It's hard to imagine it, but the man was the editor in chief for the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You remember that little book! Green cover, lots of numbered paragraphs, kind of harsh on that whole "let's act out homosexually" idea.
How quickly we forget!
Cardinal Schonborn, may God bless him, seems to have forgotten everything he's ever read. He now says celibacy may be the problem behind the media firestorm over pedophilia in the Catholic Church of Germany and Austria.
Oh, if only priests could marry! (sob! sniffle! snort!)
It's a crying shame that they can't!
Now, lest we fall down same memory-hole, we should recall the Vatican's own verdict on this: the pedophilia scandals have been caused by sodomites.
For those keeping score of such things, that's what the John Jay report originally said, too, before the USCCB got a hold of it and "revised" the findings a few years after it came out. And, of course, the US Government's own study of public schools demonstrated that public school employees offend at a rate about 20x higher than priests. As far as we recall, public school teachers are not prohibited from marrying.
So, how many people out there think that a sodomite can be cured of his predilections simply by having him marry a really hot woman?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Bueller?
Anyone?
Apparently, Cardinal Schonborn is of that opinion, because he seems to think that if sodomite priests could just get married, all of these pedophilia scandals would scatter like the storm clouds before a strong wind.
Either that, or the man is quietly recommending that sodomites be allowed to attempt to sacramentally marry each other in the Church.
But certainly even a prince of the Church isn't that stupid.
Right?
Right?
Bueller?....
Where has that boy gone?
I am appalled at your lack of nuance in treating this article. The selected quotation from the Cardinal is hardly an implication of the thesis of the paper's author - he rather draws an inference from the fact that Schoenborn suggests we need to look at the whole issue.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of priestly maturity and training in celibacy is a relevant issue to the problem of priestly pedophilia, not because it causes it, but rather because something in our training and selection processes are still letting these people through.
What ever happened to the charitable mode of argument that gives anyone the best possible reading of their statement? Why the cynicism, especially considering that this is, as you point out, the author of the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
For my part, it's harder to imagine the good Card. himself espousing such a strange idea than it is for me to imagine a media source unjustly spinning a comment to create some controversy...