
the Church would follow.
A record 87,000 Austrians left the Church in 2010, many in reaction to sexual abuse scandals there.
In
the past year, more than 800 people have registered complaints of
molestation by priests after the sexual abuse scandals rocking the
Church in Ireland, Belgium and other European countries also broke out
in Austria.