Austrian Cardinal: Church Should Respect Long-Term Gay Relationships

An Austrian Cardinal--the head of the Catholic faith in that country--has said that his church ought to respect long-term, committed relationships between people of the same gender.

Cardinal Christoph Sch�nborn made the comment along with several other remarks sure to fire up conservative Catholics, including an assertion that the church needs to reconsider its opposition to divorced people remarrying. Sch�nborn's comments were reported on by Catholic British publicationThe Tablet on May 8.

Sch�nborn told the media that College of Cardinals dean Cardinal Angelo Sodano had "deeply wronged" the victims of pedophile priests during an Easter address in which Sodano derided media reports of widespread clerical abuse in Europe, calling the reports "petty gossip," reported British newspaper The Daily Mail on May 10.

Sch�nborn accused Sodano of having derailed an investigation within the Vatican of an alleged sexual abuser in the 1990s; Sch�nborn said that then-Cardinal Ratizinger, who is now Pope Benedict XVI, had wanted to press forward with an investigation into accusations against Austrian Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, but that Sodano, who was the Vatican Secretary of State at the time, had indirectly interfered, with the result that the investigation stalled. Groer resigned in 1998, the article said, and died in 2003.

Sodano made his controversial comments during an Easter address made on April 4 at St. Peter's Square, reported Huffington Post on May 11 Sodano was responding to a media storm in which the Pope had been criticized in the press, and even blamed in some quarters, for a pedophile priest crisis that swept across parts of Europe earlier this year.

Sodano, addressing the Pope during the Easter celebration, told Benedict XVI, "Holy Father, on your side are the people of God, who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the petty gossip of the moment, by the trials which sometimes buffet the community of believers."

The suggestion that Sodano was brushing off as "petty gossip" reports of systematic sexual abuse of children by priests, and that a culture of covering those attacks up had flourished, angered many.

Various media sources called Sch�nborn's comments an "attack" on Sodano, and noted that Sch�nborn remains close to Benedict XVI. Some see Sch�nborn as a possible candidate to succeed the 83-year-old Benedict XVI.

Others regard Sch�nborn as something of a rebel. Anti-gay Christian site LifeSiteNews.com accused Sch�nborn in a May 10 article of "defiance" for having presented a petition to the Pope last year that listed among other demands an end to priestly vows of celibacy. "Despite the fact that I do not agree with some of the initiative's conclusions," Sch�nborn told Vatican Radio, "frankly I believe that it is important that people in Rome know what some of our laypeople are thinking."

The church's stance is that gays and lesbians do not "choose" to experience same-sex attraction, but that because of the nature of their sexual orientation, they are "sexually disordered" people who are called by God to lead celibate lives. Sch�nborn disagreed, saying, "We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships." Noted Sch�nborn, "A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous."