Photo ~ Cardinal Christoph Schönborn and the 'balloon mass'

Austrian cardinal speaks on controversies

For more than two decades, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna has been one of the Church’s most influential prelates, with his work as the primary author of the Catechism of the Catholic Church affecting the life and the teaching of the Church around the world.

In recent years, however, he has also been at the hub of controversy. In mid-June, the cardinal delivered an address at the Language and Catechetical Institute’s Twentieth Anniversary Conference in Gaming, Austria.

Our Sunday Visitor: Recently in your diocese, a young openly homosexual man was elected to his parish council. Both his election and your decision to allow his election to stand created quite a stir in the media. Could you explain your thinking on that decision and the controversy surrounding it?

Cardinal Schönborn:

...The fact is that sometimes we have to live with situations that are objectively disordered, but we do so with the hope that the people are on the way of faith.

We are a community of sinners who all need to improve our lives.

We all have to take steps to be more completely conformed to the Lord’s teachings.

In this particular situation, I have certainty that the young man is on the way of the Christian life and is conforming his life more and more to God’s plan.

I was clear with him about the Church’s teaching when I spoke, but we need to have patience.

Again, the only thing I request is to trust that I did not make this decision lightly or arbitrarily, and am in no way denying the Church’s teaching on this issue.

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