A Google-translated screen capture of Erzdioezese-wien.at – the official Archdiocesan website of Vienna, Austria. The title appears confusing in English, but the two uses of “equality” stem from words with different meanings in German: Gleichberechtigung (equality of rights) and Gleichmacherei (levelling or uniformization).
Cardinal Schönborn’s website promotes
gender theory as pope praises him for
his 'care of Sacred Doctrine'
BY MAIKE HICKSON
SEPTEMBER 28, 2016
On the official website of the Archdiocese of Vienna, Austria – whose reigning archbishop is Cardinal Christoph Schönborn – two different articles, though not explicitly related to one another, will likely be of great importance for Catholics in the world today.
First, there is to be found the report that Pope Francis himself has just written a supportive letter to Cardinal Schönborn on the occasion of his 25th anniversary as a bishop. Francis praises this cardinal for his leading the Austrian Bishops’ Conference as its President “in a praiseworthy manner” and for his “concordance of word and work” that is so manifest in his personal witness.
The pope also highlights that Cardinal Schönborn in his office as archbishop – and especially in his “care for the Sacred Doctrine” – is notably attentive that the sheep entrusted to him may “follow the path which you [Schönborn] show them with help of your words and your example.”
In the midst of such praise, however, another post on the same official website of Cardinal Schönborn seems to throw some doubt upon the assurance that this cardinal is leading his sheep in the right direction and for the right reasons. His own website
[worse, it's the archdiocesan website, not hie personal website] has now published an article about a theologian, Professor Gunter Prüller-Jagenteufel, who recently presented a strong attack on those Catholics who are at all critical of “Gender Theory.”
The Viennese Professor had just helped organize a conference from 22 to 25 September 2016 at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna about the Gender Theory, and he afterwards gave an interview to the Austrian Bishops’ news agency Kathpress.at (the article that is posted on the Vienna archdiocesan website).
In it, this theologian criticizes “anti-genderism,” which is widely spread within ecclesial circles, for
its unacceptable generalizations, which are: that gender is merely a social construction; and that heterosexual relationships shall be dissolved and the traditional family destroyed.
He further says: “These often intentional misunderstandings and attacks against the purported ‘left-wing’ movement, which itself comes out of feminism, are in themselves ‘highly ideological’.” Prüller-Jagenteufel is quoted as saying that “gender theory aims at equality and not at leveling down.”
In summing up the discussions from his own 22-25 September conference, Prüller-Jagenteufel says that many people claim that those who support the gender theory want “to create a new man,” just as Marxism strove to do.
Interestingly in this context, he explicitly makes a demeaning comment on Poland and on Hungary – two prominently earnest countries which still try to resist the implementation of the gender theory in their own beset homelands.
The article claims that the Austrian professor merely wants to “deconstruct” certain (unspecified) roles for men and women, but, not to destroy them. Summing up the theologian’s ideas, the article supportively says:
It is mostly about questioning labels and about making individual freedom more possible in how we lead our own lives. Additionally, ambiguities that come to us through trans- and intersexuality are only now being better perceived by us today – contrary to earlier times.
Prüller-Jagenteufel then also speciously insists upon the fact that both man and woman are made in the likeness of God and that this fact should have (again unspecified) consequences upon our ways of thinking. In this context, he therefore says: “There is a reason why Pope Francis just recently initiated a commission studying the history of the female diaconate.”
As the professor teaches theology at the University of Vienna, his license to teach theology comes from Cardinal Schönborn himself.
The Austrian news agency Kathpress.at, under the Austrian bishops' conference, also published an article on 23 September about the above-mentioned conference on gender theory, quoting several feminists who addressed the conference as promoting the idea of a feminist theology and further promoting the influence of women in general within the Church. They also discredit the gathering resistance against gender ideology and compared “anti-Genderism” with “other right-wing populist movements.”
With just these examples, a Catholic can easily recognize that the Viennese Archdiocese is giving inordinate scope to strongly undermine undermine orthodox Catholic prelates and laymen – such as Cardinal Robert Sarah and Cardinal Carlo Caffarra – who try to defend the traditional Catholic teaching on marriage and the family in its entirety.
It sheds additional light upon what Cardinal Schönborn is progressively promoting, not just allowing, in his own diocese. Thus, it seems doubtful to say that he is leading his sheep in the right direction, as Pope Francis claims.
[He is, by JMB's standards!...Yet this man continues to be president of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis Foundation! Maybe I shouldn't get into the flagrant contradictions inherent in this last fact, a long-standing anomaly, at least as I see it, that has been allowed to stand all these years...]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/09/2016 02:50]