After noteworthy career, Cardinal Schönborn exits
Does the Vienna cardinal's retirement close an era of Church history?
As Cardinal Christoph Schönborn celebrated his 80th birthday Wednesday, Pope Francis accepted his resignation as Archbishop of Vienna, Austria, as expected.
A brief line in the Holy See press office’s daily bulletin marked the end of an era not only for Vienna’s Catholics but perhaps also for the Church in Europe.
Schönborn had led the archdiocese at the continent’s crossroads since 1995. Back then, any journalist compiling a list of Europe’s most prominent churchmen would have mentioned figures like Italy’s Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Belgium’s Cardinal Godfried Danneels, and Germany’s Cardinal Karl Lehmann. Schönborn not only outlived them, he also occupied a different place on the ecclesiastical spectrum — one that was arguably all his own.
The Austrian cardinal was one of the few figures strongly associated with the theological project of John Paul II-Benedict XVI who adapted smoothly to the Francis pontificate. Some thought this revealed a malleable personality, others that Schönborn played a vital bridge-building role between two ecclesiastical worlds.
What was Schönborn’s background? What has he contributed to the Church? And what will he do next?
What was Schönborn’s background?
Cardinal Schönborn’s full name tells you a lot about his background. It’s Christoph Maria Michael Hugo Damian Peter Adalbert Schönborn. The abundance of Christian names is the mark of European aristocracy.
Schönborn was born in a castle in 1945, in what was then Nazi Germany but is now the Czech Republic. The Schönborn family, whose name is said to mean “beautiful spring,” was a sovereign family of the Holy Roman Empire that produced generations of eminent Church leaders.
Shortly after Schönborn’s birth, World War II ended and his family fled to Austria. His parents divorced in 1959, an event he later described as “one of the most painful moments of my life.”
His younger brother, Michael, became an actor, whose roles have included playing a monsignor in a stage adaptation of “Sister Act.”
Schönborn joined the Dominican order in 1963. After his ordination by Vienna’s Cardinal Franz König in 1970, he studied under Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI. His appointment in 1980 as a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission confirmed his rising status as a theologian.
In 1987, he was named general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, one of the landmark projects of John Paul II’s pontificate. In that role, he worked closely with the now Cardinal Ratzinger.
Schönborn’s episcopal career began with his appointment as a Vienna auxiliary bishop in 1991. A few years later, the Vienna archdiocese was engulfed in crisis when its leader, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër, retired amid accusations of sexual abuse. As the controversy shook the Austrian Church, Schönborn was named Groër’s successor.
It was a seemingly impossible job, but decades later, Schönborn is widely credited with stabilizing the archdiocese, which occupies a unique position in the Church in Europe as a meeting place between East and West.
What did he contribute to the Church?
In addition to his work on the Catechism, Schönborn published a stream of well-received theological works. He was also an author of the youth catechism “Youcat.”
After he was elected president of the Austrian bishops’ conference and received the red hat in 1998, he became a power player in Rome and a fixture on journalists’ lists of papabili.
In 2010, he clashed publicly with the influential former Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who in April that year appeared to dismiss clerical abuse allegations as “petty gossip.”
At a meeting with Austrian newspaper editors, Schönborn accused Sodano of “massively wronging the victims” and claimed the Italian cardinal had prevented Cardinal Ratzinger from investigating the Groër case in 1995.
Benedict XVI sought to draw a line under the dispute at a meeting with Schönborn and Sodano, where the Holy See press office said the Austrian cardinal “expressed his displeasure at the interpretations given to his words.”
Many observers at the time thought that marked a defeat for Schönborn — but with hindsight, the cardinal may have helped to bring to the surface tensions within the Church over the Vatican’s handling of abuse.
That arguably contributed indirectly to later steps to combat abuse, such as the 2019 motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi.
In 2015, Schönborn surprised most observers by lending his theological heft to Pope Francis when he appeared at the press conference launching Amoris laetitia, the highly controversial post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the family.
The cardinal expressed his “joy” and “gratitude” for the document, and gave a sympathetic exposition of the divisive eighth chapter, on “accompanying, discerning, and integrating weakness.”
Following Schönborn’s embrace of Amoris laetitia, perceptions of the cardinal as a standard bearer for St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI’s theological vision shifted.
Amid criticism from other theologians, the cardinal argued there was more continuity between the stances of the past three popes than some believed — and that argument came to define the cardinal’s public profile for most of the last decade.
What will he do next?
Schönborn already had his next job lined up before he stepped down in Vienna. In October, he was elected president of the commission of cardinals overseeing the Vatican’s Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR).
On Jan. 17, days before his resignation, he published a new book, “My Eyes have Seen Salvation,” on the religious works of artist Helmut Michael Berger (1925-2013). This suggests that, as he enters his 80s, he may be starting a new chapter as a writer.
When Pope Francis accepted Schönborn’s resignation Jan. 22, he did not name a successor. Austrian media report that figures on the terna, or three-candidate list, for Vienna declined the post.
If true, that might reflect the growing problem of priests rejecting the summons to become bishops.
But perhaps it also suggests that Schönborn has occupied such distinctive niches in the Church over the past 30 years that he has no real successor.
The cardinal’s work on the Catechism is undoubtedly his greatest contribution and for this he deserves much praise.
As for his theological perspective, I think he always had some left ward tendencies, but what separated him from more liberal clergyman was his reverence of revelation and his resourcement outlook. He always saw Revelation, Tradition, and the Fathers as authoritative and not to be relativized.
I think he was one of those breeds of men who were always of the center left, but whereas someone like Walter Kasper became a bit of a progressive boogeyman, he looked for areas where he could not only work with those across the ideological spectrum, but, as is the case with the Catechism, irrevocably put his mark on things and help steer them.
Ironically such future cases might not be as readily apparent. As the Churches globalizes in its appointments, and there is increasing pressure to have laity in positions that used to be solely clerical, you won't need to see such flexibility and tactical thinking, as the future trend will probably just be if the pope can't find a bishop ro cardinal as an ally on the cause, he'll turn to a member of the laity, at least for the intellectual firepower.