The little priest at the front is kept far away from the episcopal eminence and is deprived of any opportunity to be a conversation partner concerning these issues. Consequently, only a few bishops take notice of the parish priests' experiences and frustrations and carry them up. Looking down one is at best satisfied with sympathetic sighing and a moving lament concerning the lack of Christian families to manufacture vocations to celibacy in sufficient numbers. And further up, one is content with pouring cement on existing rules, as in the present decree. The anguish behind the events is not even a topic.
Difficulties exist wherever there are human beings.
Parenthetically, it is an unconscious or deliberate falsification to pass off the current issue as a disputation concerning celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God. It is not in question. The office in the Church, interpreted in biblical terms, constitutes an office of serving and not an exercise in sacred narcissism which can be unconcerned whether millions upon millions of Christians even have the opportunity to receive the grace-giving sacraments and to nurture the center of their community which according to Scripture and dogma is the Eucharist in a humanly meaningful manner. And one should not assume that the laity and the majority of parish priests in Austria are incapable of seeing through this business and that they can simply be dismissed as incompetent in a dialogue that was intended to be sincere. It is because of those members of the laity and those pastors far more than assorted Roman decrees that despite of everything we still have a Church in Austria.