A Clergy Rebellion in Austria's Catholic Church

VIENNA — There is open rebellion among the clergy of Austria's Catholic Church. One highly placed man of the cloth has even warned about the risk of a coming schism as significant numbers of priests are refusing obedience to the Pope and bishops for the first time in memory.

The 300-plus supporters of the so-called Priests' Initiative have had enough of what they call the church's "delaying" tactics, and they are advocating pushing ahead with policies that openly defy current practices. These include letting nonordained people lead religious services and deliver sermons; making communion available to divorced people who have remarried; allowing women to become priests and to take on important positions in the hierarchy; and letting priests carry out pastoral functions even if, in defiance of church rules, they have a wife and family.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Vienna's Archbishop and head of the Austrian Bishops' Conference, has threatened the rebels with excommunication. Incidentally, those involved in the initiative are not only low-profile members of the clergy. Indeed, it is being led by Helmut Schüller — who was for many years vicar general of the archdiocese of Vienna and director of Caritas — and the cathedral pastor in the Carinthian diocese of Gurk.

The issues that supporters of the initiative want addressed may be revolutionary, but they are by no means new: they constitute basic questions that have been around for a long time but have never been addressed by church officials.

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Because that's their only option.

What will this one be known as, "the unnoticed schism"?

Activist priests make noise

Hierarchy threatens excommunication

Activist priests reassert their resolve and demand action

Hierarchy compromises and offers increasingly high-ranking consideration

Years later (Jarndyce v. Jarndyce is fasttracked compared to ecclesiastical deliberation) the Pope issues another encyclical affirming that women and the laity are valued members of the church but, because of the spousal relationship between Christ and the church, and because priests are vicars - substitues for Christ - they can only be male and must be ordained to administer the scaraments.

Activist priests grumble but step in line. Maybe a token one or two quit.

Rinse and repeat.