Vienna's Canon Lawyer Foresees Action by Austria's Bishops Against Dissidents

Edit : "Depart from me you profitless servant." Apparently, there are some coming in, and there will be others going out.

The call of the Austrian "Pastors' Initiative" violates Canon 1373, says Viennese Canon Law expert to ORF-Radio.

Vienna (kath.net) Vienna's Canon Lawyer, Ludger Müller sees in the "Call to Disobedience" of the Austrian "Pastors' Initiative" a serious violation against the law of the Church.  "The heading is provocative in any case. It could fulfill the elements of a crime, namely the violation against Canon 1373,  which entails promoting to disobedience.

This crime is threatened with a "just punishment", whereby is prescribed the penalty of an interdict.  The interdict is so to say, a clear excommunication, therefore barring one from the Sacraments."  This said Ludwig Müller, professor of Canon Law in the Catholic Theological Faculty of Vienna in a broadcast on "Current Religion" for ORF-Radio  Ö1  Ö1 on the 8th of September.

Canon  1373 of the "Codex Iuris Canonici", of the legal book of the Roman Catholic Church, explains:

A person who publicly incites his or her subjects to hatred or animosity against the Apostolic See or the Ordinary because of some act of ecclesiastical authority or ministry, or who provokes the subjects to disobedience against them, is to be punished by interdict or other just penalties.

 Therefore, as regards the contents, the call is unsupportable, because it consists of a clear incitement  to  contravention,.  Müller views a need for action on the part of the Bishops.  As an initial step they have to address the accused Pastor in writing.

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