Posted on 07/12/2004 10:26:32 AM PDT by Land of the Irish
Roman Catholic leaders in Austria called an emergency meeting today after officials discovered a vast cache of photos and videos allegedly depicting young priests having sex at a seminary.
About 40,000 photographs and an undisclosed number of films, including child pornography, were downloaded on computers at the seminary in St Poelten, about 50 miles west of Vienna, the respected news magazine Profil reported.
Officials with the local diocese declined to comment but were meeting privately on the scandal, Austrian state television reported.
It said the seminary’s director, the Rev Ulrich Kuechl, and his deputy, Wolfgang Rothe, had resigned.
The Austrian Bishops Conference issued a statement today pledging a full and swift investigation.
“Anything that has to do with homosexuality or pornography has no place at a seminary for priests,” it said.
Church officials discovered the material on a computer at the seminary, Profil said. It published several images purportedly showing young priests and their instructors kissing and fondling each other and engaging in orgies and sex games.
The child porn came mostly from web sites based in Poland, the magazine said.
Bishop Kurt Krenn, a conservative churchman who oversees the St Poelten Diocese, told Austrian television he had seen photos of seminary leaders in sexual situations with students. Krenn, however, dismissed the photos as “silly pranks” that “had nothing to do with homosexuality”.
A group of St. Poelten Diocese officials planned to ask the Vatican to remove Krenn as bishop, Austrian radio reported.
Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini told the Austria Press Agency that the Holy See had no comment.
Krenn, 68, issued a statement calling the accusations groundless while conceding that he “may have made some wrong personnel decisions” at the seminary.
We ALL know that "attachment" to SSPX constitutes schism. You may wish to play word-games as does the Schizzie Leader (now appearing on this thread.)
But word-games don't cut it.
Yup.
Now it's called the Novus Ordo.
Frankly, I prefer the Tridentine as a matter of taste, but NOT of doctrine.
Let's hope you don't confuse taste and doctrine...
Your rhetoric is out of control, and indecipherable.
"Upside down" belief system? Please clearly define this.
LeF. was correct. There are efforts underway today to resolve some fuzzy language, particularly with regard to 'other churches' and liturgy.
Interesting insights.
Perhaps it's the prosperity which has plagued Austria's Church; that would comport with the experience here in the US, anyway.
Your intuition is correct. It's derived from synagogue practice of the (now) Orthodox Jews. I think they still maintain that tradition.
As long as the women kept the children on 'their side,' it was a GREAT deal for the men. The Ancien Regime did not have 'metrosexuals.'
You present a rational take on the topic of JPII. I think he's a 'liberal,' but more a Hubert Humphrey or Daniel Moynihan 'liberal;' he's certainly not a Modernist.
As to your prognistication about the 'last Pope of these Catholic times,' that's a bit vague. Perhaps you can explicate.
One fact that is not a matter of dispute in the current argument is that the Roman Rite and the New Mass are two different rites. Everyone in the Ecclessia Dei commission agree on that point.
I never said the Pope was evil. I said he was a bad pope--in the sense one can be a bad teacher or a bad politician. I did not mean he was morally evil. But he has been reckless in his pontificate--and sometimes derelict. Both attitudes are dangerous indicators.
It is hard, for instance, not to blame him for failing to institute necessary reforms--in the seminaries, in the Liturgy, in the way we choose our bishops. He has reformed the canonization process, but the reform only did away with necessary safeguards--which has only cheapened the process and politicized it. He also reformed the College of Cardinals, reconfiguring the way a future pope will be chosen--again relaxing standards, to what end we can only guess. But other than this, he has allowed the Church to drift without using the full benefits of his office to institute reform. Not even the huge scandals that have washed over his pontificate have moved him to make heads roll when they certainly needed to. In fact, offending cardinals have more often than not been bumped upstairs. His general inaction or indifference to serious wrongs has inflicted huge damage on the Church.
He has certainly not been sympathetic to Catholic Tradition, and many of his actions raise eyebrows among traditional Catholics especially. It's hard to understand, for instance, why he opposed Archbishop Lefebvre so forcefully for defending the traditional Mass and the traditional priesthood, yet does nothing even now to oppose openly apostate bishops or bishops who are obviously corrupt or bishops who encourage outrageous liturgical abuses. People wonder about these kinds of double-standards.
I don't buy for a second he is now a feeble old man--except in the physical sense. He was sharp enough mentally in his opposition to the Iraq war and took it upon himself to meet with Saddam's representative to undermine the President at the UN. He is still traveling around the world celebrating his own celebrity it seems. But there are few signs he takes seriously the calamity of the present crisis. For decades he spoke of a coming springtime in the Church. Now finally he is beginning to talk about a "silent apostasy" in the Church. But it is too little too late. Meanwhile he has just published a book of poetry and a book of memoirs and is said to be preparing a philosophic discourse based on a discussion he had years ago with a European intellectual. That's all very nice--but irrelevant.
I especially don't buy the excuse that he is not responsible for an agenda that has been increasingly radical ecumenically. He organized Assisi I and II despite the advice of most of his curia. He is still pushing that pan-religious policy--which previous popes have warned was heretical.
good post.
thanks also for the perspective re: Econe.
"Vagueness in a magisterial document is a capital offense."
Bingo! - Will we see this as your tagline?
You want a pope who swings a delicate spring flower (the crocus?) because.....?????? Certainly sounds like BS to me. This sounds like verrrrry bad news for the reputations of even the SSPX schismatics.
UR: Ummmmmm, at the risk of spoiling your schismatic fantasies' you might recall that "they" did NOT SEEK to condemn impudent and disobedient Marcel. Instead "they" (actually Pope John Paul II) gave cry7baby Marcel a new status: excommunicated. God rendered Marcel dead as an excommicatus. Also that is SSPX seminaries filled with disobedient anti-Catholic vipers studying to defraud the public in the role of illicitly consecrated priests, consecrated by the excommunicated few. You can put lipstick on these disobedient pigs but pigs they remain.
Deb, Padre Pio was canonized in 2002 (made a Catholic Saint) by none other than the eeveel Pope John Paul II.
Answer me this question, please: If Padre Pio were such a kook as you suggest, do you think it wouldn't be raised as an obstacle in the beatification and canonization processes? Remember, it was all done by the eeveel Pope John Paul II, the hardly legal, Polish, highly fallible, responsible for child molestation and the decline of Latin Pope hated by every "true catholic" who is much more infallible than His Holiness the Pope.
To argue the "facts" and "arguments" offered by the schismatics is to give the schism the attention it craves so that it may pick off a few poorly catechized stragglers so weak as to abandon Holy Mother the Church for such weak tea as personal and cultural preferences. That rejection is a rejection of the promises of Jesus Christ to His Church (the one in Rome, the one with a legitimately elected pope, etc.) Can you spell A-P-O-S-T-A-S-Y? You need correction, perhaps hierarchical punishment, not arguments which would give you the false impression that you are somehow on equal footing with the hierarchy.
BS: Are you jealous that JP II is a published author? It is understandable that you would probably not be published at all unless it were by some schismatic house like Angelus.
BS: By the way, you repeated yourself in mentioning "slanderous false accusations" since "slanderous" necessarily involves "false," truth, as in the case of most posts which are burrs under the schismatic saddle, being a complete defense to any charge of slander or to any other form of defamation. BTW, we write here. Written defamation (if it IS defamation) is libel, not slander. Be sure to complain about how many times I have used clearly true terms such as schism and excommunicated.
What are your OTHER FR screennames? I don't think you ever answered that one.
Get reading lessons or is dyslexia one of your problems paving your road to schism?
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