January 18, 2004

This weekend the parish is grateful to welcome as a rectory guest the Archbishop of Vienna, His Eminence Christoph Cardinal Schonborn. The Cardinal will celebrate the High Mass at 11 A.M. and will preach. Cardinal Schonborn was born in Skalsko, Bohemia on the 22nd of January in 1945. His family name has been born over many centuries by distinguished prelates including the Archbishop of Mainz, the Archbishop of Trier, the Prince Bishop of Speyer, and most recently in the nineteenth century the Cardinal Archbishop of Prague. At the tortuous end of World War II, the von Schonborns fled with their nine-month old Christoph to Austria. Eighteen years later he entered the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and was ordained in 1970. After pastoral work and studies he became a chaplain at Graz University in 1973. In 1976 he was made Associate Professor of Dogma at the University of Fribourg and Professor of Theology the following year. For ten years beginning in 1981 he was Professor of Dogmatic Theology in that institution. In 1980 he was appointed a member of the Orthodox-Roman Catholic Dialogue Commission of Switzerland and in 1987 he attained international prominence as Secretary for the Draft-Commission of the new Catechism of the Catholic Church.

His Holiness Pope John Paul II appointed him Auxiliary Bishop of Vienna on September 29, 1991 and on September 14, 1995 he was named Archbishop of Vienna. In the Sacred Consistory of 1998, the Pope created him a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. Cardinal Schonborn is a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for Oriental Churches and the Pontifical Council for Culture.

In the heart of our great city of New York we face many of the challenges that Cardinal Schonborn sees in his Austrian homeland, the good and the bad, the inspiring and the daunting. As a young scholar, Cardinal Schonborn witnessed the tendency of many "young Turks" to overthrow the classical teaching of scholar saints such as St. Thomas Aquinas in that revolutionary period of the 1960s and 1970s. His work in many areas, including the establishment of new institutes for advanced study, is dedicated to restoring and advancing the integrity of the orthodox Faith. We gather with him as he presides at our parish altar and preaches, and we send him on his way with continual prayers as he assumes ever increasing responsibilities for the good of Christ's One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Christians should bear in mind what Cardinal Schonborn has said with particular reference to St. Thomas Aquinas and other great teachers: "Suspicion comes from a deep fear of surrendering to a master. Of course, if you surrender to a master, you must be sure that he is a master, that he does not mislead you. Whom can we trust more than the saints? The saints are true Masters and our true teachers."

Fr. George W. Rutler