Like any major international news story which develops in languages which are not English, information about developments in the sex abuse scandal tend to be partial, fragmentary and confusing. In Austria (not to be confused with Australia, from where I am writing), Eisenstadt Bishop Paul Ilby has told the daily newspaper Die Presse that clerical celibacy should be an optional extra: "It should be at the discretion of every priest whether to live in voluntary celibacy or in a family." Bishop Ilby turned 75 in January and no doubt the Pope will be accepting his resignation shortly.

But when newspapers report that the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, ran a similar line a few days ago, it does send confusing signals.

The American Jesuit publisher, Father Joseph Fessio, however, has clarified the Cardinal’s widely reported remarks, which emerged in The Tablet, England’s most influential Catholic journal, as “Schönborn attacks Sodano and urges reform”.

Father Fessio says that the real story runs like this. The Cardinal invited the editors of Austria’s major newspapers to a gathering at his residence in Vienna to give them deep background on the controversy. This included a brief (even if it were long, it would still be too brief) class on the difference between deontological and eudaimonistic ethics.

Notwithstanding Austria’s (not Australia’s) renown for intellectual depth, the Cardinal may have over-estimated the journalists’ capacity for absorbing long Greek words. Apparently he was trying to show that  

The Church attempts to lead men to their ultimate happiness, which is the vision of God in his essence. Moral norms are meant to do that; they have that as their end or purpose. The norms themselves are unchanging. However, our approach to obeying them is gradual and our efforts are a mixture of success and failure. This means that while certain moral norms are absolute, that is, they hold in all circumstances without exception, our approach to obeying them may be halting and imperfect. This is commonly referred to as “the law of gradualism” and is opposed to “the gradualism of the law,” as if the law itself were somehow variable.

Somehow the signals got jumbled and the word leaked out that Cardinal Schönborn wanted to reform Catholic teachings on homosexuality and divorce and attacked Cardinal Sodano. But Father Fessio says that this is quite wrong:

Cardinal Schönborn is not calling for any change in the Church’s teaching or discipline. He is calling for a deeper understanding of the struggle to live the high demands of the moral law. He is critical of an attitude of defensiveness and dismissiveness still present in the Roman Curia (not to mention many episcopal curias—but the meeting was not about that). And he is trying to be transparent and responsive to the press. Here again, though, the adage is confirmed: No good deed goes unpunished.