Cardinal Schönborn: Church Should Respect Long-Term Gay Relationships

Edge Boston reports:

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 Schönborn 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. Schönborn’s comments were reported on by Catholic British publication The Tablet on May 8.

Schönborn 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.

Schönborn accused Sodano of having derailed an investigation within the Vatican of an alleged sexual abuser in the 1990s; Schönborn 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.

Good for Cardinal Schönborn. Over the years, I have met many admirable men and women working for change withing the Church and its ministries. They just don't tend to be the ones in charge.