What the Hapsburg Empire Got Right

...While few people were willing to stand up for the old empire after four years of world war, a century later scholars are rethinking its legacy, eager to assert its multifaceted attributes and surprisingly progressive institutions. Stretching from today’s western Ukraine to Switzerland and from the Czech Republic’s northern border with Germany down Croatia’s Adriatic coast, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy had no internal borders, one currency, two parliaments (in Vienna and Budapest), 11 officially recognized peoples/languages and almost as many religions, including Yiddish-speaking Jews, Bosnian Muslims and a variety of Orthodox Christians and Protestants to complement its Catholic majority. Formed and reformed through six centuries of feudal alliances, dynastic marriages, wars and Great Power bargains, the Hapsburg Empire was on its way to becoming a modern multinational state by the late 19th century. The army accommodated linguistic diversity in its regiments, schooling was available in different languages, and the bureaucracy was multilingual.

Although institutional changes for more political inclusivity and democracy moved slowly in the conservative monarchy, by 1907 the Austrian Parliament was elected by universal male suffrage, and a participatory public sphere was thriving. Hapsburg citizens were hardly living and working in isolated ethno-national enclaves. To this day, the turn-of-the-century architecture of train stations and other public buildings attests both to the population’s mobility and to the vast empire’s economic vitality. The similar layout of Central European cities is another visual reminder of a shared past.

The “outdated” old monarchy also produced a remarkably rich and innovative cultural life. In 1900, its multiethnic capital, Vienna, the world’s sixth-largest city, was home to such international luminaries as the founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, the composer Gustav Mahler, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the painter Gustav Klimt, the Nobel Prize-winning peace activist Bertha von Suttner, the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, the architect Otto Wagner, the feminist/freethinker Rosa Mayreder and the writers Stefan Zweig and Arthur Schnitzler.

Read the rest here. 

The Habsburgs, a Reconsideration

The Habsburg Monarchy has long been seen as an outdated empire doomed to fail. To the Central European societies it sheltered before 1914, it may have had a cosy charm, but as a dynastic empire among nation-states, critics and historians deemed Austria an anachronism. Nineteenth-century liberals judged the Habsburgs for ruling a prison of peoples and siding with fellow despots. William Gladstone, the British prime minister who epitomized liberal moralism, called Austria “the unflinching foe of freedom in every country of Europe.” Never and nowhere, he insisted, could it be said that “here Austria did good.” Those charges defined narrative even before the Habsburg Empire collapsed amidst the catastrophe of World War I.

Historical perspective and a wealth of detailed scholarship, along with intervening events over a brutal twentieth century, force a reassessment. The Habsburg Monarchy was more effective and popular than critics allowed. If doomed by internal contradictions, what made it last so long? How could a backward, repressive order have fostered the flourishing and diverse culture of Mitteleuropa? Why did it inspire such loyalty until the very end? Empire provided a unifying force as eighteenth-century Habsburgs sought to consolidate their disparate territories into a coherent state. Those top-down efforts created loyalties and institutions—including a conception of citizenship and state power limited by law—that made space for bottom-up responses within an emergent civil society. The world those interactions created requires a new approach to be understood on its own terms.

Read the rest here.

Archdiocese of Vienna on handover of churches to Orthodox

(Catholic Sentinel) - Austria's Vienna Archdiocese has defended its gifts of Catholic churches to Orthodox communities, as part of a current reorganization.

"Our own church is receding in Vienna, whereas other Christian confessions are on the rise because of immigration," Michael Pruller, the archdiocese spokesman, told Catholic News Service Dec. 19.

"Many large churches were built in the 19th century for parishes numbering tens of thousands. As in other countries, we're now having to get rid of churches, which can't be maintained by their small congregations."

Read the rest here.

I empathize. Here in the US, as families migrate from traditionally immigrant communities, a lot of Orthodox churches have suffered membership troubles and some have had to be closed. In any event I applaud the Catholics for handing the church buildings over to other Christians instead of allowing them to be used for secular purposes, or turned into mosques.

Many Years!

Many years to Archduke Imre of Austria (Imre Emmanuel Erzherzog von Habsburg-Lorraine) and H.I.H. the Archduchess Kathleen (Walker) who were married according to the traditional Roman Rite in Washington DC on Saturday.

Gott erhalte den Kaiser!
 

Rome is getting nervous about the situation in Austria

Via Fr. Anthony Chadwick's excellent blog...

Monday afternoon (23rd of January), in the Vatican there was a meeting between the top figures of the Austrian Episcopal Conference and the representatives of the Roman Dicasteries to discuss the movement led by Hellmut Schüller.

This movement is supported roughly by three hundred clerics and it openly disobeys the Roman Catholic Church with theories bordering on heresy, moreover now it wants to spread abroad creating an international net open to priests of other nations and continents.

For Pope Benedict and the Roman Curia it is time to take action against this separatist movement. Schüller himself, in several interviews, did not deny his will to disengage from Rome and he added that there are priests from other countries like France, Germany and Australia wanting to join the initiative.

The Austrian bishops were represented at the meeting by Christoph Schönborn, Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, by Alois Kothgasser, Archbishop of Saltsburg , by Egon Kapellari and Klaus Küng, bishops of Graz and St. Pölten. Representing Rome were the clerics of the Vatican Secretariat of State, of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and of the Roman Congregations of Bishops and priests. The objective of the Vatican was, among other things, to examine closely, asking specific and careful questions, the scale of the possible apostasy, which may lead to a schism of the Church.

Read the rest here.

I don’t want to sound like some Prussian disciplinarian, but really, there are limits. Or at least there should be. Rome used to know how to deal with people like this. Can anyone for even a second imagine something like this occurring under Pius XII? These bishops are in urgent need of a spinal transplant. If I were a bishop over there my response would be…
1. Issue an immediate ultimatum to any “priest” who signed this document. Repent and formally recant and then sign the Catechism of the Catholic Church within thirty days or…
2. Face suspension to be followed in six months by excommunication for schism and heresy and be deposed from Holy Orders.

Austria: Dissident Catholics in open revolt

VIENNA (Reuters) - Dissident Austrian Catholics announced lay people will start celebrating Mass when a priest is unavailable, a clear call to disobedience just as the country's bishops hold their autumn conference.

A manifesto adopted by dozens of activists at the weekend said lay people will preach, consecrate and distribute communion in priestless parishes, said Hans Peter Hurka, head of the group We Are Church.

"Church law bans this. The question is, can Church law overrule the Bible? We are of the opinion, based on findings from the Second Vatican Council, that this (ban) is not possible," he said Monday.

The Catholic Church only allows ordained priests to preside at Mass.

Read the rest here.

I know what should be done.  But the odds of it happening are lower than mine of hitting the trifecta at the Kentucky Derby. (Which are rather low since I don't play the horses.)  Austria used to be a pretty solidly Catholic country.  Today it is Protestant in all but name.

Requiem for H.I.H. Archduke Otto von Hapsburg

Part 1 of 9. See the rest here.

Austria: Over 300 priests join 'call to disobedience'

Over 300 of Austria’s 4,200 priests have pledged to take part in Aufruf zum Ungehorsam (Call to Disobedience), an initiative launched in June.
The Call to Disobedience document cites “the Roman refusal of a long-overdue Church reform and the inaction of bishops.” Priests who support the document pledge

• to pray for Church reform at every liturgy, since “in the presence of God there is freedom of speech”
• not to deny the Holy Eucharist to “believers of good will,” including non-Catholic Christians and those who have remarried outside the Church
• to avoid offering Mass more than once on Sundays and holy days and to avoid making use of visiting priests--instead holding a “self-designed” Liturgy of the Word
• to describe such a Liturgy of the Word with the distribution of Holy Communion as a “priestless Eucharistic celebration”; “thus we fulfill the Sunday obligation in a time of priest shortage”
• to “ignore” canonical norms that restrict the preaching of the homily to clergy
• to oppose parish mergers, insisting instead that each parish have its own individual leader, “whether man or woman”
• to “use every opportunity to speak out openly in favor of the admission of the married and of women to the priesthood”

Read the rest here.
HT: Fr. Z.

Otto von Habsburg remembered as great defender of Christian values

Vienna, Austria, Jul 6, 2011 / 01:56 am (CNA).- Otto von Habsburg, a Catholic leader for a unified Europe and heir to the defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, died July 4 at the age of 98. Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino remembered him as one of the twentieth century’s “greatest defenders” of the Catholic faith and human dignity.

“Even well into his nineties, Otto von Habsburg campaigned tirelessly to uphold Europe's Christian values and the sanctity of all human life,” the cardinal said in a statement from the Rome-based Dignitatis Humanae Institute.

“Otto von Habsburg's father, (Emperor) Blessed Karl of Austria, instilled in him from an early age that the office of a ruler is one of holy service and selfless sacrifice for the good of the peoples entrusted to him. It was a philosophy that would influence him all his life. He will be greatly missed.”

Cardinal Martino, who is the president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, noted that the dynastic leader’s “uncompromising position” on human dignity was evident in his agreement to become a patron of the Dignitas Humanae Institute despite his increasing frailty.

The organization advocates a universal declaration which bases this dignity on man’s creation in the image and likeness of God.

In 2007 Habsburg argued that lobbyists should examine the effective tactics of the “anti-family lobby” and use them to promote the protection of the most vulnerable, the cardinal recalled.

“Our thoughts and prayers at this time are turned towards the repose of Otto's soul, the consolation of his family, and loss of the people of Austria; and we trust in the mercy of God that today this holy, humble man beholds the face of Jesus Christ, now into eternity,” the cardinal said.

Habsburg died at his villa in Poecking in southern Germany, where he had lived since the 1950s, with his seven children nearby, the Associated Press reports.

Although he was a witness to the dismantling of his family’s empire, he used his influence in an unsuccessful struggle to keep the Nazis from annexing Austria before World War II. He also opposed Soviet communism and worked for the opening of the Iron Curtain in the decades after the war.

Cardinal Martino said Habsburg was “particularly disturbed” by the rise of the major totalitarian ideologies and fought against both National Socialism and International Socialism “at significant risk to his own life.”

Read the rest here.

RIP: Archduke Otto von Hapsburg

H.I.H Archduke Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius von Hapsburg has reposed at 98. He was heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungry and the last surviving member of any of the royal houses alive during the First World War.

Read the story here.

Austrian MP slams Turkish religious intolerance

H/T Fr. Z

Wow... Just wow.