Stift Melk -- A Visitation is Long Overdue

How Catholic is Melk Abbey? A papal visitation could clarify this issue. At the latest after Eugen Drewermann has held the annual retreat for the Convention, it would be timely.

A commentary by John Graf

Melk (kath.net / jg)
The announcement was so implausible that you could easily have taken it for a joke at first glance. Eugen Drewermann has held the annual retreat for the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Melk. Meanwhile, reports have been confirmed.

 Drewermann has already lost the authorization teach in 1991  at the Catholic Faculty of Paderborn and to preach in 1992.. In the same year the Paderborn Archbishop Johannes Degenhardt suspended him suspended from the priesthood. In 2005 he resigned from the Catholic Church. In the program "People in Maischberger" he described this step literally as a "gift of freedom to myself" on his 65th birthday. In the same year he signed a public call to vote for the Left Party.

Advertising

Nevertheless, Melk Abbot Georg Wilfinger invited him to hold the annual retreat for the monks of his monastery. Exercises, said spiritual exercises are there for faith, to deepen their relationship with God, to find clarity about one's personal journey with God. How is it that a retreat preacher like Drewermann could succeed, who felt his withdrawal from the Catholic Church as a liberation?

According to reports, Drewermann has even   celebrated the Eucharist in the context of the retreat. Abbot Wilfinger must have  at least known that if he has not even been there. The Rule of St. Benedict says of the abbot: "Therefore, the Abbot should only teach and preach that which is the law of the Lord" (Chapter 2) Georg Wilfinger has not met this point  and thus also has not complied with his responsibility towards his brothers.

Involuntarily there is a comparison with the Franciscans of the Immaculate. In this community, sectarian or schismatic tendencies are suspected. Therefore the need for an Apostolic Commissioner as part of a visitation was assumed. 

A similar approach seems appropriate in the case of Melk Abbey. Which hired an apostate priest from the church for the guidance of an annual retreat and who  also celebrated the Eucharist, should at least  be placed under guardianship as mentioned against Franciscan Congregation. Anyone familiar with the current spiritual and disciplinary situation of Melk Abbey a little, will find more reasons for a visitation.   

Since the monastery does not belong to the diocese, the local bishop has no direct handle on this. But there are points of contact between the Stift and the diocese. The Abbey serves 23 parishes in the diocese of St. Pölten and Vienna. The bishops Küng and Schönborn can not be indifferent to what  the monastery in their parishes. The Rule of Benedict even provides an involvement of diocesan bishops, if an abbot does not meet the requirements. "But if (which God forbid) the whole community should agree to choose a person who will acquiesce in their vices, and if those vices somehow become known to the Bishop to whose diocese the place belongs, or to the Abbots, Abbesses or the faithful of the vicinity, let them prevent the success of this conspiracy of the wicked, and set a worthy steward over the house of God. "(Chapter 64) It was time. © Photo: wikipedia/ludger1961/gemeinfrei

Dissident Ex-Priest Gives Retreat at Melk Austria for 8,000 Euro

Ex-Catholic and Ex-Priest Drewermann

Edit: Stift Melk is more than 900 years old with a dwindling number of monks.   Truly a decadent community as caretakers of one of the most beautiful churches in what’s left of Christendom.  So this doesn’t come as a surprise.

(Melk) every year in the Benedictine Abbey of St. Lambrecht in Styria there is a so-called annual retreat for the entire convent of the famous Benedictine Abbey of Melk, set in Lower Austria. For several days, all the monks of the Austrian "Escorial" take spiritual exercises at St. Lambrecht.

This year, the retreat took place from 2 July to  29 June.  The guidance of the retreat, which will serve as spiritual exercises a deepening and renewal of faith of the monks was entrusted to the former priest and psychotherapist Eugen Drewermann in 2014.

Eugen Drewermann left the Catholic Church in 2005 and had been suspended in 1992 as a priest after he  had been deprived from his  teaching and preaching  license by the bishop of Paderborn. The starting point were the measures in 1986 by the then Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who expressed his concern about Drewermann's increasingly radical departures away from the Catholic doctrine. For his 65th birthday, Drewermann announced his withdrawal from the Catholic Church.

What Brings An Ex-priest and Ex-Catholic and Benedictine Monks Together?

What might the Melk Benedictine in "spiritual exercises” learn exactly in spiritual exercises from an apostate priest as beaten from the Church?  Certainly not the Catholic Doctrine and the  Catholic Faith, anyway.

Eugen Drewermann is to have received an 8,000 euro fee for the four days of "retreat" from Melk Abbey and celebrated the Eucharist at the daily services in the Abbey of St. Lambrecht. The ex-priest and ex-Catholic was hired on behalf of the Melk of Abbot Georg Wilfinger by Father Jeremiah Eisenbauer who is also a psychotherapist and is also involved with Helmut Schüller’s Pfarrer initiative of dissident priests.

A reaction of the Diocese of St. Pölten where the Melk Abbey is located, and the Apostolic Nunciature in Vienna is not yet known.

Text: Martha Weinzl
image: Wikicommons (assembly Katholisches.info)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
Link to Katholisches…
AMGD