(Image Source: Rainbow Sash Movement)

BY NOE GANDILLOT

ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY
 

You're watching multisource world video news analysis from Newsy. 

The Vatican has a revolution on its hands. More than 300 Austrian priests called for the end of celibacy for clerics, the allowance of marriage, and increasing tolerance of non-catholics. The dissenting priests’ website has the details:

“Rome’s refusal to take up long-needed reforms and our bishops’ inactivity not only allow but force us to obey our consciences and make ourselves independent”


Der Standard reports 76% of those polled agree with the priests. The archbishop of Vienna does not. He has threatened excommunication and told the paper:

“This has to stop. If somebody decides to become a dissident, he will have to face the consequences.”

But might there be consequences for the Church? Le Monde quotes Paul Zulehner, a theologist who says the church should be concerned:

“ The catholic church must react quickly if it wants to avoid a schism.”

This isn’t the first sign of trouble. Suddeutsche Zeitung argues the uprising is a symptom of deeper problems for the church.


“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.”


Which might explain why some say popular opinion is turning against the Church. A parishioner tells Deutsche Welle :

“What’s going on in the catholic church is terrible. Not just in Austria, but across Europe. The Vatican is incapable of moving with the time and introducing reforms.”
 

France’s Catholic La Croix reports the more Austrians left the Catholic Church last year than ever before.
 

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Transcript by Newsy.