“Conservative” is getting like those funny pics you can’t figure out what you’re looking at. Bunny or duck? Bunny or duck? Bunnyduckbunnyduckbunnyduckbunnyduck…

Steve lines up a few helpful statements from Cardinal Yes-I’m-Conservative Schonborn, just to keep handy…

In His Own Words: Cardinal Schönborn on Exhortation’s Deepest Concerns

_Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the Archbishop of Vienna, Austria, has been chosen by Pope Francis to present his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Leaeticia, on 8 April.

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As to the question of the “remarried” divorcees, Schönborn sees that “there is not general solution.” Even though he says that “’Anything goes’ is not the way of the Gospels,” he claims that the Synod of Bishops on the Family proposes that every situation is different. The priests have to listen – in the “Forum internum” – “what the conscience is saying” in order to see what may be done “also with regard to the access to the Sacraments, to the Sacrament of Penance and of Holy Communion.”

In those relationships that are not “fully sacramental,” there are to be found “elements of truth and of sanctification.” In this, Cardinal Schönborn proposes that even in sinful situations (of cohabitation, adultery, etc.) there can be found elements of sanctification.

If a woman, for example, has had a broken marriage and an abortion, but later “remarried” civilly and has now five children and desires to receive absolution for her former abortion, Schönborn explicitly says that he advises his own priests to give such a woman absolution – even though she lives in a sinful situation. “You [priests]cannot let this woman go away without having freed her from the burden of her sin,” he says.

Schönborn proposes that one has to see the positive in unusual situations. “In ‘patchwork families’ there is not a lack of surprising generosity, even though some people will be scandalized by them.” He continues: “One can certainly learn from such persons who live in such situations.”

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Or maybe it’s just like that thing where you say the word over and over and it loses its meaning in your mind and you have to go watch TV or something before you start feeling like you’re going crazy.

Crazier.

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