Herbert Lackner writing in the Austrian newsmagazine Profil is shocked, shocked, to discover that Cardinal Schönborn is Catholic and supports the teachings of the papacy (whose current occupant happens to be his professor at Regensburg and I believe his dissertation director). 

In March 2008 he spoke to priests of the neocatechumate.  

His theme: the fall of the birth rate in Europe. Schönborn described three reasons for this: the abortion law that was liberalized in the 1970s, the increasing tendency to government recognition of homosexual partnerships, and contraception. In regard to the last themes Schönborn made his predecessors responsible: it as a sin that the Austrian bishops’ conference in 1968 in the Mariatroster Explanation said a strong No to the anti-pill encyclical of Pope Paul Vi. One did not have the courage to say Yes. 

Sein Thema: der Rückgang der Geburtenraten in Europa. Drei Gründe machte Schönborn dafür aus: die in den siebziger Jahren liberalisierten Abtreibungsgesetze, die zunehmende Tendenz zur staatlichen Anerkennung von homosexuellen Partnerschaften und die Empfängnisverhütung. Beim letzten Thema machte Schönborn auch seine Vorgänger mitverantwortlich: Es sei eine „Sünde“ gewesen, dass die österreichische Bischofskonferenz 1968 in der so genannten „Mariatroster Erklärung“ „Nein“ zur strengen Antibabypillen-Enzyklika von Papst Paul VI. gesagt habe. Man habe „nicht den Yes.Mut gehabt, Ja zu sagen“. 

Schönborn had to backtrack on his criticism of the bishops, but it seems undeniable that the acceptance of abortion and contraception by Austrian Catholics has led to a catastophic decline in the birth rate (I doubt that hosmoexuality is a cause of the decline).

Young Austrians are more anti-immigrant than older Austrians, according to Carl Djerassi („Warum wir bald sehr alt ausschauen,“ Der Standard, December 13, 2008) one of the inventors of the pill, but young Austrians don’t want to have children. Something has to give.