Bishop sorry for´homosexuality is a mental illness´ remark [with news on the Austrian crisis and exodus]

  • Thread starter Thread starter vs_trumpet
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
V

vs_trumpet

Guest
austriantimes.at/index.php?id=11173

During the radio interview, [Bishop] Fischer, a trained psychotherapist, compared homosexuality to alcoholism or an anxiety neurosis. He said there was literature that made that claim, so why not believe it. . . .

[bishop-designate] Wagner has been in the news lately owing to a number of controversial public statements. He has called the Harry Potter book series an invitation to devil worship and implied natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Southeast Asian tsunami were God’s punishments for human sin. . . .

110 Catholics had left the Church in the Linz diocese last week, four times [last year’s number for the same week. An] official of the Linz diocese had commented the number had been “unusually high” [He] added many Catholics had sent his office emails in which they said the Wagner’s nomination as auxiliary bishop of the diocese was the reason for their departure from the Church. Many people had also criticised Pope Benedict XVI for his rehabilitation of bishops in the Pius X Brotherhood in their emails, the official said.

According to Reuters, the Austrian Catholic Church is holding and the Vatican’s readmission of a banned bishop who denies the Holocaust, officials said on Friday." The confluence in time of these two events seems to have led to this crisis and it has caused, according to Reuters, even Austrian prelates to criticize the pope: “In one of the bluntest criticisms from a prelate, Salzburg Archbishop Alois Kothgasser said on Tuesday the SSPX bishops seemed to be heretics who had shut themselves out of the Church. He also said the Church must not shrink into ‘a sect … with few but strictly obedient members’ – a veiled criticism of Pope Benedict, who once suggested the Church might have to reduce to a hard core to survive the secular modernist age.”
 
Thankfully, the bishop-designate nominated by the pope has asked to have his promotion be taken back. Here’s an English language Associated Press article

cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/02/15/bishop-katrina.html

“Regarding the fierce criticism, I am praying, and after consulting the diocesan bishop, I have decided to ask the Holy Father in Rome to take back my promotion as auxiliary bishop,” ORF quotes the Wagner, 54, as saying…

Wagner wrote that people should ask themselves whether the “noticeable” increase of natural disasters such as Katrina was a result of pollution caused by humans or the result of “spiritual pollution.”

"This was not the sinking of just any city but that of a people’s dream city with the ‘best brothels and prettiest prostitutes,’ " he wrote.

As I mentioned and reported above he has said similar things of tsunamis and labelled Harry Potter as Satanism. I was beginning to worry that the “judgment” that Cardinal Ratzinger seemed to sign off on on the demonic nature of Harry Potter not only was to remain his opinion but was to affect his papacy. I am glad that the pope is an eminently reasonable man in that he listens and responds to the concerns of others in Austria as well as to the German Chancellor, to Jewish leaders etc. May that consultative spirit of his ever increase in him and his successors. If you can read Italian, here’s an article reporting the Vatican has accepted this:

leggonline.it/ansa.php?file=newsANSA/2009-02-15_115315737.txt

Who knows what hand the Vatican may have had in encouraging the bishop-designate to offer his withdrawal to the pope.

I know that in conservative Catholic ecclessiology, the pope appoints and that’s that. In reality, it’s a consultative process with recommendations often being made and the pope usually selecting among the recommendations. Though I’m not Christian, I would hope that the more liberal view that the local church of Austria must give consent to the appointment for it to be valid would eventually be the official church view. One can hope. This would make the church even more than it is now, a church oriented towards peace. Perhaps Christians will take it upon themselves on a grassroots and leadership level to respond to the invitation of John Paul II to explore new ways the Petrine ministry could be faithfully exercised.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top