Cardinal Schonborn is an excellent example of what is wrong with the church today.
Here he is (a cardinal no less) and he doesn’t have a theological clue as to what’s going on.
Anyone of sound reasoning already knows that it is just plain SIN that is causing the abuse crisis.
Their marital status has absolutely nothing at all to do with it. Take a look at this list of Protestant abusers, of which most surely all of them are married:
reformation.com/
Wake up cardinal …
I will presume you have not read through the thread.
Cardinal Schonborn is actually what may be right with the Church today. He is highly intelligent, and sadly with people who are intelligent, when they speak in nuanced terms, the reporters - who too often do not even have the word “nuanced” in their dictionary - get it wrong, write what they want filtered through their own prejudices, and leave the speaker (here, the Cardinal) wondering why what he said was not reported, instead of being spun off in an entirely different direction.
I would also presume that you do not read the Catholic press; for example, Our Sunday Visitor, which had an article about the Cardinal’s statement, clarifying that the Cardinal did not mean what the original reporter wrote.
In a trial in civil or criminal court, it is called “hearsay” when someone testifies to someone else’s out-of-court statement. It is popularly stated as “he said she said” and such testimony is not allowed in court because of its inherent unreliability. Your reaction is a prime example of why such testimony is not allowed. The Cardinal made a statement. The reporter twisted the statement to imply something else. You reacted to the reporter’s twisiting of the statement and now have condemned a Cardinal for what he did not say.
I can understand how this happens. However, there is a slight issue about charity, let alone publicly condemning one of the hierarchy without sufficient evidence. That is called character assassination, to put it directly.
I am sure you did not mean such; but we could all learn from this episode. Just because an article appears in the public press saying “so and so {bishop, pope, Cardinal…) said” does not mean that we can take the statement as factually correct. It is a major lack of thinking on the part of anyone to get on the internet and start broadcasting “so and so (bishop, cardinal…) is not a faithful follower of the Magisterium (or the equivalent)”. The person so doing is not using reasonable intelligence to determine what the truth is but is passing off the statement as truth; others who also do not use reasonable intelligence follow suit, and all of a sudden we have anyone and everyone who reads these posts judging the character, fidelity to the Church, and intelligence of priests, bishops and Cardinals based over some untruthful statment that now becomes “true” simply because of repeating it.
It is called gossip, and the damage we do when we make such statements can have untold damage even though we never intended such. It is questionable enough when people in one diocese start criticizing the actions - in truth - of a bishop in another diocese.
It is beyond questionable when we attack anyone over a statement they simply did not make, or one that was spun to imply what they had no intention of implying.
