An Austrian Catholic priest and theologian will not return to his teaching position at a Catholic college following a controversy over his defense of historical Catholic arguments concerning the punishment of heresy.
Father Edmund Waldstein, an Austrian Cistercian monk and moral theologian, has been excluded from teaching at the Benedict XVI Philosophical-Theological College at Heiligenkreuz Abbey in Austria, according to LifeSiteNews, citing the Austrian Bishops’ Conference news agency Kathpress.
The decision means Waldstein will not resume teaching at the college for at least the remainder of Rector Wolfgang Klausnitzer’s tenure. His academic teaching title, however, has not been revoked.
At the center of the dispute are Waldstein’s writings concerning Catholic integralism and, in particular, his defense of the historical position that civil authorities could impose the death penalty for obstinate heresy.
Integralism holds that political society should not be entirely separated from humanity’s ultimate spiritual end and that temporal authority is ultimately subordinate to spiritual authority.
According to LifeSiteNews, Klausnitzer asked Waldstein to provide a scholarly clarification of his controversial position. Waldstein reportedly did not retract his statements and instead defended them by appealing to the history of Catholic theology.
Klausnitzer strongly rejected Waldstein’s argument.
“The theological methodology he employed in doing so I would not accept from a first-semester student,” Klausnitzer told the German Catholic publication Kirche und Leben, according to LifeSiteNews.
The rector also characterized Waldstein’s comments as “unspeakable statements,” particularly those concerning “the killing of heretics.”
The controversy has generated sharp disagreement among Catholic theologians and writers over both integralism and the proper interpretation of the Church’s historical teaching.
Michaela Quast-Neulinger, a professor in Innsbruck, welcomed the decision to exclude Waldstein from teaching.
“Integralist positions clearly contradict Catholic teaching and the legal framework of a democratic constitutional state,” Quast-Neulinger said, according to Kathpress as cited by LifeSiteNews.
She further described Waldstein as part of a wider network of integralist theologians in Europe and the United States that she considers “a danger to democracy and the Church.”
Dietmar Winkler, dean of the Catholic Theological Faculty in Salzburg, also supported the decision, according to LifeSiteNews. The controversy comes as Catholic theological faculties and pedagogical colleges in Austria have publicly opposed what they describe as “Christian-nationalist currents” and “neo-integralism.”
Other Catholic thinkers have defended Waldstein and disputed the claim that his position can simply be dismissed as contrary to Catholic doctrine.
Philosopher Edward Feser called the controversy “a calumny against a good man and holy priest.”
“What Pater Edmund Waldstein defends is simply traditional teaching that Vatican II explicitly says it ‘leaves untouched,’” Feser said, according to LifeSiteNews. “What his persecutors are trying to insulate from criticism is their own personal theology, not Catholic doctrine.”
Father Thomas Crean, co-author of Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy, similarly criticized the theologians who supported Waldstein’s exclusion.
“It’s sad to see these Austrian theologians separate themselves from the Church by denying the duties of human societies to the true religion, as defined by Pius IX and repeated by Vatican II,” Crean said, according to LifeSiteNews.
The dispute involves a complicated area of Catholic theological history.
St. Thomas Aquinas famously argued in the Summa Theologiae that obstinate heresy could merit temporal punishment after ecclesiastical judgment. Centuries later, Pope Leo X’s 1520 bull Exsurge Domine condemned a series of propositions associated with Martin Luther, including proposition 33: “That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit.”
Those historical texts, however, exist alongside the Church’s contemporary teaching on religious freedom and the death penalty. The Catechism of the Catholic Church currently teaches that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” and says the Church works for its abolition worldwide.
The controversy therefore raises questions extending beyond Waldstein himself: how historical magisterial statements should be interpreted in light of subsequent doctrinal development, what authority should be assigned to older theological arguments concerning the relationship between Church and state, and how Catholic scholars should address teachings developed under political circumstances very different from those of the modern world.
For now, Waldstein remains a member of Heiligenkreuz Abbey and retains his academic title. According to LifeSiteNews, Klausnitzer said he does not have the authority to revoke that title; such a decision would have to be made by the college’s academic Senate, which is expected to meet during the winter semester.
Meanwhile, Heiligenkreuz Abbey has granted Waldstein leave to pursue doctoral studies in philosophy in Rome.
The debate surrounding his case is unlikely to end with his departure from the classroom. It has instead brought an old and difficult Catholic theological question into renewed focus: how the Church’s historical teachings concerning religious error, civil authority and punishment should be understood faithfully within the Church’s teaching today.
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