Over 300 Austrian Priests Join ‘Call to Disobedience’

Over 300 of Austria’s 4,200 priests have just signed a pledge to take part in "A Call to Disobedience."

The Call to Disobedience document cites “the Roman refusal of a long-overdue Church reform and the inaction of bishops.” Priests who support the document pledge

• to pray for Church reform at every liturgy, since “in the presence of God there is freedom of speech”
• not to deny the Holy Eucharist to “believers of good will,” including non-Catholic Christians and those who have remarried outside the Church
• to avoid offering Mass more than once on Sundays and holy days and to avoid making use of visiting priests--instead holding a “self-designed” Liturgy of the Word
• to describe such a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy Communion as a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; “thus we fulfill the Sunday obligation in a time of priest shortage”
• to “ignore” canonical norms that restrict the preaching of the homily to clergy
• to oppose parish mergers, insisting instead that each parish have its own individual leader, “whether man or woman”
• to “use every opportunity to speak out openly in favor of the admission of the married and of women to the priesthood”