The Vatican has
cracked down on a prominent Austrian Roman Catholic priest who has been
leading a disobedience campaign to openly challenge Roman Catholic
teachings on celibacy and women priests.
The Vatican said on Thursday it
had stripped Father Helmut Schueller of the right to use title
monsignor and said he also was no longer a "Chaplain of His Holiness".
Schueller remains a priest.
Schueller,
a former deputy to Vienna's archbishop, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn,
had been given the honorary title in his capacity as head of the
Austrian branch of the Catholic charity group Caritas.
Schueller
is head of the group "Call to Disobedience", which has broad public
backing in opinion polls and says it represents about 10 percent of the
Austrian clergy.
Nearly 150,000 Austrians left the Church in 2011-2012, many in reaction to sexual abuse scandals.
The
group wants Church rules changed so that priests can marry and women
can become priests. It has said it will break Church rules by giving
communion to Protestants and divorced Catholics who remarry.
Schueller told Austrian media that the Vatican decision had not shaken his principles.
Reformist
Austrian Catholics have for decades challenged the conservative
policies of Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, creating protest
movements and advocating changes the Vatican refuses to make.
Schueller
has met like-minded clergy in Austria and abroad since launching the
"Call to Disobedience" group. Catholic reform groups in Germany, Ireland and the United States have made similar demands from the Church.
The
Catholic Church does not allow priests to marry and teaches that it has
no authority to allow women to become priests because Jesus willingly
chose only men as his apostles when he instituted the priesthood at the
Last Supper.
Proponents of a female priesthood say Jesus was only adhering to the social norms of his times.
Last week, the Vatican disciplined another priest who advocated women's ordination.
Father
Ray Bourgeois, an American of the Maryknoll religious order, was kicked
out of the priesthood and the order by the Vatican's doctrinal
department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Last
year, Bourgeois, who had been a priest for 40 years, was among a group
of Roman Catholic activists detained by Italian police after they tried
to deliver a petition to the Vatican in favor of a female priesthood.
Benedict,
who for decades before his 2005 election as pope was the Vatican's
chief doctrinal enforcer, directly denounced disobedient priests last
April, saying it was not the right path to renewal in the Church.