Deans, take your partners please for the Linz Waltz

KATH.NET - Katholischer Nachrichtendienst

The controversial Dean Josef Friedl from the Diocese of Linz publicly admitted in a panel discussion that he has a girlfriend and says that he lives with her - Friedl is one of the 31"anti-Rome Deans"

Linz (kath.net)
The controversial Dean Josef Friedl from the Diocese of Linz admitted on Thursday evening in a panel discussion in Linz he had a girlfriend, with whom he openly lives and rejected "mandatory celibacy" . He said also he did this in conformity with his conscience and no-one in his parish of Ungenach has a problem. Friedl is one of the 31 deans who at the beginning of February in an illegal assembly of deans voted against the Windischgarsten priest, Gerhard Wagner. According to a report of "Der Welt" several other deans of the diocese of Linz have de facto ignored the obligation to celibacy.

At the roundtable "Where are church and society going?" organised by the Greens of Linz apart Dean Josef Friedl, also participated Rolf Sauer (Family Department of the Diocese of Linz), Erika Kirchweger (Catholic Women's Movement), Episcopal Vicar Wilhelm Vieböck and Gernot Steier (The Christians- Cathcon- an unsuccessful attempt to provide a Christian alternative to the no longer Catholic Austrian Peoples' Party).

Cathcon: These Deans by attacking the exemplary Father Wagner are trying to deal with their own private difficulties with faith and morals not his. They are not talking about the good of the Church but their own comfort.